Ben Bernstein: [00:00:00] This episode of Rambling on the River is presented by BB Riverboats.

Sponsor Message: What does summertime in the Ohio River Valley mean to you? From the deck of a BB riverboat, it means a breeze on the water, lush views, and a historic cruise by the queen city Skyline. BB Riverboats offers an experience as unforgettable as childhood summers.

This season let our crew take care of yours as you cruise the mighty Ohio. BB Riverboats. The river is waiting.

Moderator: You're listening to the Ramblin on the River podcast, presented by BB Riverboats. The Bernstein family has been a predominant name in Cincinnati's hospitality landscape since the 1960s, and this podcast will be a collection of the stories, tales, and experiences from their entrepreneurial [00:01:00] endeavors in the restaurant and excursion boat business.

Join as they take you on a a journey through the family's history in their own unique style. Now, here are your hosts, Ben Terri and Alan Bernstein.

Ben Bernstein: Welcome, welcome aboard and you can say hello rambling on the river podcast. My name is Ben Bernstein. I'm joined by my father, Alan. Hello. And my sister, Terri. Hello. 

 Before we get started, please ask that you follow and connect with the show by giving us a like and subscribe on any one of your favorite podcast platforms, you can visit us on our Facebook page or Instagram page or by visiting our website at ramblinontheriver. com. If you have any direct questions or comments or would like to just reach out to us individually, [00:02:00] feel free to email podcast at bbriverboats. com. That will go to all three of us. Last episode we talked about my father Alan's parents Ben and Shirley Bernstein my or our grandparents. I guess I should say they were the catalyst of the family business this week. We are going to move to kind of the start of BB Riverboats and kind of the first real opportunity for BB Riverboats, in its, what would that be? Its second year? Yeah. That is the 1982 world's fair. That's right So first off not many people may even know what a world's fair is

Ben Bernstein: so the world's fair is also known as the universal exhibition or expo.

It was a large global exhibition designed to showcase the achievements of nations. It would move around to different countries. They were typically about three to six months. The first one occurred in 1791 in Prague. [00:03:00] The last one in the United States was in New Orleans in 1984, but they are continuing on.

They just have not been back in the United States since 1984. Specifically, 1982 was in Knoxville, Tennessee. It's theme was energy turns the world. Occurred on a 70 acre site between downtown Knoxville and the L and N railroad yard. 

It opened on May 1st of 1982. Ronald Reagan came to open the fair over 11 million people attended. Bob Hope, Johnny Cash, Ricky Skaggs played at the fair and some of the innovations, I thought this was interesting. The, some of the innovations that were showcased at the world's fair. Was touchscreen technology, shelf stable milk, pay at the pump technology, which I found interesting considering it seemed like it was many, many more years later where you saw it become prevalent, one hour photos. The Lincoln Town Car with a built in car [00:04:00] phone. Ooh, they had, they had a couple. That's, that's quite funny. They had a couple of those. Oh, you had a white one, a black one, and a green one. Oh, yeah. The green one. The 

Terri Bernstein: green, the Jack Nicklaus. That was a Jack 

Ben Bernstein: Nicklaus. You're right.

Terri Bernstein: With white leather interior. Yeah. 

Ben Bernstein: And then Coca Cola tested lime, lemon, vanilla, and cherry flavors. At the end of the World's Fair, they figured out that cherry was the most popular, and that was the beginnings of Cherry Coke. 

Terri Bernstein: Which is still my favorite. 

Ben Bernstein: It's a good one. Yep. Yes. So that will bring us to story time.

Moderator: Gather round everybody because it is story time on rambling on the river.

Ben Bernstein: So it has only taken us four episodes to bring on our first guest. of the podcast. He is the former general manager here at BB. He goes back a long way. He is the current general [00:05:00] manager for the USS nightmare, which is our haunted house here in the general manager in invader. Yeah. Also the mastermind of BB Riverboats operations in Knoxville back in 1982. He is. Allen Rizzo. Hey, Al. Hey. How you doing? So, 1982 comes around, BB Riverboats opened up in 1980. We got running here at the Mike Fink on the back docks of the Mike Fink.

Was very successful. We've gone through, I guess, our second cruising season in 1981, and an opportunity came up. Yeah, I got a phone 

Alan Bernstein: call out of the blue from do you remember my, our partner's name is no, I don't, I can't remember it either, but I, I can see him. I just can't really 

Allen Rizzo: a silent partner.

Yeah. 

Alan Bernstein: Anyway, he called me and he said, Mr. Bernstein in his Knoxville twang Mr. Bernstein, I am a Knoxville [00:06:00] businessman. And we have an opportunity on the river in Knoxville. And I think my first question was what river is it in Knoxville? And he said the Tennessee river.

He convinced me that he should come up and we could have a, talk with my dad and him, and I think he had another guy, another partner. And one other person, and he came up and I don't know how we did it, but we struck a deal we were headed to the world's fair.

Ben Bernstein: So he was somebody who wanted to bring a boat to the world's fair or he wanted to be in business with someone 

Alan Bernstein: He thought there was a great opportunity there for a boat at the fair. Where he had the opportunity and they didn't know anything about boats. I don't know how he found us. I guess he looked was the computer invented by then?

Ben Bernstein: Not the internet. 

Alan Bernstein: Not the internet, but computers were up and running. What is he going to search on the [00:07:00] computer? I was going to say, he was going to search a BB. Right. I don't know how he found Microsoft word pages, but anyway, it'd be in BB. 

Allen Rizzo: We were the second one on the list. 

Alan Bernstein: That was a strategy back then. Yeah. he found us and that's how we got involved in the world. We made a deal and away we went, you know, it was easy.

And you needed money. Oh, we definitely needed money. He had made an arrangement with Jake Butcher at the United was it United American Bank, Riz? Or is it just United Bank? United American Bank. United American Bank in Knoxville, Tennessee, the tallest building in Knoxville. And Mr. Butcher's office was the entire top floor of the office.

And my dad and I drove down and our partners were there and we walked into Jake's office. You can only imagine it was surrounded by three levels of glass that, [00:08:00] and I, I don't even think I could describe it, but anyway, it was spectacular. It was, it was quite an office and Jake is sitting behind his desk and we walked up and we were introduced and Mr. Butcher said to my Dad, How much money do you need? That was his first question.. I 

Terri Bernstein: think when you told the story yesterday, you threw in the Tennessee twang. 

Alan Bernstein: He did talk with a Tennessee twang. And he said in his twang, How much money do you need? And Dad said, well, I think we need about a half a million dollars and that could pay for, you know, pretty much, well, that's not enough. We're going to give you a million dollars in cash. You'll go down and get it from the cashier when we're done. And I was dumbfounded. I think dad didn't know what to [00:09:00] say.

And to fast forward to the end of the story, the funny thing is we were the only company to pay the loan back from the American United Bank. We were the only company that paid him back all the money because everybody borrowed millions, you know, it was So did you walk down the stairs and walk out with a million dollars?

We walked out with a check. A check for $1 million. 

Terri Bernstein: No, you a half a million. A 

Alan Bernstein: half a million. We told him we didn't need the million. And dad said, all we're going to take is a half a million. But we walked out of the bank signing nothing going over nothing with a check for a half a million dollars, which we deposited in 1982 at 1982.

Actually, this was 1981, 81, because how it had to be six months to build. We had to find barges. We had the bill started in May. On May 1st. That's right. So it had to have been 1981. Yeah. So [00:10:00] we walked out of that bank with a half a million dollar check and we came home and that story is so incredible today because you know, that just doesn't happen.

Terri Bernstein: It's hard to borrow 50, 000. 

Alan Bernstein: I think it's hard to borrow 20, 000 without signing your life away. 

Ben Bernstein: So that is a true story. At any point, did you start wondering maybe I should have taken more than the 500, 000? 

Alan Bernstein: Well, no, but I said, I asked him at that meeting, I said, Mr. Butcher, what happens if we can't pay you all the money back? And he said, son. In East Tennessee, we call that tooth shit, and I was stunned again, and I think dad was stunned, and I, I said, what does tough shit mean? I don't think you want to find out. [00:11:00] Well, no, he probably had a gun he could have brought it out and said. Well, he ended up in jail, didn't he? Oh, but prison 25 years, I think.

Allen Rizzo: Why? He lent the same money out to several different 

Alan Bernstein: people. What happened is Jake, had 36 branches of the United American Bank all over Tennessee, maybe even into Kentucky, into Georgia, you know, he was a big bank. And what he did is he took money from each of the branches and moved it so that there was money when you did business in Knoxville, all the money was in Knoxville.

So the money was not an issue and it wasn't until the auditors went to each bank on the same day that they caught him in this scheme of lending money that he did not have. And that's why he went to a prison. He defrauded or frauded, I don't know, millions of people.

[00:12:00] People lost their homes and. Call that a Ponzi scheme. Yeah, it did. I think it created some new rules and regulations for banking. I think it did. 

Ben Bernstein: I'm sure that's when lending money on a handshake might've stopped. Well, that's probably true too. Walking 000 without signing a piece of paper. 

Alan Bernstein: Ben, it was just so astonishing.

It was. 

Terri Bernstein: Maybe you shouldn't have paid it back. 

Alan Bernstein: Well, I don't know because the people that didn't, I think had to pay up. 

Terri Bernstein: Oh. 

Alan Bernstein: I think that they all had to cut because they had to settle the difference, 

Terri Bernstein: right? 

Alan Bernstein: I mean, these people, and I don't know if that went to those people or not. There were a lot of people hurt in that whole deal.

So yeah, if you research Jake Butcher, it's got to be online somewhere. Oh, probably. I mean, 

Allen Rizzo: some of the stories that I've read, I heard that it wasn't for him. The World's Fair may not have happened. 

Alan Bernstein: That is, that might be very true. It was his finagling 

Allen Rizzo: that allowed that. In 

Ben Bernstein: every scandal, there's people that benefited and [00:13:00] there's people that lost.

Alan Bernstein: Well, and I have to say, even though we did pay them back, we benefited. We came out with a boat. The Becky Thatcher Well, we ended up with the Good Ship Lollipop. We did return, but we had a good ship lollipop there and we'll get 

Ben Bernstein: to that. Yeah. Okay. So you, you have a half a million dollar check in your hand, right?

You come back to Cincinnati and we said, we're going to the world's fair. And all right. So then the, then the planning started. I called Alan Rizzo, Riz, 

Alan Bernstein: we're going to the world's fair Riz and and I, and, who was our general manager then? Irv Connet? No, no. The, the guy, the tie. He, he wait a minute. 

Allen Rizzo: I'll think 

Alan Bernstein: of it. Yeah, I will too. Anyway our general manager at that time was a friend of Betty Blake's and Betty got him this job and. And he always had a tie on. He was just pristine. 

Terri Bernstein: You always wear a tie too. 

Alan Bernstein: Back then [00:14:00] you did wear a tie. There wasn't a golf shirts like there we started meeting and, went on we hired several people, Mark Schultz. Uncle Mark. Uncle Mark. Uncle Monkey. Uncle Monkey. Mark was hired to go down to Chattanooga. We bought barges on the Tennessee River, I believe.

We bought them below Chattanooga and we had them brought up to Chattanooga. And we found a little place to put them where we could build out it was a lagoon. It was just a little offshoot. It was a lagoon? It was, yeah. It wasn't much more. It was a mud. Oh, you mean where the barges were? Where we, yeah, where we put the barges.

Yeah. Thought you meant what 

Ben Bernstein: we built for 

Alan Bernstein: our, for our facilities as a lagoon. And Mark was sort of our eyes there to, to make sure everything went well. The Hansman family, that was dad and the son. Were master carpenters at that time, [00:15:00] the father I know passed away, but I see his son every once in a while. And we build it out there in Chattanooga and everything else. What were you building? Here we go. This is where the memory starts. Well we built a raw bar, we thought a raw bar would be fun to do down there a bar, a big bar. We had a large bar, and a snack bar. You 

Allen Rizzo: had two very large barges that you put patios on and covered them. So a dock 

Alan Bernstein: facility for people to eat and to sit and to enjoy the river and drinks. All bar, bar, 

Allen Rizzo: tables and chairs. Yeah, tables and chairs. Ticket office and seating boarding area.

Yeah, yeah. And then attached to that were the crew quarters and the operations barges. Right. It was a whole facility. 

Terri Bernstein: But I thought you built the crew barges here. 

Allen Rizzo: We did. The crew barge was built here. It was remodeled here 

Alan Bernstein: and taken down. And then we towed it all the way. Now a lot of people may not know from Cincinnati, Ohio. If you wanted to go to Knoxville, Tennessee, you go right down I [00:16:00] 75 and you're there in about four hours. The way that the barges had to go was down the Ohio to Paducah, Kentucky and turn left now, 500 miles. That's about 500 miles, maybe a little more. And then up the river Knoxville was mile 640 on the Tennessee river.

So it made a good thousand mile trip over 11 that you can do in four hours.

Terri Bernstein: So Riz was here building the crew barges. You guys were there working on the other stuff. 

Alan Bernstein: Yeah, and I was going back and forth and we bought the Becky Thatcher from New Orleans. And we bought two boats from New Orleans, the Mark Twain and the Becky Thatcher.

Ben Bernstein: You bought it for the World's Fair, or you purchased it with the intentions of BB Riverboats here in Cincinnati? 

Alan Bernstein: We bought the Becky Thatcher with the intention of keeping it. And we made a deal with a guy named Bob Lump, which comes back into our history many times. Bob [00:17:00] bought the Mark Twain and we traded the, you know, our little small Mark Twain was his boat in Hannibal, Missouri.

Yes. And we traded the big Mark Twain that we bought in New Orleans. He took it. We traded the small Mark Twain, came to Cincinnati to operate as an excursion boat. And there was money involved too. That, that's how we we, but you 

Terri Bernstein: also got one of my very favorite boats. 

Alan Bernstein: Good Ship lollipop.

Terri Bernstein: The good Ship lollipop. 

Alan Bernstein: Yes. That came down from Pittsburgh. And you rode home on it. We , brought the not home. We went to Pittsburgh, got the boat and brought it to Cincinnati. And we all slept in the pilot house. You remember the pilot house? You don't remember? 

Terri Bernstein: No. I remember the capstan on the front of the boat.

Yes, that's where we 

Alan Bernstein: sat during 

Alan Bernstein: the day. Because I 

Terri Bernstein: always 

Alan Bernstein: sat there. Yeah, yeah, that's where we sat during the day. But the whole boat was open air other than the pilothouse. So everybody slept in the pilothouse. 

Terri Bernstein: What [00:18:00] about the Shirley B and the Tell City? , 

Alan Bernstein: We bought the Shirley B up the river Ironton. No. Yeah. It was above Ironton, Ohio. It was a dock boat for a coal. Do you remember having to climb the ladder to get down on? Oh my God. Yes. Oh my God. Yes. 

Allen Rizzo: A big high, big high pier with the small steps that they have on a, Appear to go down to the boat. That was way down below us. It was, it was fun to watch.

I'll do that. Oh my 

Alan Bernstein: God. It was, I would have done it. It was a hundred feet. I bet. No, I mean, I had to go down a ladder. It was just laughing the whole time. No boy. We bought the Shirley B, which is a tow boat. And I think we paid like 30, 000, but it was like 3 million. We said, what are we doing with a little tow boat like this and spending all this money, but it was a great buy.

As you know, the Shirley B lives in infamy. It might be the best boat we've ever had period. It might be. We tell city barge. Now the tell city [00:19:00] barge is a pretty funny story because a friend of mine called me from Evansville, Indiana.

His name is Ron Rankin. And Ron called me and said, Hey, I got this barge here and you're going to come by here. Why don't you take this barge to the world's fair? And I said, well, that sounds okay Ron, we'll come by and pick it up. Well, we never discussed any financial arrangement. He intended to rent it to us and I thought he was giving it to us, but that wasn't the case.

Did we ever use the, the, the Tell City? 

Allen Rizzo: Yes, we did. 

Alan Bernstein: We did. We, you know, I'll never, 

Allen Rizzo: I'll never forget the reason that I remember that because it, it ran out of beer and I had to take beer down to it in, in, in late night on the Tennessee river. And I ended up hitting a log and limped back with a broken prop.

So yeah, it was a long trip back for me. 

Alan Bernstein: Wow. What did we use 

Allen Rizzo: it 

Terri Bernstein: for? 

Alan Bernstein: Well, we intended to use it for excursions. But 

 Included [00:20:00] in that trip, I think it was the only trip, maybe one or two more. Yeah. We just didn't have the business that we thought we were going to have. Including the Good Ship Lollipop. 

Terri Bernstein: Okay, so now you have all the boats. You have all the barges. 

Ben Bernstein: So what was everything that we had?

So, okay, we, so we had the 

Alan Bernstein: two barges that were our wharf, which you would now built. It was open air. Okay. And which you've now built out. We, we built out and it's all built out and we then we had behind it, the first barge was the cruise quarters because it was our office in the front and behind it were three crew rooms.

Ben Bernstein: And I came 

Alan Bernstein: that had. And a kitchen, it had a full kitchen. So is that where 

Ben Bernstein: everybody stayed? You didn't have any hotels or anything? No. So that's where 

Alan Bernstein: the crew stayed there. Our crew, Ben, the crew of the boat crew of the boat with the captains and and, and Riz and all that.

We all lived on the premise. And what was that? R. 

Allen Rizzo: B. Hall was my roommate. 

Ben Bernstein: Yeah. I was on the bunk. Russell B. Hall. Russell B. Hall. He's already come up [00:21:00] several times. Yeah. Yeah. Rest in peace. And, so was it like a bunk room? Is that what you? Yeah. There were three bunk rooms. 

Allen Rizzo: on a on a tow boat. And we each had one drawer in a small closet.

Yeah. We had a, a stacked washer and dryer. A full kitchen, a table inside and a table out on the deck, covered. 

Alan Bernstein: We had a little picnic table in the back where they could eat, you know, have dinner outside if it was nice. Do you have a bathroom? 

Ben Bernstein: You just cut a hole in 

Alan Bernstein: the deck. Oh no, a real 

Speaker 8: nice bathroom with a 

Allen Rizzo: shower.

Hot running water. Rizzo 

Terri Bernstein: built it to live 

Allen Rizzo: in. You know, really nice. I knew I was going to live in it, but I'll tell you, I had a big window in the bedroom and every morning at about 4. 30 in the morning, when the Kearns bakery driver would come up to deliver the bread, he knew where my window was and he'd wake me up.

Every once in a while he'd bring us hot bread, but that, he, that's how he'd get his his invoice signed was knocking on my bedroom window. 

Alan Bernstein: Yeah. So that's where everybody stayed. 

Ben Bernstein: Back to 

Alan Bernstein: everything that we had. Then we had the tell city behind the office barge, and then we had a [00:22:00] dock. I think it, there was one dock wait a minute.

It was our fuel barge. 

Allen Rizzo: Yes, 

Alan Bernstein: it was the fuel barge and it had the fuel tanks that we were gonna use and the Shirley b. Yeah, now we had to get all of that to Knoxville. Some of that was in Chattanooga. We started in Paducah. We got the Becky Thatcher there. We brought it to Chattanooga.

We had to bring it all the way to Chattanooga. That's where it stayed. We were doing renovations on it too. We were painting it. Some modernization then the barges were already in Chattanooga and the flotilla that was coming from Cincinnati. got to Paducah and then they headed to Chattanooga.

Terri Bernstein: So you had two flotillas. 

Alan Bernstein: We had two flotillas coming from different directions. Yes. 

Terri Bernstein: And you met up somewhere? 

Alan Bernstein: Chattanooga. We were all that we all eventually got into the [00:23:00] lagoon in Chattanooga and it looked like the Beverly Hillbillies had arrived. 

Ben Bernstein: So now on your way down to Chattanooga the one flotilla the Coast Guard did not like.

Okay, 

Alan Bernstein: so we leave Cincinnati. I'm sorry We leave Cincinnati and we get below Tell City, Indiana This is two three and a half days out on the trip and on the Marine Radio Channel 16 the Coast Guard announces The motor vessel, Shirley B, the motor vessel, Shirley B, this is the United States Coast Guard calling on channel 16.

Are 

Terri Bernstein: you the captain? 

Alan Bernstein: I was not the captain. Which is 

Ben Bernstein: something you 

Alan Bernstein: don't ever 

Ben Bernstein: want to hear. 

Alan Bernstein: You know, if you are a captain of a boat, you do not want to hear. This is the United States Coast Guard calling the Shirley B. So the Shirley B answered. [00:24:00] And the Coast Guard said. The Captain of the Port has issued a stop cruising order.

Wherever you are, you find a safe place to dock and you are to stay there until our Coast Guard boat gets there three and a half days later. It arrives and they inform us that we have illegal fuel tanks that are not properly contained and we had to remove the diesel fuel from the tanks in order to proceed.

So we had to find somebody in, I guess it was Tell City. It might've been Evansville, Indiana to come. With a truck to get all of the fuel off. Now they didn't pay for the fuel. We simply had to pump it off of the boat. So they took the fuel in return [00:25:00] for coming to Evansville and they used it. We. Didn't have the opportunity.

How much fuel was it? 4, 000 gallons. 

Ben Bernstein: 4, 000 gallons? 

Alan Bernstein: Yeah, and I think at that point we were paying Did you, did you 35 cents a gallon or 40 cents Did you build your own Fuel, fuel storage? No, I think we borrowed them from from Carlisle Construction. I think you're right. I think it was a lack of containment.

They, they needed to be in a second. They needed to be in a, yeah, in a, in a container. There. Container contain, contain the leak. What 

Terri Bernstein: they said was they were afraid when they got to Knoxville, there would be no place to get fuel. So they brought all this fuel with them. 

Alan Bernstein: Right. Not knowing that it was illegal. We thought, you know, being in a tank like that, no problem at all. That backfired. And that backfired. Yeah, we lost all of that. And we then were allowed to proceed. It was about a five day delay, total, because it took us a day or so to get the truck up there to get the fuel off. So we got to Paducah [00:26:00] a little bit late, but we got to Paducah and then up the Tennessee River, we started. 

We then were introduced to a gentleman from St. Louis and his name was Jim Doyle Buckethead, yes, 

Terri Bernstein: Captain Buckethead, Captain 

Alan Bernstein: Buckethead. Buckethead was a very appropriate name for him. He had some of the craziest jokes. 

Terri Bernstein: Did I name him Captain Buckethead? I 

Ben Bernstein: believe you did. 

Terri Bernstein: I mean, I've called him 

Ben Bernstein: that my entire life. Everybody who I've ever known who knows him has called him Buckethead. Yeah. 

Terri Bernstein: Yeah, but I think I named him that. I don't know why. I you were a little kid. You were six, seven 

Alan Bernstein: years old. Five. 

Terri Bernstein: I was five. Five. 

Alan Bernstein: Yeah.

I went to first grade. And we had one other person that I forgot. These guys that were on the boat wouldn't go without a good cook. And Edna, which was, at that time Edna was Irv, [00:27:00] Captain Irv's wife, and she decided to go on, and who was Captain Irv? Captain Irv was our main captain at the, we, you know, we were brand new in this business.

Did you have a license yet? Yes, I had just gotten my, we were still 

Allen Rizzo: learning how to store fuel. 

Alan Bernstein: Clearly you weren't reading regulations. Yeah. Okay. So did all the cooks, the cook and her cooking was pretty damn good. How did you, but how did you end up with nothing to eat?

Well, we on the Becky Thatcher flotilla eight graham crackers and peanut butter crackers. He rough cereal. stuff like that. We didn't have the kitchen 

Allen Rizzo: facilities 

Alan Bernstein: that they had. Did they, 

Terri Bernstein: did you have microwavable meals back then? 

Alan Bernstein: Yeah. Well, we had a microwave. It might've been one of the first, I don't know.

It was but in the flotilla, when we decided, we didn't realize they were eating as good as they were until we started up the river from [00:28:00] Chattanooga to Knoxville, which is about 180, 190 miles. Not a very long trip, but When you have a flotilla like that, it was two miles an hour, three miles an hour.

Terri Bernstein: Before we continue, who is on both boats? Okay. Who is the crew? 

Alan Bernstein: Well, the crew on the crew boat.

The crew barge, that flotilla was Irv and Edna and Jimmy no, no, Jimmy wait a minute. His son, wait a minute, they had the deckhand, was a son, and we had a couple of Bubby, Bubby Hall was on that boat because he was the second captain. There were a couple of others. 

Terri Bernstein: And who was with you? 

Alan Bernstein: And then there was Riz Jimmy and Buckethead Uncle 

Terri Bernstein: Jimmy Holthaus, not Bernstein, Jimmy Bernstein.

That we had Uncle Jimmy Holthaus. 

Alan Bernstein: Moms, brother's. A very important distinction. We were separated and every morning when I came on watch Russell Hall would come out of the pilothouse going I, he had a [00:29:00] little handheld radio and he would go. I can't eat anymore. It was so good. We had biscuits and gravy and a country ham. And here I am eating cold cereal with no milk and some peanut butter crackers.

So we decided to plot captain bucket, had Riz, uncle, Jimmy. It was well executed. Our intention was on the last lock and dam, I would pull the boat up close enough for the pack of thieves to get off of our boat onto their boat.

And their orders were to take everything in the refrigerator. Didn't matter what it was. You just take everything and they had trench coats or we hand it. Maybe it was blank. I don't know. They had to put it in something. Cause it was a whole [00:30:00] refrigerator. I mean, there were steaks and all kinds of stuff in there, milk and.

So they had, they were 

Allen Rizzo: so preoccupied with the lock and dam, they had no idea what was going on. 

Alan Bernstein: They had no idea. And we got on the barge and off of the barge and no one knew anything. And we backed away from the barge so that when they came back to the back, You know, it was just land clandestine operation.

They, they had the seal team six camouflage and we get through the lock and the first clue that they had discovered what had happened is a deckhand came out and goes. 

Ben Bernstein: And, and I, hold on, you realize people can't see you. Oh, that's right.

Speaker 3: So, 

Ben Bernstein: anyway, a deckhand comes up with his hands out in 

Alan Bernstein: the air going like, what the hell happened? Where did everything go? Yeah. All right, continue. And so I, [00:31:00] seeing him, I go out on the, on the bridge out on, and I went, you know, I don't know anything. I, you know I don't know what you're talking about. Probably as you're eating, so I think it was lunch. I don't think it was dinner time. It was lunchtime and we had steak, we had pork chops, we had bacon.

I mean, they cooked the whole refrigerator, whatever was in there. We cooked it all. And ate him on the deck so they could watch his eating. And, and so when we went back up go back on watch, we're going, oh, I can't eat anymore. And, Russell. was at the helm and Irv came up to him and read him the riot act like it was Russell's fault.

Dressed him down. Oh, it was, it was so funny and we were laughing so hard we couldn't even help Russell. We had stolen everything. They, they ate [00:32:00] nothing for another 15 20 hours. And we ate it all. You arrive in Knoxville, we arrive in Knoxville to almost a shooting that they were so mad that they didn't have any food, but we landed and we got everything put together, landed in Knoxville, landed in Knoxville, right behind the TVA, , you pulled into a sewer.

It was a sewer, it was, it absolutely was. So we actually have pictures of the sewer because it. It was one of the 

Allen Rizzo: rainfall. It was a storm creek. Yeah, it was a storm water out of the University of Tennessee. But you know 

Alan Bernstein: storm sewers are concrete circles. Right. 

Allen Rizzo: Where it goes underneath the road and underneath the railroad.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a square, it's a square sewer pipe for the storm water out of the University of Tennessee. Right, right. And when it would rain, it 

Alan Bernstein: would flow. I mean, we got stuff that was out of there that was unbelievable. Then they had built a concrete walkway alongside the sewer so that people could get from the fair down to the river [00:33:00] and the TVA did a really nice job doing it.

I 

Terri Bernstein: mean, 

Alan Bernstein: Tennessee Valley authority who is in charge of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. That's their mission power TVA. Actually you guys are way too young. But the TVA flooded the Tennessee and Cumberland river to make all the lakes a very controversial decision Kentucky back in the 40s.

Maybe in the early 50s. Maybe late 40s Kentucky Lake Lake Barkley. Yeah all the lakes 

right. In the fall of the year, they , cut it off and they lower the lakes by several feet. Yeah. They just dump it. It comes out in Paducah and goes down to Mississippi River.

And they do that every fall. And then every spring they do the reverse of that. They hold all the water and they build all their lakes back. And it's a big deal. The [00:34:00] reason it was controversial at the very beginning is that was all farmland, very fertile farmland. And in order to make these lakes, they had to flood them and people lost property.

I think they bought all the property. you can read all about the Tennessee Valley Authority. It's a well told story. 

Terri Bernstein: We both docked together by the two facilities on the river 

Allen Rizzo: by the sewer. Tennessee Valley Authority is ahead of us, we're behind it, we're hanging off the end of the dock and we're all looking up at the fair, the Sun Sphere and the University of Tennessee's stadium.

 Neyland 

Stadium. Neyland Stadium. We were right at the base of it. The funny thing is that they were above the sewer and we were below the sewer. Yes. The Tennessee Valley Authority never got anything out of it. They had a much better location. 

Alan Bernstein: I think they figured that out. I don't know. Location, location, location. Yeah, there you go. That's right. 

Allen Rizzo: Yeah, I remember the day we pulled into Knoxville was a big day. I spent a lot of time in Cincinnati [00:35:00] working on the barge and I knew there were a lot of people down in Tennessee working on the other barges.

But we pulled into Knoxville. It was really a big deal. It wasn't a lot of people there. We were greeted by a couple of fish if you remember. 

Alan Bernstein: Yes. Yes. Big. Wait a minute. Big fish. 

Allen Rizzo: Well, the Tennessee River, unlike the Ohio that, that I'm familiar with, you can look into the water and see three, four, five feet down.

It was clear water. It is 

Alan Bernstein: pristine water. That's right. 

Allen Rizzo: We are at the very headwaters of the Tennessee River. What is it? The the French Broad. I wanted, I almost said mangala. No, not the manga. Not that it's a Houston, the Hu Hu Houston River. And the and in the French frog is correct. Come together just above Knoxville.

Pristine, clear water compared to what we're used to in Cincinnati. Absolutely. So when you look into the water, you can see wildlife. There's two fish and one of the crew members threw some corn down in the fish, ate it up, you didn't think much of it then. But over the next few weeks. They brought their friends back sort of like the raccoons do and every day we were feeding more carp So as we were setting up the world's fair, we had some pet carp that we fed And [00:36:00] those two fish from the first day within the month Turned into hundreds even thousands.

Yeah to the way to the point if this is a good time to tell you Where now the world's fair is open. We've put vending machines to vend floating fish food And the fare goers would put a quarter in and get a handful of food and throw it in and the fish would come up. And the Tennessee Valley Authority did not think that was cool.

This is the World's Fair, you should be giving it to them, you shouldn't be charging people. So they thought they'll thwart our efforts and they'll put a salt spreader, put the same food in the salt spreader, and every 30 minutes this salt spreader would click, throw a bunch of food out, and all these fish would come boiling out of the water.

Some of them would be being pushed up out of the water from the fish below them. And they thought that that would stop people from feeding them. Well, what it actually did is cause more people to put quarters in. If you can believe that 183 days, I think the world's fair was over 20, 000 where the quarters were put in our one quarter at a time, [00:37:00] one quarter, one quarter at a time feeding carp that I have no idea what they did when we left, but there were thousands of fish by the end of the world.

Oh, 

Alan Bernstein: there's no doubt. They would actually boil enough where the fish. We're not in water. They were all on top of each other trying to get this fish food. we were friends with the TVA, but they didn't like our fish feeding. 

Allen Rizzo: If I can find a photograph, I'll make sure that you guys get it. So you can put it.

Alan Bernstein: Well, yeah, we, we have plenty of photos of that, 

Allen Rizzo: of the carp. 

Alan Bernstein: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Now the other funny thing, which today is funny, I don't know that the world's fair ever. Got wind or would have liked us, but we were sort of a back door into the World's Fair and we were running a ferry service from just 200 feet, maybe.

What do you think the houseboats were? 300 feet, 400. It didn't matter. But [00:38:00] anybody that came in through BB riverboats never had to pay from the fair. And so, you know, I don't know what was a 20, 15. That might've been 10. Anyway, anybody that came to us, 

Allen Rizzo: they picked up a lot of crew members that weren't crew. 

Alan Bernstein: Okay. But anyway, that was that was sort of a back door. And 

we had the entrance under the road to get up to the fair and people had already paid to get to us. So going up, you got in free. 

Allen Rizzo: If you rode the ferry across, you were supposed to have bought your ticket on the other side.

So when you got on the ferry, you were supposed to have already had your ticket. 

Alan Bernstein: Where did we find people to work? Now Riz was sort of the head guy on this. 

Allen Rizzo: The months leading up to the World's Fair, there was a lot of whirlwind. I mean, we went and made several trips.

Peter was involved in, if you remember all the information about selling condos and houses. And they were, people were gonna sell rooms in their houses, and That's right, that's right. We, we made many trips to Knoxville, but one of the trips was this huge job fair. [00:39:00] And it was speed hiring at its best.

I mean, I'm talking 250 people came through Jimmy Holthaus and I had to interview him in a, in a few hours. But I mean, if you talk about speed dating, we were doing speed interviewing and they, they were going, the world's fair set it up and they were setting it up for all the employers that were trying to hire people.

And we had all the university of Tennessee students coming through. And you know, if you've never been involved in a speed dating or speed hiring event, it was pretty, it was pretty interesting. 

Ben Bernstein: You probably started a whole new trend and you didn't even know it. 

Allen Rizzo: Hired all the employees that we needed and waitresses and bartenders and deckhands and the service people for the, for the barge.

We hire a crew of people that were our, our tour guides that did the commentary. 

Ben Bernstein: You brought, I guess, a base crew or base management, I guess. Well, we brought our 

Alan Bernstein: captains and then all the service management, right. And then we hired everybody. 

Terri Bernstein: So you brought up in the very beginning something about a near jet van.

Alan Bernstein: Yes, yes. 

Terri Bernstein: What is that all about? We 

Alan Bernstein: Knew that we were going to make a lot of trips to and from [00:40:00] Cincinnati to Knoxville. So we bought a very large van and I, it was like a custom van, a travel van, but it didn't have a kitchen or, you know, it just had seating for eight or nine, maybe ten.

And, and the seats had a tray in front of it like a airplane would have where you could bring a tray down. And we did a lot of work. We had a lot of meetings in the near jet. 

Allen Rizzo: And so for years after I knew every stop between meetings, you get to stinking 60 miles out.

Alan Bernstein: There's stinking creek still there. I know. Yeah. I've always, I was by that the last time. Where was it going to go? Well, I mean, you know, 

Allen Rizzo: Things change in 50 years. But on one trip I was driving everybody.

They, I dropped Peter off and some other people off in a meeting and, and I had to go someplace else and then come back. And on the way back, I turned left in front of somebody and it was my first auto accident was in I imagine, you know, 20 years old and I have to call the boss and say, I just wrecked your near jet.

Ben Bernstein: He said the jet has been [00:41:00] injured. Well, that same boss, you had a historic game of chicken.

Allen Rizzo: I can tell that story. Leading up to the world's fair, they talked about how housing was going to be a problem. They rebuilt all the roads. Traffic's going to be terrible. You're not going to be able to be anywhere in downtown. Everybody's going to be late for their classes. And so I got the bright idea that I'd get a motorcycle and I'd be able to weave through all the traffic if I had to go someplace. I bought a motorcycle. I've never ridden one a day in my life.

So I got to ride it down to BB Riverboats to put it on a truck because they're going to drive all the office equipment down in a truck. We're going to deliver my motorcycle. So I go down, I come down Greenup Street, turn left to go to BB Riverboats. And Alan and Mary are coming out in the green Lincoln and Alan, you know, being playful as he is.

Turns a little bit into my path. And so I weaved a little bit to my right and Alan weaved into me again. And I weaved again and, and I'm getting closer to him and he does it a third time and I do it a third time and hit a patch of gravel. 

It's the first time [00:42:00] I'm riding my motorcycle and now I've got it laying on the ground right in front of the Lincoln and I'd get up.

I can't believe it happened. It's embarrassing, but Alan is getting beat really bad from Mary. Oh my. She's a whoppy. Moving again. My 

Alan Bernstein: wife, I 

Allen Rizzo: can't believe it was so 

Alan Bernstein: pissed at. I don't think she talked to me for a week. That's 

Ben Bernstein: typical. A week. You probably deserve. Well, well r certainly thought so. I'm surprised you didn't get outta the car and say, 

Alan Bernstein: why'd you do that, Riz?

Well, we had a conversation and I don't remember what it was all about. But I had to get out of the car. Mary was beating me. I mean, it was a massacre. 

Allen Rizzo: Truth be known, he probably saved my life because of that I didn't ride the motorcycle. So Mary, you can let him off the hook. 

Terri Bernstein: So, back to the near jet.

Why did you call it a near jet? 

Alan Bernstein: Well, we couldn't afford a jet, you know, to make that trip. So he had to buy this van and it, it was sort of a luxury van. I mean, it was, [00:43:00] it was a nice little van, sort of. So 

Terri Bernstein: it was a near jet, not a near, not a near jet. You 

Ben Bernstein: ever heard, you know how they call the three, two beer, near beer?

Near beer. Yeah. 

Allen Rizzo: This was a near jet. I think it goes back to that first meeting where they said, we don't need a million dollars. We'll just take 500, 000. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, 

Alan Bernstein: yeah, we could have taken a million and bought a real jet. We could still have a corporate 

Terri Bernstein: didn't grandpa have to go back home? Oh, 

Alan Bernstein: yes. Yes. Grandpa, Ben, my father came down. And we've drove down in the near jet with some other people. And. I don't remember what it was, but he had to meet down there. And then he wanted to come home.

And I said well, dad, I can't leave. I can't 

Terri Bernstein: take the van and you 

Alan Bernstein: can't take the van. We need it. So he said, well, I need to get back to Cincinnati. I said, well, let me take you to the Greyhound station and I'll put you on a Greyhound bus. Now, you know that the trip from Knoxville to Cincinnati is four hours, three [00:44:00] and a half, four hours.

And if you drive slow, maybe four and a half. It took him 13 hours to get back to Cincinnati on a Greyhound bus. I bet he was happy. He was, you know, he had a bald head his bald head was so red and the guy that sat next to him smell body odor.

It was all 13 hours. He is sitting with this guy and he can barely breathe. When I got home, dad came to me and he said, Alan, you will never ever put me on another Greyhound bus. The next time I'm flying home. So that was pretty funny. Dad on a Greyhound bus. I don't know, 13 hours on a bus is a long time.

We hired a captain in Knoxville. His name was Clifford Grub. And Clifford was a good old Knoxvillian, had the whole Knoxvillian twang. You got that down. And Clifford had [00:45:00] worked 40 years, maybe longer for Shell Oil Company transporting oil all over the world.

And When he came the funny story with Clifford is he came and gave me his license and his license said he was a first mate unlimited anywhere in the world. Anywhere in the world. And I said to Clifford, I said, Clifford, I don't think you can run our boat. You're not licensed to handle A boat like this.

Well, he was quite taken back. he was really a little bit angered. And he said, Mr. Bernstein, you need to call the United States Coast Guard and see about my license. So I called down to the Nashville or Chattanooga office and I said sirs, I have a. Captain here. He gave me a document that is a [00:46:00] first mate anywhere in the world.

I'm surprised you even checked. Oh no, I did because, he wanted me to, I didn't think he was capable, you know, I didn't know we'd been business for a year and a half. And they said, could you read that again? And I said first mate anywhere in the world, it said it right on his license.

And they said Mr. Bernstein, that man can literally captain any boat anywhere in the world, in the world, but he was a world traveler. I mean, he, he took oil everywhere. He had been to almost every port in the world. And he said no, he can run your little Becky Thatcher. And he did, he did a great job and was a great guy. And Clifford really did have a job. And the other very funny story about Clifford. I hope this isn't going too far too quickly. [00:47:00] Anyway at the end of the fair was getting close to Halloween and you know, we had captain's uniforms and the epaulettes and all that stuff. And so somebody said, let's go up to the, there was a restaurant just above us. Do you remember the name of it? Riz? It was Calhouns. Calhouns on the river. Calhouns on the river. We all went up together and we went in and we sat down and we didn't even know that the contest was going on. But there had been a people that were walking around the restaurant grading costumes. And Clifford always wore his hat and you know, he always looked pretty pristine. Captain Buckethead. And myself and every, we'd have our shirts unbuttoned and all that stuff.

So they all of a sudden announced we have the three runners [00:48:00] up and the winner of our costume contest for Halloween. So they say, well, the runner up number three is this and they get to the number one winner. Of 500. Now, 500 back then was a lot of money and they go Clifford grub. And we all cracked up because he wasn't in a costume.

It was his uniform and he won the number one out of all the units, all the costumes that were in there, and they had a pretty, pretty packed house. And he was the winner of the costume party, just wearing his BB Riverboats uniform. So, back 

Terri Bernstein: to the World's Fair.

We're 

Alan Bernstein: going back to the World's Fair. Well, we've still been there. We haven't. I 

Allen Rizzo: think we've got to talk about World's Fair food. Do you remember that, menu? 

Alan Bernstein: The funny story is we would go and we would stay at the Hyatt Regency in Knoxville, which is up on a hill. And they had a Was it actually a Hyatt Regency?

Terri Bernstein: Didn't we stay at the Hyatt Regency West Bank? [00:49:00] Yes, and that's in New 

Ben Bernstein: Orleans. Next episode, we will be talking about the Hyatt Regency of the West Bank, and it'll make sense why I asked if it was actually a 

Allen Rizzo: Hyatt Regency.

Stay tuned, right? 

Alan Bernstein: You have to wait till next week. Go on. Anyway we stayed at the Hyatt Regency, Knoxville. And every morning we'd go down and have breakfast or lunch or whatever it was, maybe dinner. Eggs benedict. Eggs benedict. And for one of their menu items was thought it was the Rocky Mountain, Rocky Mountain High or something and what it was, it was thin stack turkey on a plate. On a bun and a ham that was stacked real high on a bun. And it had this cheese sauce. Yes. It was good. I mean, it really. 

Terri Bernstein: Like a Philly Cheesesteak? 

Ben Bernstein: No, not like that. Like a 

Allen Rizzo: Open faced hot brown. Yeah, yeah. You gotta think cheddar cheese sauce instead of 

Alan Bernstein: Well, and it wasn't laid flat on bread.

It [00:50:00] was mounded high. It was like a, Two mountains. Two mountains. What do they call that? Béchamel sauce? 

Terri Bernstein: Yeah, but yeah, but it was cheese sauce. It was more like cheese whiz. 

Alan Bernstein: Yeah, it was more like cheese whiz than it was anything else. That's 

Terri Bernstein: why it sounds more like a. Cheese steak. Cheese steak. 

Alan Bernstein: I think we thought it was so good that we ought to have it down on the river.

On the cruises? No, on the wharf. For you to eat? Yeah, to sell. We actually sold. To sell, yes. I don't think we sold many, but I think we, actually, we didn't do a lot of sales. We had a 

Allen Rizzo: whole menu. We had the Mike Fink's Raw Bar when we started. Yes. It didn't go through the whole fair because it wasn't popular.

Right. But we did start with it. We had the the Rocky Mountain Ham and Turkey Sandwich. Remember our hot dog? I wouldn't call it a hot dog. I'd call it a Wurst Kebab because that's what we had A Worsh what? Yeah. A what? Well, you gotta have an imagination and I'm glad people are listening to this and it's not on video. But you gotta take a knockwurst and cut it up into [00:51:00] pieces inch and a half long. Yeah. And put them on a skewer. Put them on a skewer. And then you get some onion and green pepper squares and you make a shish kebab out of it. Cook it. Now, we didn't cook it on the grill, we cooked it in the steamer, but and then we would put it on the bun, and cover it with the same cheese.

We only had to order one kind of cheese, but, and I can't eat it to this day. No, I can't eat it either. But that actually made it through the whole fair. Yeah. 

Alan Bernstein: Yeah, the Wurst Kebab. 

Allen Rizzo: Did you sell many of those? We did sell a lot of those because we were as far as you go in the World's Fair site, and we were down by the ride, so there wasn't a whole lot of food, you know?

Yeah. Food on our end of the World's Fair was hard to come by. 

If you look in the history of World's fairs, you'll find out that the first ice cream cone was served at the World's Fair when the guys serving ice cream ran out and. Has the waffle maker to make some cups and if you can find it, Wurst Kebab will be the first, first thing.

It'll be one of the famous things. So it'll be sitting right next to the invention of a waffle cone? Yeah, yeah. Ben, Google it, pull it up, 

Terri Bernstein: it's gotta be on Wikipedia, the Wurst [00:52:00] Kebab. Yeah, 

Ben Bernstein: yeah. Oh, give me a couple hours, we can just create a new page for it. 

Allen Rizzo: There's a lot of World's Fair trivia that you can find, but that's one of the ones that it.

That'll be a million dollar since 

Terri Bernstein: we're such a famous podcast. 

Allen Rizzo: Do you know the icon building for the Knoxville Worlds Fair? The, yeah, the sphere. It's called a sun sphere but, you know, the Knoxville has the sun sphere do you know other buildings around the world? I mean, there's a whole series of buildings that were built for world's fairs. 

Ben Bernstein: Was the Space Needle built for the World's Fair? Space Needle was, absolutely. The Eiffel Tower?

The Eiffel Tower? I didn't know that. 

Allen Rizzo: There was one in Chicago, the Crystal Palace, but a metal and glass building and somehow it burned down. I'm not quite sure how that happened, but the Crystal Palace in Chicago. So there's a And I 

Alan Bernstein: think there was a fountain that's still there that it was a part of the World's Fair.

In Chicago, that, that big, I don't know what it's called. 

Allen Rizzo: Yep in Chicago also had one of the first huge Ferris wheels. 

Ben Bernstein: Yeah, on Navy Pier? 

Allen Rizzo: On Navy Pier, huge, so the [00:53:00] history of World's Fairs was very interesting with the icon buildings, but the Sun Sphere is still there. 

Terri Bernstein: Completely jumping stories, but there's a story about a woman with an apron and Rizzo. 

Allen Rizzo: Yeah, you're going to make me tell it, aren't you? I think so. Well, you know, listen, we did a lot of prep for the World's Fair. We want to do everything in first class.

And so if you look at the picture that Terri, if you could see that our servers all had custom World's Fair aprons. And , they were limited. We printed a certain number of them that we thought we would need to get through the World's Fair. So there was a limited edition , and one day one of my waitresses came up and said, I've got a customer that won't leave me alone. She wants my apron. Can I give it to her? Can I sell it to her? I said, no, you can't get another one. We're almost out of them. And she says, well, you go talk to this lady. So I went over and talked to the girl and she, turns out she was from Cincinnati and she's with her friend and she's trying to convince me that I want to sell her apron and I'd tell her. I really can't. And so she wants to convince me later after work, and she convinces me to take her to some of the pavilions after I get off at five o'clock. [00:54:00] So I took her up to see some of the bigger exhibits because I knew the World's Fair pretty well, and I knew how to get into the China pavilion.

And it was a particularly busy day, and we were packed in a line. And, and so we don't get lost with each other. We're kind of holding on to each other's waist. And at some point in the crowd. a surprise to me. I believe me. I it took me by surprise. She moved my hand from her waist to her breast.

I'm sure he was shocked. I was like, what do you do in the middle of the line to the China pavilion? And what is the right answer here? It turns out that You know, that was the beginning of a whirlwind. And I'll just leave it at that. Actually, 

Alan Bernstein: Riz, you don't tell the story exactly, exactly right. I'm not being PC.

Yeah. Hi, Glenna. 

Terri Bernstein: Everything's good. Glenna, don't pay 

Alan Bernstein: attention to this. Long before [00:55:00] you ever met Allen Rizzo this young lady was a full definition of a nymphomaniac because she actually had to have sex to exist. And this is before sex addiction was a thing. Yeah, I'm well before well before that.

And so one day I said to somebody, where's Riz? And they said he's back with Marilyn and he goes again. He was just with Marilyn and I said, yeah, he's back there again.

So when he came out. I said, Riz, what is going on? He says, I was in there with Marilyn and I went, do you know if you're coming or going? 

Allen Rizzo: I'm 20 years old. I'm 20 years old in 1982 in May, actually I am experiencing the world really. Right. I mean, women from China, the Down Under club in Australia. I [00:56:00] was introduced. 

Alan Bernstein: Yeah. He was he was taught about things that he didn't know 

Terri Bernstein: speaking of that completely off our Agenda here, but we never talked about Rizzo coming to work for us.

Allen Rizzo: I'll tell you how it went. I'm 14 years old. I've got a little Jewish boy that lives down the street and he's a bus boy at El Greco and Mark Schultz was his name. It was. I don't know. It's funny as it is. It wasn't the Mark Schultz. Not our Mark. Not our. Right. A little, little flat Jewish boy. And he says, they need busboys. They need busboys. Go down and , tell them you want to work for them. Just tell them you're 16 years old. I live up on the hill. I walked down El Greco. I had to walk there. It was a few mile walk. On the way there, I had to walk past Beverly Hills. It was still open. I walked up there because my brother had worked as a busboy there and it was a Monday and they were closed.

Because I was going to apply there. If I'm going to apply at one place, I'll apply at the other. And they were closed. finished and walked down Del Greco, walked in Marianne Bankamper, who was at the , front desk. And I said, I want to apply for a job. She said, we're [00:57:00] not hiring anybody now, but you can fill out this paperwork. And she was real nice, but we're not hiring anybody right now. And I don't know the history of your story or when you came back, but you This was right after you had come back from wherever, and I guess it was the Delta Queen, and they put you in charge of the busboys, I found out later, but somehow Alan got put in charge of the busboys, and a week later my mom is waiting for me outside of school, and she says, come on, you gotta be at El Greco at four o'clock, they want you to start working.

And we had to go buy a pair of black pants and a white shirt, and I walked in, and Alan was now in charge of the busboys, and he had hired three or four people all at one time, and I was 14 years old, walking to and from work every day. I had a lot. I mean, I worked a lot. Yeah, but I was one of your, I was one of your, not to us because you weren't around to my family.

Listen, here's how it went. I went to school with people , that Alan was a coach for baseball and they were ribbing him one day saying, I want to work for you. Well, come, come down and work. Alan would say, come down and work when you're 16 years old. What you got [00:58:00] Rizzo there. He says, well, he's 16 years old.

No, he's not. He's in my class. So that must have been May it must have been about my birthday, because I had my birthday, my 16th birthday, and everybody's telling me happy birthday at the restaurant, and Alan comes up and takes me outside and says, is today your birthday? I said, yeah. He said, happy birthday.

He said, what birthday is it? I said, it's 16. He says, I thought you were already 16. I said, no, this is my 16th birthday. He says, well, did you lie to us when you started working here? I said, well, yeah. He said, well, why'd you lie? I said, well. If I would have told you I was 14, would you have hired me?

Speaker 3: And he said, 

Allen Rizzo: no, I said, well, there you go. 

Alan Bernstein: Yeah. He'd already been working for two years, 

Allen Rizzo: I worked as a busboy for a few years. Then I went back to him. Good one. I had told Alan, I wanted to learn the restaurant business better. He said, I can put you behind the line.

You'll learn the cooking line. I cooked with Harold and Edna, our Broer guy. Wait, wait a minute. Wait. John. John. jj. jj. jj. 

Yeah. jj. John Johnson. Teddy Miller. It was, it was a treat. Was Gloria 

Terri Bernstein: [00:59:00] there then? 

Alan Bernstein: No. Yes. Was she? Yes. 

Terri Bernstein: Gloria made the best shrimp scampi and veal parmesan.

Allen Rizzo: The veal parmesan got me. She had made one, put it up on top of the steamer. The steamer door leaked. Time to pick it up. I'm in the middle. I said, pick it up a veal parmesan. She goes to hand it to me and she says it's hot and she's holding it with her bare hand and I didn't process it right. And I said, that's okay.

And she said, it's hot. And so I grabbed it and it would have been hanging over the steam. It was hot on one end and cold on the other. And it was the worst burn I ever got. Yeah, it was a good one. Three times she she told me it was hot. But then in 79 is when you came to me and said, we're going to start this thing down the river.

Do you want to do it? And I'll never forget being the, the steward to bring Alan out the food he was the carver. Alan was the carver on the first cruise. I could never figure out how to cut the bread to your mom's liking on the first year. Not many 

Ben Bernstein: people did. Well, you cut it 

Allen Rizzo: the way she told you last time, and it wasn't right the next time.

We [01:00:00] had to big nod at bread, and it was never right, but Shirley was passionate about Sounds like my dad. She was passionate about her bread. But Al and I were the stewards on the first series of cruises. 

Alan Bernstein: And Riz and I together invented the famous curtain that blocked the sun. The dishes, the green curtain, the green curtain, on the Betty Blake, we had to display the dirty dishes out in the open.

And it was ugly. There was no, you know, that terrible looking thing. And one day we had worked a lot of hours and we were sitting out together and I said, Riz, what if we. Built something that we could disguise these dishes. And he said, well, I don't think you want to build anything, Alan. It would be a big, you know, structure.

And he said, well, what about a curtain? That's genius. And we came up with the green curtain and it was up on a track. Most [01:01:00] of these we 

Ben Bernstein: things is Riz. Not, there's no, wait, wait, you bought the supplies is probably all you did. And 

Allen Rizzo: you are right. It would not have happened without me, but it was a collaborative effort. It may have been, and you'll hear that story about the nightmare. How long it took me to convince him that. People would pay to get Oh, my God. 

Terri Bernstein: Back to the world's fair. Let's get back alright, so what did we do there? What were we doing in the World's Fair? Were we running sightseeing cruises? Dinner cruises? 

Alan Bernstein: We ran sightseeing cruises on a regular schedule with two boats. The Good Ship Lollipop and the Becky Thatcher. And they were running on a regular schedule and then our operation on the wharf was we were open from 11 to 9 maybe or 10. After, I guess the last cruise left, we would How many cruises would we do? 

Had to be six or seven 

Ben Bernstein: a day.

These, like [01:02:00] hour cruises or, or they 

Allen Rizzo: were, we, we had two boats and we were, 

Alan Bernstein: yeah. I mean, they were all schedules. I think they were running half hour, one hour cruises, half hour apart, apart. Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. 

Terri Bernstein: How long's the one hour sightseeing cruise? 

Alan Bernstein: Well, we were asked that a lot, . We 

Allen Rizzo: did run some private charters after 

Alan Bernstein: we did.

We, we did. And we ran a race there of a very put together race between the ugly duck, which was our competitor at that point. Oh, I thought you were the only boat. We were but the ugly duck was based out maybe five miles below us or 

Allen Rizzo: something. Not in the world's fair. It was 

Alan Bernstein: not in the world's fair in Knoxville.

That's correct. In Knoxville. Cool. And it was an ugly boat. It had this real high bow. Like you would see on the, it reminds me a lot of the deadliest catch. Alaskan fishing boat. Yes. That's the way this high bow came up and then it came back and it was pretty ugly.[01:03:00] 

Allen Rizzo: But I 

Alan Bernstein: think it was one of the, for very first, And I don't know where he got it, but we called it the ugly duck. And of course they didn't like that, but we had a race and we won the Becky Thatcher won. I have a poster in the library of the race promotion, the original sign for the ugly duck Versus the Becky Thatcher.

Terri Bernstein: Did it say Ugly doc Hana? It 

Alan Bernstein: does 

Terri Bernstein: Really? 

Ben Bernstein: It does . 

Terri Bernstein: I'll have to find that. I'll dig that out. It's 

Ben Bernstein: in the library. And so we had a dock facility. We sold food. Yep. People could just come and hang out. Yep, yep. Were running. We had a bar and then sneak 

Terri Bernstein: into the World's Fair. We had a bar. We had a bar. Yeah. Yeah.

We And you 

Allen Rizzo: could 

Terri Bernstein: go 

Allen Rizzo: on a cruise. 

Ben Bernstein: You could go on a cruise. Did we? Did we sell souvenirs? 

Allen Rizzo: We did have souvenirs. You had, you had some. Not many. Not many. 

Terri Bernstein: The World's Fair had souvenirs. 

Alan Bernstein: The official World's Fair souvenir had everything. Anything you can think of. 

Ben Bernstein: [01:04:00] Coincidentally, I think we have every single one.

We have at least one or two of every souvenir from the 1982 World's Fair. If you want to come down to BB Riverboats, it's 101 Riverboat Row. We have a whole display of World's Fair 

Alan Bernstein: gifts 

Ben Bernstein: or 

Alan Bernstein: souvenirs. I call it junk, he calls it relics. You are out of the will on my collections. Out of the will. Terri is getting everything. Collected them. And I really want to tell you a lot of people look at those world's fairs items and go, I remember that I even have Zippo lighters and I mean, things yo yos. The World's Fair collection is down at BB and you can see it. It's on display. And it's free. Free of charge. Free of charge. You don't have to buy anything. Business hours only. 

Ben Bernstein: And when you come down and ask for Alan Bernstein, he's the curator, he's the [01:05:00] curator of the museum. 

 Page three. Page 

Alan Bernstein: three, Paul Harvey. Well, wait a minute. So one day I get a call early in the morning. Alan, someone has stolen the good ship lollipop. I said, what do you mean? There are nine people living on the barge that the boat is on. They said, boss, it's gone. We can't find it anywhere. It's not down the river. So I come down, I, I don't, I don't even know if I, I, I guess I put pants and a shirt on, but I come down and everybody's got this long face on their on their look.

And I I said, what, what's going on guys? They said, we found a good ship lollipop. I said, well, where is it? I'm thinking, you know, we got to go miles down the river. And they said, boss just look down And I looked down and Riz already told you that the water is crystal clear I mean, it's amazing in the summer that the [01:06:00] water in Knoxville is really at least Eight ten feet down you can see and sure enough.

There is the good ship lollipop when they brought it up, we found the problem and it was our mistake. So we had a crane come 

Allen Rizzo: and lift it up in the air. The crane was building a bridge it's not a river crane. It is a bridge crane, a 

Alan Bernstein: huge, big, big, big crane. And asked the guy, could you roll the crane down here? You know, the, the riverbank it was big enough to, to do it. And they said, yeah, we can do that on, you know, Friday afternoon or whatever.

They came down and they got it up out of the river and they were hoisting it. And all of a sudden there was a pop, like, I've never heard. An inch and a half cable snaps. Now you try to put an inch and a half on your fingers in a circle and you'll realize how much weight it had to be to take that [01:07:00] cable to break it.

So do 

Allen Rizzo: you remember the cable coming all back down on top of the cab? 

Alan Bernstein: It recoils all the way down the boom. And it comes right back on to the, you can only imagine what the cab sounded like when it came back and they dropped the boat and it sunk again, it sunk again, the second.

So Paul Harvey, who was a famous radio announcer at that time, he had the Paul Harvey show And, and it was a syndicate, nationally syndicated show. So he was on everywhere. And his famous stories or his news was this is on page one. This is page two and page three was always something unusual.

So he went to page three. He had this very, you know, unique radio voice. He said, today the Good Ship Lollipop sank [01:08:00] and kids everywhere must be heartbroken. So we made Paul Harvey, there'll be no joy. There'll be no joy in the world yet. That's right. And now you know the rest of the story and he also was famous for saying goodbye Just like that, you know, goodbye but yeah, we lost the good ship lollipop and we made the Paul Harvey, which we all thought was really pretty neat, you know It took the sinking of the good ship lollipop to get on. Didn't you borrow 

Terri Bernstein: that boat from Pittsburgh?

Huh, and we 

Alan Bernstein: leased it from Pittsburgh. 

Terri Bernstein: What did Terri Wirginis say? Well when 

Allen Rizzo: I caught him I said, Literally, you know the boat the second time they raised it they had no problem They took it up slower and they got it pumped out and it wasn't as heavy and That was two hours later, it was running under its own power yeah. It was amazing how fast they emptied it outta water. Yep. And, and got it running. It smoked a little bit, but why did it sink? It had a glass cover so you could see the strainer 

Alan Bernstein: and it, and 

Allen Rizzo: it cracked.[01:09:00] 

Alan Bernstein: It was, it cracked and it wasn't seated correctly, and that's why it actually cracked. But, that sank the boat. It was no doubt about that. So it was fine after 

Terri Bernstein: that? 

Alan Bernstein: It 

Ben Bernstein: was like, yeah. That sounds like a technology call. Well, no, no, no, no, no. We had to get the water 

Alan Bernstein: out of the engine and put new oil in and all of that stuff.

Terri Bernstein: But when you returned the boat to Pittsburgh, it was all fine? Here you go. 

Alan Bernstein: Yeah. I mean, it wasn't damaged. It really wasn't. It wasn't damaged at all. If you remember the boat, it was all steel. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. No, 

Alan Bernstein: no, wait a minute. We did damage some handrail bringing the boat up out of the water. We damaged some handrails, but it wasn't much.

There was very little 

Ben Bernstein: damage. It's one of those situations where dad dropped it off and said, it's not my problem. Yeah. There was a I guess after the, the world's fair ended or maybe towards the end, there was a, a late night cruise with all the employees from the world's fair. 

Alan Bernstein: Yeah. That's another Alan Rizzo famous story.

Allen Rizzo: The K I double E, which was the energy exposition, the employees that work for the actual world's fair. [01:10:00] So people that clean the fair and sold tickets and they decided to do a party for their employees. And they talked down into doing a late night cruise and late night cruises in Knoxville were notorious.

I already told you I ran a beer and had to take it out in the middle of the cruise. So there was a 

Ben Bernstein: college town 

Allen Rizzo: and all the employees were college kids. So this was a rowdy crowd. Now you got to remember, this is 1982. I think the who concert is 1979. I think. And I had a friend that was lost at the who concert.

So crowd and crowd dynamics were kind of something I was familiar with. And I'm at the stage. 

Ben Bernstein: 1979. 

Allen Rizzo: So I'm, I'm boarding the people on a 50 foot wide dock, all trying to funnel into a three foot wide ramp. 

Alan Bernstein: Yep. 

Allen Rizzo: And they're, they're in a hurry and they're getting free tickets and they're employees, and nobody's can, you know, following the lines of the signs.

And so I'm trying to get the crowd to, you know, stop pushing because people are tripping on the ramp. I walked from the side of the ramp to in front of the ramp to get the crowd to understand that we couldn't board like this. And the crowd surged when I was walking around the end of the stage.

And this girl got pinned between me and the crowd. [01:11:00] And I had my arm up her chest trying to, 

Alan Bernstein: yeah, trying to keep people back. 

Allen Rizzo: The crowd pushed her against my arm. She was there for a couple seconds. And when the crowd calmed down, she said, Hey, you know, that hurt me. And I said, well, you know, we stepped off to the side, we talked to her, she said, I'm okay to board.

She boarded the boat half hour into the cruise, we're doing an emergency pickup of a girl that can't breathe. And it turns out it's that girl that Donna was her name. I won't use the whole name, but I remember the full name, but, she went to the hospital and got serviced and thought she had bruised.

And I think she had a concern that the bruising on her chest would cause some kind of breast cancer. And. Maybe it was a lottery ticket against the world's fair and this company from Tennessee and, and me. And so we ended up in a lawsuit and, and it went to court and had a jury and. Luckily, after a bunch of wrangling, the judge heard the story and said, you got no, no, didn't 

Terri Bernstein: you all show up in uniform? 

Allen Rizzo: Yep. 

Alan Bernstein: Yeah. He said, is this the Navy coming into our courtroom? 

Allen Rizzo: But the [01:12:00] judge didn't even let the jury decide. He said, you haven't proven your case and it got thrown out. So, I mean, it was an unfortunate incident, but wasn't.

Alan Bernstein: To defend Riz, there was no intention of hurting her or you know, I I think at one time she said you had accosted her. And well, was all true. It says in the news article 

Terri Bernstein: a woman who said she was violently struck by an employee, right, 

Alan Bernstein: yeah. While 

Terri Bernstein: boarding.

Alan Bernstein: Yep. It, there wasn't much violent about. But didn't 

Terri Bernstein: she also claim that she got breast cancer from that? Well, she was concerned that she, that she 

Allen Rizzo: would struck. Got it. That's, that was her complaint. That, you know, might lead to breast cancer. And listen, I, you know, maybe she had that concern and, and she did.

We got. I'm not gonna deny that there was contact, but the contact was the crowd pushing her and I had no place to go. 'cause I was backed up against the ramp. Right. The crowd pushed her into me. And, and that's what the judge and, and said and, and it didn't go to the jury. Right, right. I, I hope if Donna's here this, that she never ended up with breast cancer, any, any long term concerns.

'cause there was no malice. It was just the crowd [01:13:00] dynamic and in the back of my mind. I'm seeing people trip on the stage and on the ramp. Me too. If somebody goes down, it's going to be trampling and, and I had to stop that. Had the right intention. 

Ben Bernstein: A very famous piece of our fleet. Was affectionately known as the, 

Alan Bernstein: It was docked near our fleet. 

Allen Rizzo: It was part of, you know, they said there was going to be a shortage of hotel room. It was an honorary member of our, so somebody decided it would be a great idea right across the world's fair to take all these houseboats. I didn't even have any, 

Alan Bernstein: no engines and 

Allen Rizzo: they built all these houseboats. When I say all of them, more than a hundred. I was going to say 35 or 40, but it might've been on Jimmy would be able to tell us, but somewhere between 40 and a hundred boats on a beautiful dock sitting right on the Tennessee river. And they were hotel rooms. 

Alan Bernstein: Yeah. 

Allen Rizzo: It was a flotel. 

Alan Bernstein: They, that 

Allen Rizzo: is the dock that we ran the, the, 

Alan Bernstein: the shuttle from or the 

Allen Rizzo: ferry, 

Alan Bernstein: yeah.

Allen Rizzo: Ferry 82. And, and 

Alan Bernstein: Uncle Jimmy Holthaus lived with Mary and I, at our apartment, there wasn't [01:14:00] room in the, And you 

Terri Bernstein: and 

Alan Bernstein: Ben, Ben was there. He was alive. He was a little tiny baby. I 

Allen Rizzo: can imagine living with his older sister really put a kink in his plan. 

Alan Bernstein: Well, it did. And we, we had a code when he had somebody in the room, there was usually a sock put on the the doorknob that was the code, but anyway, Jimmy and Jim Doyle decided to move into the, to the houseboats.

And made a deal with them to rent for the fair houseboat. And they 

Terri Bernstein: shared one? 

Alan Bernstein: They shared one. It was several beds. I think there were three or four beds. They were nice houseboats. Yeah. So, in a kitchen, and in a, you know, it was a regular houseboat. And well, with no engines. And it was famous for. What was his nickname? Women going in and out of the the, the, the house bag, hence the term love tug. The, the, yeah. Hence the word Love [01:15:00] Tug . I have to say, in my experience at the World's Fair, which was nothing to do with the love tug, the nymphomaniac, or any other, , 

Terri Bernstein: that's the appropriate answer with your two kids in the room.

Alan Bernstein: Yes. Yes. But, and my mother 

Terri Bernstein: listening. 

Alan Bernstein: Yeah, I'm sure your mother is listening. She's rolling her eyes actually, right? Oh yeah. She's laughing. She's going, oh, he's his been 20 

Allen Rizzo: years old. You could have had a fun now. 

Alan Bernstein: Yeah. Well the, the World's Fair ends. The World's Fair comes, the aftermath begins.

Yes. And we had 30 days to get out. Yeah, they, the rule was after 30 days, you had to vacate the property. And it took us less than 30 days, but we got everything put together and all in one flotilla. Now we start out headed South on the Tennessee river to go down to come home 

Allen Rizzo: before the end of October, I get sent home because you had [01:16:00] just purchased the white wharf. And you wanted to start remodeling the 

Alan Bernstein: Seaplane hangar. The seaplane hangar. The famous seaplane hangar. I 

Allen Rizzo: was not there at the end of the World's Fair. I, three or four weeks early I came home because he had just purchased the wharf and I needed to build a wharf bar.

Alan Bernstein: Anyway on the way after we started the first night. Everybody wakes up the next morning to the fact that the flotilla wasn't moving, was not moving. It was sort of stationary and everybody's looking out their windows.

And somebody went to the pilot house and the pilot sound asleep. So now we're out in the middle of the river between Chattanooga and Knoxville. And we are very seriously hard of ground, not hard of ground. We are on the ground. So I get off the flotilla, I get a car, I don't know how I got down to [01:17:00] Chattanooga, but I got down to Chattanooga and I had to charter a tow boat and a Crane and a barge to come up and try to get us off the ground.

Now we've already gone through this in the Tennessee river in the fall. They lower the pool. So and they announced the date. So, you know, that on November 5th, the pool is going to the winter pool. So I think this is November 3rd. Maybe November 2nd, 3rd, and we were facing a whole winter of ground, the entire winter.

And so I had to go and charter a boat and a crane, and I did, and we got up to the grounding on the same day they were going to lower the pool. So I called the TVA and I [01:18:00] said we had had the TVA on our boat for an inspection on some things that they wanted to do. And they thought that our boat would be better.

So I knew some of the head people at the TVA and I called them and I said, I need a big favor. I know that today you are going to lower the pool. Can I ask that you wait 10 hours? Now nobody has ever been successful asking the TVA to not lower the pool. And I was able to get 10 hours. They gave us 10 hours and the clock started right away.

So we went back up there and about the eighth hour. , we got the boat free. Mm-Hmm. . We, we got it cleared off and you know, we were a large flotilla. We had barges , and boats and I, I mean we probably looked [01:19:00] like Sanford and Son coming down the river, right? But I think I'm the only person in the world that convinced the TVA. To not drop the pool. 

Ben Bernstein: You get it off the ground. And away we go. And we head down getting towards the Ohio River. Yes. Bubby Hall warns you, he does not think that you should continue. He thought you guys should stop. And 

Alan Bernstein: wait in Paducah. Yes. Because the Ohio river was in flood stage and the Tennessee river was falling because of the dropout.

We were making 10, 11 miles an hour on the Tennessee river. And when we turned the river and started on the Ohio, we were making a top speed of 1. 1 miles per hour. Now, if you have ever done that. Anybody out there, brutal going one mile an hour means [01:20:00] that for six hours, you go six miles. He can do math.

Oh, I, I am. That's good. And you can often see in six hours where you were six hours ago. And that's the way it was all the way up the river. And Bubby said, boss, I told you, I think we still should go back to Paducah and wait this out. And of course we wanted to all get home and you know, everybody was tired.

So we, we kept going. We burned a lot more fuel than we had anticipated. And it turned out to be a big problem. It did turn out to be a huge problem. About. Two and a half, three miles from Cincinnati. That would be old Southern Harbor, maybe the Southern railroad bridge, maybe just below that. Scott's landing.

Let's go. Maybe it's Scott's landing. We run out of fuel 

Terri Bernstein: [01:21:00] out of fuel. So close, 

Alan Bernstein: so close. We can see the set back then. I think it was the central trust tower and you could see the lights of the central trust tower and everybody was getting excited. We were home. Two and a half hours later, we got enough fuel that we could start the engine and make our way up to our dock.

And we did get enough fuel to finish the cruise, but it was close. Even getting to our dock was, we were wondering if we'd ever make it. So we did run out of fuel. That was a part of coming home. There was no welcome committee. Because you had everybody with you. Well, that is true.

I think everybody was on the boat. So how did the event do financially? Well we paid the United National Bank back and we had the Becky Thatcher and that's about it. Financial broke even,

Terri Bernstein: we got a boat. We had a boat. 

Allen Rizzo: We've got some experience. Yes. Unbelievable. Sounds like, yeah, 

Ben Bernstein: Some of [01:22:00] that experience, like running a ground was to foreshadow a little bit in your career and I had much needed experience. 

Alan Bernstein: I had told everybody, all of our main employees, including Bubby Hall, which if he were here today.

He would ask for his world's fair bonus. So I said to everybody, if we make money, which we had anticipated, everybody would get a world's fair bonus. And of course we didn't make any money and Bobby to the day he died was asking for his world fair bonus. So we did not have any money at the end, but we had an asset.

Right. And it really was the base of our, what allowed us to grow, allowed us to grow and to do things and go places. And I think Riz is right. There was a lot of things that we learned there that not only about traveling and, you know, fuel and, and [01:23:00] transporting fuel in an illegal way we learned a lot.

That helped me. What it, the World's Fair, 1982. 22 is 40 years ago. 2022. So 40 some years ago. 42. Yeah. , you did 

Speaker 8: the part. I, 

Alan Bernstein: I did the hard part. Did most of the work. You got the, I did the hard part. I, and then you forgot to add the two. You're right. It did have some experience and some things that we.

Definitely have used many times since and that really was the payday that was our payday. So we 

Allen Rizzo: survived with some great experience. We 

Alan Bernstein: did. We did. Nobody got hurt. Nobody. Great stories. Some great stories. I wouldn't really change it. I think if we had a chance to go to another World's Fair and we could make it happen we would do it.

I would. 

Allen Rizzo: I heard a story about, jumping onto the Delta queen. And I sort of look at me going to the world's fair at 20 years old. First time out of the house, [01:24:00] great experience. And if I had to do it all again, I would absolutely do it all again. I'd recommend my grandkids do it.

Alan Bernstein: And the Tennessee river is really almost become my favorite river. It's one of your top four. It is because it was such a beautiful you know, it's a series of, I think eight lakes that are all connected by a small channel in the river. And you, you have this huge body of water and the channel is 500, 1, 000 feet.

Terri Bernstein: We did a trip from Cincinnati to Chattanooga on the Belle of Cincinnati. 

Ben Bernstein: Yes, we did. That was not a successful trip. Laughter. Well, and we ran the ground there. Well, we did that, yeah. Trip. We 

Allen Rizzo: came back with a boat. We didn't make any money, but we came back with a boat. 

Ben Bernstein: We did not come back with a boat on that trip.

Actually, there was a river hop we used to do every night. Yeah. That portion. Was very popular. We got down there and we decided to stay for a week and run, run a cruises [01:25:00] and a thousand 

Alan Bernstein: passenger boat. We'd have 12 passengers and

had the Delta queen as a hotel. There 

Terri Bernstein: we docked on it. Yeah. 

Alan Bernstein: Yeah. 

Ben Bernstein: Yeah. Well, Riz, thank you. Oh, go ahead. This 

Allen Rizzo: was a lot of fun. Thank you. I, you know, I, I could talk all day long and I know that you guys like to keep it at an hour, 

Ben Bernstein: okay. Well, Riz, thank you very much.

You will be hearing again from Riz probably here in a. A month or so. He is the current general manager of the USS. I'm sure we'll have a haunted show at some point in the lead up to I'll 

Allen Rizzo: give you a little preview that I'll tell you the story of Al's a trip through the haunted houses in Kansas city.

Oh, that's a treat. 

Alan Bernstein: Thank you. Thank you, Ben. Well, it's 

Ben Bernstein: been, it's been a blast. Thanks Riz. It was a great having you. Well, all right. Well, I guess it is time for your favorites. Portion of the day, Al's word of the day. 

Moderator: Now it is time [01:26:00] for rambling on the rivers

word of the 

Ben Bernstein: day. Well, so we are now on the fourth installment of the word of the day. We've gone through doozies of words, such as. Offtaglaboozem. And Cali 

Alan Bernstein: Caliwhompers. I can't remember Mark Twain. Yeah, Mark Twain. That's sort of 

Ben Bernstein: a week. Today's Word of the Day is Doohickey. Doohickey.

Alan Bernstein: And a Doohickey is when you look at something you cannot understand can't understand. You can't put your hands or your mind on the name of what it is and you say, look over there at that doohickey. And 

Ben Bernstein: we have to [01:27:00] spell it for everybody. Well, you know, the fun, again, this is the fourth word of the day and we have asked you to spell every one of them.

Yeah. You have not completed one spelling yet. I do not believe. Well, you know, you did, we didn't ask you to, to spell Mark Twain. Do I think we assume that you could do that? Well, yeah, that's pretty cally whompers and offtaglaboozem 

Alan Bernstein: blism. That would have loved those are 

Ben Bernstein: tough words. It would have taken way too long.

Alan Bernstein: Now do Hickey do Hickey is a tough word to spell because it's really 

Ben Bernstein: easiest 

Alan Bernstein: one out of the three that we've had. Well, but remember. You can't define what it is, so it's a doohickey, and I think this is spelled incorrectly on paper. Luckily, nobody's looking at the paper. You know, that would be right, but me, and I think there's another O in doohickey, and so I would spell it [01:28:00] D 

Ben Bernstein: O O Oh, because there's a lot of words in the English language.

They have three O's in a row. 

Alan Bernstein: Well, in Alan's dictionary, there definitely are three words with go on. H I C. Now it would have to be a K. It can't be an H so you can be, it's your word. Well okay. I E and that is a. Dooohickie! 

Ben Bernstein: I 

Terri Bernstein: believe that that's not spelled correctly. 

Ben Bernstein: Oh! Is it a real word? Yes! 

Terri Bernstein: It's two against one! What? It's a small object or gadget. Especially one whose name the speaker does not know or cannot recall. , wait a minute. A garage filled with electric parts and other valuable do hickeys. I I wanted an apology from both of you.

Ben Bernstein: I have floored that that [01:29:00] Webster's dictionary has doohickey. I want 

Terri Bernstein: public, but it is not IE it is ey. 

Ben Bernstein: Ey. Ooh. Do hickey a do I thought it'd just be a single y. 

Terri Bernstein: Nope. 

Ben Bernstein: Yeah, that, that's really good. Al why don't you use it in a sentence. 

Terri Bernstein: Hey, 

Alan Bernstein: no, look at that de hickey over there. . I guess he already did.

I guess we're ready for current events. 

Moderator: Welcome to As The Paddle Wheel Turns. Our look at pertinent current events happening right now in the world.

Ben Bernstein: You look like you're ready to go. It sounds like a 

Terri Bernstein: wedding. 

Ben Bernstein: Who cares? Oh, that that, yeah, it sort of has a little bit of wedding Again, as I told you in the last episode, you have your own production and we can use that. 

 So current events. This is the segment each [01:30:00] week. Yep. Where we will pick a current event. Yeah. And the legalization of marijuana is specifically the legalization pertaining to the maritime industry. My brother's 

Terri Bernstein: favorite word, specifically. Well, 

Alan Bernstein: it is it is still illegal in the maritime industry.

Although they are working very hard to come up with new testing regulations that 

Ben Bernstein: would not So, a mariner is required to be enrolled in a Department of Transportation random drug testing pool. That is correct. As one of your requirements to become a master or a captain or a license, actually any license of all, not a captain, any, there, there are many licenses.

out there that you could. The problem being there are now 38 states 

Terri Bernstein: and not licensed. Our, our deckhands have to be Oh, that's qualified. Qualified crew. 

Ben Bernstein: Qualified crew. That is correct. She's correct. Now there are both qualified and unqualified [01:31:00] crew in your crew, but that's a whole other story. The issue being there's now 38 states that have legalized at least medical marijuana in America.

And a large portion of those, or a portion of those, I guess I should say, have legalized recreational use. There are still 12 states that it remains illegal, really only Indiana and Tennessee, as far as the Ohio River system, Mississippi River system are really the only two that remain illegal.

Totally, 

Speaker 8: yeah, 

Ben Bernstein: right. Totally illegal. Right. Now Mariners of Qualified Crew are still held to the standards of what a drug test can detect. So, the issue being now that marijuana is legal in many places it's not treated like alcohol. In the fact that obviously you can't use alcohol while you're on duty.

So unlike alcohol, alcohol, you can drink one night, come to work in the morning and assuming you're [01:32:00] recovered and you're not still impaired. There are minimum hour requirements that you must abide by but use alcohol one night, you come to work the next day, there's no problem with that. The issue is marijuana sits in your system for a period of time. A long time. That's right. Well, it depends. It depends on whether you use it all the 

Terri Bernstein: time or, or a one off. There are 

Ben Bernstein: some factors that affect how long it stays in your system. Body fat. How often you use it and , what type of test is used first time users, a test may only detect it for about three days.

If you're using it three to four times a week, it could be in your system up to a week, even 10 days. But if you're using marijuana habitually, typically it's in your system for 30 days or even longer. There are different tests that you can take there's a urine test, saliva, a hair test which is the most [01:33:00] stringent of them all, THC is in your hair for up to 90 days actually, there's even sweat tests and the shortest actually of them all is a blood test. Now the interesting thing is here lately probably within the last couple of months, the department of transportation has updated its rules to include saliva testing. This is a big change prior to this. It was all urine testing. They have updated saliva is a big update to this rule, because saliva you can detect, while it's still not detecting impairments, it is detecting recent use of marijuana. In your saliva, it can detect 24 to 48 hours max. Okay. Of you using marijuana. Now they are trying to change marijuana from a schedule one drug, which what that means currently marijuana sits in a class of [01:34:00] drugs with heroin, cocaine, 

Speaker 11: ODMA, 

Ben Bernstein: Which is the highest or worst class of drugs. And they're trying to move that to a schedule three drug, which is a really a drug with. Lower potential for abuse. There's a medical use, et cetera. From there, what that will do will allow test makers other resources to develop these tests, to get to a point where. Everybody's goal is to be able to have a test where you can specifically test for impairment.

Right. if you come to work and we think you're drunk, we have test swabs here that we can give to an employee that will immediately tell us if there's alcohol in the system. Right. And, right now, there is no test. They, correct. This saliva test is the closest thing. It's still not there.

But it seems on the horizon that it's pretty likely that we're [01:35:00] going to get to a point where it's going to be possible to test the impairment of a person on marijuana. Now, I don't think anything will change. I think looking forward, you're probably looking at A future where you will be able to use marijuana, such as you do now with alcohol.

But until then there's really no other way to do it. Against the rules. Yeah. 

Terri Bernstein: So I sit on the regulatory committee of the Passenger Vessel Association and yesterday we had a phone call and this came up about moving from a schedule one to a schedule three. And is a big deal for multiple reasons, but one, it'll allow companies to hire people that do marijuana.

Not in the federal drug test pool, but in companies that just drug test employees, not federally, not in DOT, but it'll allow them to be able to hire those [01:36:00] employees where they have, Not been able to. To do in the past. Now, the Passenger Vessel Association, their biggest concern is impairment.

Right. So, no matter what happens, whether it moves from a Schedule 1 to a Schedule 3, our biggest problem still is impairment, and we do not want anybody impaired driving any vessels with passengers. So, even if it moves, until there is some sort of testing. That will allow us to know impairment it will not change for TNT 

Speaker 11: smoke weed every day

Yes, 

Terri Bernstein: I just came back from Las Vegas and I believe every person there is smoking weed 

Alan Bernstein: Well, I think you smoke weed even you're not smoking weed because when you breathe it 

Ben Bernstein: Everywhere, yeah 

Terri Bernstein: New York City, I mean, a lot of these cities. 

Ben Bernstein: We're coming towards the end of the show, and I got something exciting for you, Al.

Our second [01:37:00] episode. Second episode. The word of the day was Mark Twain. Yes. And, one of our employees came up and gave you alerted you of a song that really gave us the definition of Mark Twain. That song was sung by the Kingston Trio and it's called Mark Twain and I got a little 

Music: Mark Twain It's two fans deep below Mark Twain He's the gangplank star of the show Mark Twain 

Ben Bernstein: The Grammy nominated Kingston Trio. Well, 

Alan Bernstein: The version I sent you, that was the version you sent me. Oh, it was, it wasn't the same. Yeah. The clip I sent you was when they described Mark Twain as 12 feet, or 

Ben Bernstein: if that's 

Alan Bernstein: exactly what the clip 

Ben Bernstein: did. Do I need to play it again?

No, no. That's okay. Listen closer. I Okay. 

Music: T Fat. [01:38:00] I got it. I got it.

Alan Bernstein: Yeah, I got it. Now there are versions and I believe John Hartford had a version of Mark Twain, the fathom, the, the depth so you would say he covered the Kingston tree. 

Ben Bernstein: Next week we will talk about the purchase of the Emerald lady and the renovation project that ensued. To turn that I hear the Hyatt 

Alan Bernstein: Regency West Bank coming. Can we 

Terri Bernstein: get Captain Troy Manthey? 

Alan Bernstein: We can certainly try. Oh, we gotta have, no, I don't know that he'll be back.

He's away right now. We would 

Ben Bernstein: do it by phone. Yeah, well, I know. The Emerald Lady was renovated into what is now the Belle of Cincinnati. We purchased it in 1998. We brought it up here to Cincinnati in 1999 [01:39:00] after. The hottest summer, there's no doubt of anybody's life. It absolutely will. And we will tell some stories surrounding that.

So other than that, thank you for listening to us. Thank you to Alan Rizzo for stopping by and talking about the, Rizzo's the 

Alan Bernstein: greatest. 

Ben Bernstein: We will see you again next week.

Speaker 4: Thank you for listening to The Rambling on the River podcast presented by BB Riverboats. Stay tuned for the next episode of our podcast and remember to like, subscribe, and follow us on all your favorite podcast platforms.

Ben Bernstein: The previous episode was brought to you by BB Riverboats. 

Speaker 12: The moments that await just around the river's bend are what we look forward to [01:40:00] each day. Watching high school sweethearts tie the knot. Or watching them celebrate 50 wonderful years together. A group of old friends reuniting for one more adventure.

Or young minds embarking on their first. At BB Riverboats, we believe a cruise on the mighty Ohio is where lifelong memories are made. And that once you experience it, you'll want to share it with others time and time again. Plan your group event at BBRiverboats. com. Journey Aboard.