Robert Gudmestad

It's a different version of that.

You have chairs, you have people reading.

Sometimes you have people singing, people reading newspapers, people engaging in conversation.

And then you also have people gambling because you're always going to have smaller tables set up with chairs around them.

And the stereotype of the riverboat gambler, that phrase has entered American history for a reason.

Yeah.

Is, you know, a guy who's maybe very well dressed and maybe has a cane or, you know, he looks the part.

That is completely false.

Oh, yeah.

Because if you're going to make your living as a gambler, you don't want to be known that you're a professional card player.

You want to look like a, if you will, regular cabin passenger.

So these professional gamblers...

They posed as a planter from the South.

They posed as a farmer or an attorney from Illinois or Indiana.

They had these complex backstories that they would tell people because, again, people aren't sitting around...

you know, scrolling on Instagram or playing Candy Crush on these boats, for the most part, they're interacting with one another.

Sure.

And so these people had to have these elaborate stories to be able to convince others that they were just, you know, traveling from St.

Louis to New Orleans for a day.

It was a glamorous experience if you're on one of the