Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
set before them in communal pans twice a day. They were drunk all the time. They referred
to their whiskey as “good old Nongela,” as it was distilled on the banks of the Mononga-
hela River. These men were tall and short, fat and thin, fair-skinned and swarthy, the same
sorts who once filled the galleys of Roman ships. It was a male society, where the rivermen
constantly fought to establish position. Each boat had a champion, a man who bloodied all
the others. He wore a red turkey feather in his hat, which told the world,
I'm the baddest
motherfucker on the Mississippi
. At night, when the ships tied up at the landings, crews in-
termingled. When the holder of a red feather came across another red-feather holder, a circle
formed and a battle commenced. The names of the great fighters live on: Mike Fink, the
toughest man on the Ohio; Bill Sedley, who whipped everyone on the Mississippi then went
mad in New Orleans, killing two people in a dive bar before fleeing into the Indian Territory.
It's a culture lampooned in
Huckleberry Finn
when two flatboat toughs circle each other
whilesharingtheirbonafides.Inthispassageyouhave,innascentform,thebestoftheblues
and hip-hop, as well as the trash talk of Muhammad Ali:
Whoo-oop! I'm the old original iron-jawed, brass-mounted, copper-bellied corpse-
maker from the wilds of Arkansaw!—Look at me! I'm the man they call Sudden Death
and General Desolation! Sired by a hurricane, dam'd by an earthquake, half-brother to
the cholera, nearly related to the small-pox on the mother's side! Look at me! I take
nineteen alligators and a bar'l of whiskey for breakfast when I'm in robust health, and
a bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I'm ailing! I split the everlasting rocks
with my glance, and I squench the thunder when I speak! Whoo-oop! Stand back and
give me room according to my strength! Blood's my natural drink, and the wails of the
dying is music to my ear! Cast your eye on me, gentlemen!—and lay low and hold your
breath, for I'm bout to turn myself loose!
For men on the river, every trip ended in New Orleans. That is where they were paid and
spentwhattheywerepaid.Itwasthegoal,theplacetheywouldfinallydriveouttheboredom
of all those weeks on the water. It was the adventures accumulated in the course of all those
sprees that turned New Orleans into a party town. All those tchotchkes (the nipple-shaped
shot glass), T-shirts (
What drinking problem? I get drunk and fall down. No problem
), and
stories (“and the funny thing is, I don't even remember driving home, but there was the car,
in the middle of the lawn”) started on the keelboats, where the deck hands shouted as the
spires came into view. Even in the 1800s, rivermen referred to New Orleans as the City of
Sin. The culture of the docks spilled into the streets and became one aspect of the town. The
violent mood in the dives, the Mardi Gras of stoned outsiders filling the squares and driving
the locals indoors, the way the town can seem like two towns—the one seen by the drunken
conventioneer who gets in a fight on Bourbon Street; the other seen by the native, secret and
