The Tall Stacks story

BY CINDY STARR
Post staff reporter

Capt. Alan Bernstein of BB Riverboats asked the question.

"What if we invite a few other paddlewheelers to Cincinnati and rekindle a part of our Ohio River past?"

Greater Cincinnati gave the answer, and it was as proud and melodious as a four-toned steamboat whistle.

The "once-in-a-lifetime" riverboat festival named Tall Stacks touched a chord so deep in our Midwestern psyche that it surpassed its mandate as a 1988 Cincinnati bicentennial celebration and was destined to be repeated, again and again.

Now, for the fourth time in 12 years, the riverboats with their paddlewheels and tall stacks and calliopes are either here or en route to Cincinnati.

Nineteen boats in all will arrive from 14 cities and 10 states along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, five of them for the first time. Their captains are excited, and first-time crew-members have been counting the days for months.

The festival begins Wednesday and concludes Oct. 17.

What began as a simple question - "It was very innocent; it was almost naive," Bernstein recalled - is now one of the most spectacular celebrations in the country.

Even before the first boat pulled into the Port of Cincinnati, Tall Stacks '99 had been named the nation's top tourism event for the year by the American Bus Association.

Leonard A. Weakley, chairman of the Greater Cincinnati Tall Stacks Commission, once said that "Mark Twain himself would be impressed."

Not taking anything for granted, Cincinnati executives, planners and a "Steam Team" of more than 6,000 volunteers - Weakley included - have been working for years to make Tall Stacks '99 as successful as its predecessors.

Weakley - who in real life is a partner with the Cincinnati law firm of Rendigs, Fry, Kiely and Dennis - also said Tall Stacks "most likely" will be part of Ohio's bicentennial celebrations in 2003.

Next week passengers and onlookers are expected to be drawn to the riverboats and their story-telling captains, just as they were in 1995, 1992 and 1988.

They will be drawn to the boats, to the river, as surely as people were drawn to boats and the river in the 1940s, in the 1890s and in the 1840s.

They will be touched by the magic of the water, will be mesmerized by it, no less than when passengers took their first steamboat excursion on the Ohio River in 1811.

"Tall Stacks provides people with an event that takes them back to a less hurried, gentler, kinder era," Weakley said.

"The history allows them to participate in a lifestyle that they could only read about before we were able to literally try to recreate it.

"With our lifestyles as they are today, so hurried by technology, stepping back into this era of simplicity and serenity is, to me, a fun thing to do."