COMING TOGETHER AS ONE

[HostDave]

We’ve all done it. Maybe it was in a shopping mall’s center courtyard beneath a glass roof or maybe it was in Rome beneath the brilliant blue sky. At some point, we’ve all thrown a penny into a fountain for good luck and made a wish. In fact, it’s tough to find any fountain anywhere that doesn’t have a liberal carpet of coins coating its bottom, shimmering just below the surface. But those coins are not given up without cost; each represents one of the wishes bestowed upon the gesture of tossing a coin in a fountain by the currency’s owner.

Superstitions and traditions are often interchangeable. Some historians trace the idea of throwing coins into water as far back as the Romans during their time in what is now England and others claim it began as part of Celtic mythology. One possible explanation is that it was an offering to appease the gods, who expected tribute for worldly successes. If you made money, then you should toss some of it into the sea to thank the gods and to wish for more.

Of all the fountains on earth, Trevi fountain in Rome is perhaps the most famous and if you throw a coin into its historic waters, supposedly it solidifies your wish to return to Rome someday. The fountains in front of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas are reknowned for the spectacle they represent. One fountain does more than just collect coins, at certain times of the day, it gives them back! The Fountain of Wealth in Singapore is turned off a few times a day and visitors can walk into its center and pick up the shining coins left by other visitors earlier in the morning. While throwing coins in the fountain is supposed to grant a wish, collecting them brings good fortune. Apparently, taking someone’s wishful coins for your own good luck does not negate the original wish itself. Or so the Singaporeans claim.

While we have plenty of fountains in the United States to test the claim that dropping a penny in a fountain makes wishes come true (which is far more convenient than waiting once a year to blow out your birthday candles), there is one spot where you can toss a coin into a body of water and become part of river lore. Just head to Cairo, IL and you’ll find out why.

Cairo, it turns out, is located at the spot where the Ohio River flows into the Mississippi River. For the American Queen Steamboat Company, it is the confluence of our three sailing regions for the grand American Queen. North of the area is what we call the Upper Mississippi, south of the juncture is the Lower Mississippi, and to the east is the Ohio and Tennessee river systems.

It also represents a milestone on the journey of a riverboat and, before that, the flatboatmen who navigated their glorified rafts down the river. Though funds were sparse in the 1800s, many a steamboatman (and plenty of female passengers, too), tossed a coin into the dividing line where the rivers met. To do so was to ensure safe passage.

Notice that we used the words “dividing line” for very good reason. The Ohio is a blue river, fairly clear and fed by wilderness streams. The Mississippi starts out clear, nourished by the lakes of the northern Untied States, but as it flows through fertile farmland, it takes on a more earthy appearance thanks to the rich soil suspended in the water. Frequent cycles of flooding into the fields along the way bring even more soil into the mix. Some have called the Mississippi, and its equally muddy tributary, the Missouri River, “too thin to plow and too thick to drink.” Where the blue Ohio meets the soil-rich Mississippi, the waters do not immediately mix. Instead, for a section of the river, the two waters, each of a different color, flow side-by-side before eventually the twists and turns of the Mississippi stir the two together. There is a very clear line of demarcation right down the middle of the river at Cairo. The key to having your wishes granted isn’t just to throw a coin into the water near Cairo; it’s a much more precise game than that. Your wish is granted only if your coin splashes into the water on the exact dividing line between tan water and blue water.

Obviously, you can only throw a coin into the precise spot on the river where the waters meet if you’re on a boat (although on a clear day, you can see the phenomenon from shore, especially from the vantage point of Fort Jefferson Hill to the south of Wycliffe, KY) and the tradition has become very popular among the American Queen’s guests over the years.

But the visible division between the rivers that eventually fades away also represents the different character of the Mississippi River itself and explains why our guests are so drawn to this part of the country on a riverboat. North of the area, the river is laced with locks as it drops in a steeper grade and south of Cairo it broadens and flows more gently. The region to the North has an atmosphere steeped in the hard-working farmers of Scandinavian and German heritage whereas as one heads toward New Orleans, the culture of the South and the allure of antebellum mansions and magnolia blossoms take hold.

For us, the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers is symbolic of our direction in 2014 when the elegant American Empress joins the American Queen in cruising America’s waterways. Though the American Empress will sail in the Pacific Northwest along the Columbia and Snake rivers beginning in April, she will carry on the same style of service, superb regional farm-to-table cuisines, enlightening entertainment and all-American hospitality that have made a voyage on the American Queen one of the most sought after vacations in the United States. Though the American Empress is distinct and unique from the American Queen, just as the blue Ohio is from the tan Mississippi, the experience will be seamless. The American Queen Steamboat Company will be much more than just the sum of its parts, much as the two rivers themselves merge into the greatest river on earth.