This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
We restless Americans have always loved to watch machines going and coming. A ship from England pulling into dock, a train chuffing into a station, an airplane winging in to land have always gathered crowds.
But no crowds were larger and more reverent back in the 19th century than the townspeople who found their way down to the levee at the cry "Steamboat a'coming." Each arrival was a self-contained stage play in several scenes, and admission was free.
A steamboat announced itself an hour before its arrival by columns of thick black smoke pouring from its stacks—still invisible in the distance. The black smoke was all show—produced by adding pine pitch to the fires. Then, far downstream, the lonesome whistle would sound, and, closer, the wheezy calliope would begin a familiar tune.
As the steamboat approached the levee, the prologue ended, and the play began. No stage was ever so grand as the Mississippi steamer and its great paddles. Four stories high, above which stood twin black smokestacks with gilt decorations. The rows of neat white railings and the intricate gingerbread framed the actors in the play—who by now had appeared. There was the captain in his uniform crisscrossed with braid. There were the boys who had run away from town to work on the boat, and now stood proudly at the rail. Now the gang plank lowered, and the passengers emerged, costumed as fine ladies, perhaps from New Orleans, or important businessmen in a hurry to be off. With luck, there might be dapper professional gamblers, or an immigrant family, or a criminal rounded up by a sheriff. Every script was different.
Then the play was over. Storekeepers returned to their shops and boys to their marbles. The boat took on cargo and new passengers, and, minus the pine pitch and the calliope, continued its trip.
If trains had learned this kind of showmanship, they might still be around. It's not too late for the airplane. Wouldn't it be interesting if, one day, the pilot of TWA flight 851 remembered that he had been top gun in the Navy, and decided to engage his Boeing 737 in a bit of steamboat theatrics?
The Mississippi steamboat knew how to play to its audience.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
