The wonderfully evocative photograph spread across the two preceding pages has a great deal to say, in the way that pictures do, about America, its heritage, and the importance of historic preservation. And besides all that, it is a good point to begin what starts out as a very unhappy story.
About three in the afternoon of November 2 last, with jazz bands blaring, the steam calliope belting out “AuId Lang Syne,” and fireboats playing their great arching streams of muddy Mississippi water, the last river packet in the United States, the steamboat in our photograph, slowed down to tie up at New Orleans in what was then widely heralded as her last and final stop. The paddlewheel palace Delta Queen, eleven days out of St. Paul, Minnesota, eased up toward the Poydras Street wharf while eager hands stretched out to take her lines. In Captain Ernest Wagner’s pilothouse, where Mark Twain would have felt at home, the engine telegraph signalled back “all stop.” For a moment the mournful steam whistle, in one last mighty blast, drowned out the noise with which Americans handle all great events, happy or otherwise. Cameras flashed, television men scurried about, dignitaries maneuvered for position. The full load of passengers, 189 strong and from twenty different states, began to disappear into the crowd. Reporters interviewed anyone and everyone. History had come again to New Orleans. The steamboat age was over and would be buried in a great burst of sentiment. So everyone thought.
Full Story >> |
