'Even though we were convicted of criminal stupidity, we're still appealing."

Now that's a 24-karat quote. You can spend a lifetime panning the muddy news river and never find a nugget like that.

It's out of context, of course. But not very far. And the back story is even better - a stolen horse, golden antlers, a sentence of poop scooping and a rivalry between Cincinnati and Louisville that's hotter than a steamboat boiler.

The story begins once upon a time when there was a big steamboat race between Louisville and Cincinnati. A few weeks ago.

"It was a beautiful day to start the race," said Alan Bernstein of BB Riverboats, owner of the Belle of Cincinnati.

During Kentucky Derby week, Louisville invites the Belle of Cincinnati to race its Belle of Louisville and the Delta Queen.

"Riverboat racing is sort of a pride thing," Bernstein said. "We celebrate the tradition and the antics river men used to do."

The way Bernstein tells it, "Cheating is just a part of steamboat racing," and Louisville is very good at it - cheating, that is, not racing.

As usual, the Belle of Cincinnati had the worst starting position, punished for being a diesel. "But there's no advantage to being diesel. Zero," Bernstein insists.

Besides, his boat uses steam to press uniforms, and theirs use diesel to heat steam boilers - so he figures it's a wash.

The Louisville boats left early to get a head start, and that's when things went south faster than ice melts in Kentucky bourbon. "They left this horse and jockey sitting there," Bernstein said.

It was a plastic horse and jockey, like Cincinnati's plastic pigs. Life-size. Red, white and blue. Personal property of the mayor of Louisville. "We thought, "Somebody could steal that horse. We should take care of it."

The horse was spotted by TV cameras, "trotting" down the dock to the Belle of Cincinnati.

When the other boats saw the horse, they were shocked into stunned silence, he said.

"We won the race with some very, very sharp maneuvering." But when they went to collect the coveted golden antlers, "We were told we were not a steamboat."

The antlers went to the Belle of Louisville.

"That riled us up into a frenzy," Bernstein said. "We decided to - well, we refer to it as we took what was rightfully ours. They like to refer to it as stealing."

In Louisville, where a sense of humor is harder to find than a three-way coney, someone called the cops. "I decided to turn myself in to the Louisville Police," Bernstein said.

He was "charged" with impersonating a steamboat, impersonating a river man and criminal stupidity for stealing the antlers. His sentence: One day as a deckhand on a Louisville steamboat, and pooper-scooper duty behind police horses in a Derby parade next year.

Bernstein and his crew are already stoking the fires under a stewpot of rich paybacks. They plan to race next year in prison stripes. "We might find a pair of gold antlers we can present to ourselves," he said.

Maybe Cincinnati should give Louisville a painted pig with its mayor as a jockey. Or mail them our "extra" cicadas, for a plague of locusts.

I'd suggest "loaning" them a few of our boycotters, but I think that already happened. Maybe that's why they're so steamed.

Meanwhile, the Cincinnati Belle has given us a new city motto: "We may be criminally stupid, but we're still appealing."

E-mail pbronson@enquirer.com or call 768-8301.