Bad Links?
Other glitches?
Notify Webmaster

Rollin’ on Old Man River . . .

By RONDA RICH

MISSISSIPPI RIVER — “One cannot see too many summer sunrises on the Mississippi,” wrote Mark Twain, who shared a well-publicized love affair with the river. “They are enchanting.”

I wouldn’t know.

I don’t believe that I have ever seen a sunrise, summer or not, on the Mississippi. They always arrive inconveniently early for me. I have, however, seen many red-orange sunsets and a few times I have seen a full moon, pregnant with light and wonderment, hover majestically over the storied river.

The charms of the mighty, mystical Mississippi have long held me enthralled. I have a favorite spot at the back of New Orleans’ French Market where I like to sit quietly — unusual for me — and ponder her magnificence as well as the role she played in the history of our South and the rest of the nation.

This romantic dalliance recently developed into a full-blown, heart-throbbing infatuation when I cruised the river for several days. I was on a modern version of an old-fashioned steamboat, a stunning rendition of the kind that Mark Twain captained up and down his beloved river.

It is called the American Queen and she is the king of the riverboat queens. There are three of them including the Mississippi Queen and the 77-year-old Delta Queen, which, by Congressional exemption, is the only wooden constructed boat allowed on American waters.

The American Queen was built for $65 million and launched in 1995 for river cruises. It is Victorian glamour at its best with rich red velvets, carved antique furniture, Tiffany lamps and dark wood paneling. Southern hospitality, at its most impressive, resounded throughout the boat in the largest and smallest of ways. Staff called passengers by their first names with Miss and Mister in front of them so I was regularly greeted with, “Hello, Miss Ronda! How are you today?”

Most of the passengers on our cruise were non-Southern so it was very interesting to observe their reaction to our fabled Southern hospitality. They melted. Then, they mellowed. And soon they started practicing the particular art of Southern courtesy, sliding into it as easily as Tom Sawyer slid out of painting that picket fence. It was all very pleasant.

When the boat — and yes, despite its size (3,707 tons), its captain and staff insist that it be referred to as a “boat” and not a “ship” — pulls out from port in New Orleans as well as all of its subsequent stops, the Calliope (a steam-propelled pipe organ), always plays “Dixie” while passengers dance happily on the decks to the merry melody.

The best part of all was that I danced intimately with Mark Twain’s river, sweetly astounded to discover that the land along its edge is still virtually untouched by development in an age where skyscrapers, malls and subdivisions have rudely pushed in and took hostage of our treasured Southern soil.

Swaying gently in a rocker on a balcony, I spent hours reading Southern writers and glancing up from time to time to watch the unharmed Southern land drift quietly by. Twain was right. There is something enormously peaceful and simultaneously majestic about that river.

On the last night of the cruise, Linda, a charming reporter from Toronto, sighed heavily when one of the staff greeted her with, “Hello, Miss Linda!”

With a wan smile, she shook her head sadly and said, “It’s going to be awfully hard to go back to a world where no one calls me ‘Miss Linda.’”

And so it was for all of us. But, to me, leaving behind the music of the Mississippi River was even harder.