13. Marbles

My house is 104 years old. I used to think it was 105, but the land was bought in 1904 and the house built in 1905. So my title search/abstract that Mary gave us when we moved in is for the land, not necessarily the house. The folks who owned it first, the Zieglers, owned it for only two years--I can only assume they were the buildesr.

Since then, three families. I've lived here 11 years.. The other two families, the Woltjens and the Kimpler-Murphy-Chapman clan (the Widow Kimpler became the Widow Chapman became the Widow Murphy and then she died, leaving the house to her daughter Mary), take up the remaining 91 years. I know very little about them, and what I do know isn't very complimentary. Mrs. Murphy ran the place as a boarding house. We still have deadbolts (or the holes from the removed deadbolts) on the bedroom doors. There was a makeshift kitchen in the second floor back bedroom (now part of the bathroom). The butler's pantry was ravaged and left as a 3/4 bath with the worst fixtures I've ever seen in any house. When Mrs. Murphy died, and Mary inherited the house, she let her indigent brother live in the basement. She didn't do anything really bad to the house, really. She had the kitchen redone in 1980; our bedroom and the living and dining rooms were given new ceilings around that time. None of it is really that great, though, and every time we change something, I think about how there's one fewer reminder of the Chapman-Murphy mistakes. Like when I finally painted over our hideous bedroom wallpaper.

There's not much left from the former residents these days. A heating oil tank in the basement is hardly sentimental. We haven't mustered the energy to rehab that butler's pantry bathroom, and so we just shut the door for now. That's about it.

But every spring I kneel down in the garden or in the yard, and out pops a marble. Way in back where I grow tomatoes. Under the back porch as I pull up the Virginia creeper vine. When I helped my grandmother plant daffodils. When I put in my two peonies. Front and back yards, one or two each year.

Mary Chapman, I must remember, was born and raised here along with her brothers. They weren't always indigent alcoholics. The Pelikanos family lived two doors down. I'm sure they had a bunch of kids. Are the marbles from the 60s, played with by my father's contemporaries, or are they from the 20's, shot across a dirt playing field by boys my grandfather's age now? I don't know how to appraise marbles like I might a quilt. But I liked this little literal souvenir, and so I kept them in a jar in my kitchen window.

My mom noticed them at some point and thought I was collecting them with some purpose. She picked some up at an antique mall. Now, I have a problem with collections. I love little things. So I didn't suppress this. Only about a third of my marbles are from my yard, but I know which ones are, for the most part.

I held the belief that these were unique to my experience somehow. There are marbles in my yard. This is special. Then I helped my sister move from a two-family flat on Tholozan, and as I was getting directions to the new place, one foot in the car, I looked down. A little orange and white marble, not new, was wedged between the dirt and the curb, exposed by a table leg that had scraped against the ground.

It made me want to take a giant rake to south city and find all the remnants of childhood underneath the daylilies and juniper bushes.

12. Gangway

I grew up in the suburbs. All the suburbs, frankly. Or maybe, better said, the one suburb. They all sort of blend together. Yes, there are different trees and methods of getting your mail, but in the end they are all curvy street neighborhoods with the houses a modest distance apart.

I now live in what was probably considered a "streetcar suburb" back when it was built--I don't live in a high rise apartment building or above a storefront or in a block of flats. I live in a detached house, with its own footprint, with no shared walls with any neighbors.

Between our house and the ones on either side are gangways--about three feet wide, leading from the front sidewalk to the backyard.

Gangway. It evokes a certain image, especially in the city, especially in the summertime. A way for gangs. And there are summer mornings when I find the evidence that my gangway has been traveled: the gate is unlocked and the backyard gate to the alley is ajar. Where our yard leads to, I'm not sure, but it does occasionally serve as a gangway.

But that's not the history of the word. Gang and gangway come from the same root, but gangway doesn't come from the modern meaning of gang. More like gangplank. Gang is related to go, and thus gangway is a going way. A way one can go. And the original meaning of gang is simply a group going the same way--which, having seen gangs move, I can still see.

I like words.

I like gangways, too. I like hearing my neighbors, and I like the idea (in a terrible way) that if someone were to try to axe-murder my family in the middle of the night, Colin and Katie next door might notice. The night this past winter when we heard the woman scream, the first place Mike checked was the house next door. We are close by in the city and I've grown accustomed to the closeness.

11. Parishes

We were standing in Soulard Market. We were in town, visiting my grandparents, and my mom and dad took us down to Soulard. It's a farmers market (and produce resellers market, I mean, they have bananas and avocados there, too), ancient in St. Louis terms (opened in 1779), filled with all sorts of characters. But that's a post for another time.

So we were there. I was twelve, I think, and an older man was talking to my parents, trying to sell them whatever he had at the moment (I think it was a whole box of cabbage). They weren't interested, but my mom got to talking to him about how we were in town from Dallas, but that she and my dad had grown up here.

"Oh," he said to her. "What parishes?"

"Immaculate Heart of Mary for me, All Souls for Terry," was her response. He mentioned where he'd grown up down on the south side--St. Cecilia's, I think.

I thought nothing of this.

Now that I've lived other places and been to other places and realized the whole world isn't Catholic, this strikes me as very odd. That old man didn't know my parents were Catholic, but he asked them what parish they grew up in. Because it didn't matter, in my parents' generation and before, whether you were Catholic or not--you knew what parish you lived in. It was a geographical marker as much as a place of worship (especially if you weren't Catholic).

Houston doesn't act this way; Georgia and Dallas don't have enough Catholic parishes to do this. And nowadays, I don't think even Catholics obey rules of parish geography. We just go to church where we feel comfortable. Right? And we tell people where we live by neighborhood or suburb (All Souls, for instance, could have been "Overland").

Nobody ever asked me what parish I lived in, unless we were already talking about church, until last year. The woman who runs the Irish Dance school we go to had a conversation with me--it turns out she knew my grandmother and her friends and so forth. My German last name dropped away and I became Bridgett BLAKE again. And then she asked, "But you're down in South City now, right?"

I nodded, amused by all this.

"What parish do you live in?"

I told her. And then she rattled off the (maiden names) of the people she knew in my parish. Didn't ask if I attended that parish. The fact that I lived there was enough.

I live in St. Pius V parish, now. When I moved here, I lived in St. Francis de Sales. But now, de Sales is an intentional parish (the Latin mass is said there), and St. Pius V took over its geographical boundaries. Now, Pius goes from Grand to the river. Not easy to pin down location with that. With fewer parishes due to the south side reorganization, I would guess that this question dies a quiet death, to be replaced with the more direct "where do you live?" or "what neighborhood?"

But I still think about places in terms of what church is there. Shaw is synonymous with Margaret of Scotland. Bevo is St. John the Baptist. St. Joan of Arc, Our Lady of Sorrows, St. Anthony. I can envision the typical architecture of the houses that fall in their boundaries. And parishes that are no more--St. Henry or Holy Family, for instance--still have a fuzzy area associated with them.

Now, besides the Presbyterian church that houses my kids' school, and the Lutheran church on the corner, I couldn't tell you what any given protestant church is close to a neighborhood. Of course, protestants don't tend to focus so much on geography as Catholics. Anybody can go to this or that Methodist Church, but there was a time when you couldn't be a member of a parish you didn't live in without the pastor's permission. It becomes ingrained. Even to the point that it spills over to your protestant neighbors.

10. Street Names

Downtown St. Louis is on a Philadelphia model of street names: the north-south streets are numbered, and the east-west streets are trees--in order of hardness of wood, by the way.

South City is done less methodically. There are state names (at one time, I was warned against living on a "state street" due to crime in those areas--except that some of them are so long, it would be hard to generalize like that and take it seriously). There are Indian tribe names--at one time, there were two Kansas Avenues, one for the tribe, one for the street. Now, I believe, there is no Kansas Avenue because one of them became Compton and the other, I forget what it became.

So we have Keokuk and Winnebago and Potomac. My street used to be Powhatan, I believe, until it was changed to a landowner's surname. And we have Texas, Ohio, Iowa, and so forth.

There are vestiges of the downtown streets--there's a 39th nearby, and a 59th further west. And some are named for destinations: Gravois is the road to the dump; Hydraulic, I assume, is named for the brick company; Arsenal is self-explanatory. Others, like Grand and Kingshighway, are lofty descriptions.

West of where I live, Henry Shaw named his streets after things he liked (Botanical, Flora, Magnolia) and people he knew (Gurney). In Tower Grove South, Hartford is named for the insurance company, and Connecticut for the state Hartford is located in. Pestalozzi is a Swiss educator. Blow is an American educator (St. Louis is the home of the first American kindergarten, started by Susan Blow). My aunt lives on Marwinette, named for the wives of the developers of her area (all merged together).

I'm glad I don't live on Sulphur; I kind of wish I had an address on Hydraulic just because it reminds me of the movie Metropolis for some reason. Further west of me, names get odd: Pernod, Tholozan, January (but no February),Landsdowne--without any real rhyme or reason to them. We still have a Goethe Street, but most of the German names were purged during the war. The Irish part of town doesn't have particularly Irish names (Gregg? Tamm?), and besides Marconi, I can't remember anything down on the Hill that sounds Italian.

We pronounce Gravois wrong (Gra-voy) and a professor at SLU once told me no self-respecting Dutchman would ever say Vandeventer the way we do (VAN-duh-vent-er), but instead van-DEV-enter.

St. Louis is not that confusing, though--roads do not change names, and it is essentially a grid system, with a few spokes radiating out from downtown (Gravois, for instance). Tamm is a tricky little street, zigzagging back and forth between crossroads, and some roads pick up blocks after they leave off (like Crittenden). But for the most part, if someone says something to me like "I grew up at Bates & Tennessee" or "It's on the corner of Magnolia and Klemm" I can envision what they mean. I don't know my hundreds-blocks very well (4200 block of Russell, for instance) but I know when they say "Russell before Tower Grove Avenue").

Just remember, if you have holes in your socks, according to my great-great-grandmother Jennie, you're relatives of the Chouteau family (show-toe), and you'll be able to follow directions just fine.

9. One-Way

I live on a one-way street.

I grew up in suburbia, where one-way streets were something you viewed on Sesame Street. I never had to drive on one the first 2 years I had a license. Not until I moved to St. Louis. They used to mystify and infuriate me. I'd be on my way somewhere, and the turn I'd planned turned out to be illegal.

We mocked the Shaw neighborhood when I lived across Grand from them. All those one-way streets spitting out onto other one-way streets. There, of course, the one-ways are compounded by dead-ends, such that it took me 6 months of my daughters' going to school there to learn my way around for sure.

Then we started looking for houses, and found this street. A one-way that terminates at Grand, but such that you can only turn right on Grand. Traffic? Not much. Maybe not such a bad plan. But why was this street, really just this block, westbound only?

The streets around us are two-way. The rest of my street, which is only 4 or 5 blocks long to begin with, is two-way. The street is broad and could easily handle cars in both directions. It was a mystery until I started talking to George. George was the neighbor who had lived on the block the longest. When he and his wife moved in, they had neighbors who had lived here since the block was built. There was a well in the front yard still when he moved here. And George told me the story.

At one time, the northwest corner building was a two-family, or maybe it was a business with a residence upstairs. Then another building was constructed literally in its backyard (probably during the housing shortage of the 1940s). But by the late 60s, it was a tenement. By the 70s, it was a whorehouse.

Tower Grove Park had a seedy reputation as a hook-up locale for gay prostitutes. I knew this, but George repeated it and pointed to that building. That was the hive, or den, or what have you. That's where the prostitutes were. He used to sit on his porch swing at night with a gun on his lap, waiting.

George was not a tolerant man, but he was also a father of several children on a block of rooming houses and prostitutes, so you can see where it stemmed from, perhaps.

In order to control traffic around the building, the city made our street a west-bound one-way. This BEGS the question why they didn't just shut down the illegal activity, but it was the 70s. Who knows.

A few weeks ago, I hailed a car heading the wrong way on my street (it happens at the rate of a couple a week). Wrong way! I shouted. She slowed down and flashed me a grin complete with dimples you could lose a nickel in. "Oh?" she asked innocently. "When did they change that? It wasn't one-way the last time I was here."

I am not one of those easily amused folks I keep hearing about. "So, you haven't been here since 1974?"

It was lost on her. And she didn't turn around. Just waved and grinned and drove up the street.

8. Grand Avenue

My very first memories of home happen in a four-family flat building on South Grand. My mom ironing in the central kitchen-dining area. My bedroom in the back with the 3-season porch right behind. That first Christmas. My mom being pregnant and then we moved away.

It is the only street I have lived on twice: once when I was three, and then when Mike and I first married. We lived about 6 blocks north of where my parents' flat was, in a smaller, not as nice apartment. I like to think I've come full-circle, even though my first residence was in the county, and I don't technically live on South Grand now. I'm a half block from Grand; I can see it from my front porch and hear it at night when things are still in the house.

Grand has many personalities as it travels south from I-70 down to Carondelet Park. I don't know much about it north of the Fox Theater, but it was integral to my life at SLU, since it bisects the campus and students were always jaywalking to get to class on time. The hospitals are on Grand, too--SLU Hospital, formerly Firmin Desloge, and Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital, where I have spent more than my fair share of time the past 2 months.

The area I know best of all, of course, starts just south of Glennon, crosses I-44, and heads into Tower Grove. Shaw is to the west, Compton Heights to the east. The park, the business district, St. Pius V, Carpenter Library. A lot of my time happens in those four places. We walk, bike, and play in the park. We eat gelato and drink coffee and go to the post office and get dry cleaning done and get haircuts and flowers and Vietnamese food and kabobs and and and. St. Pius isn't where Mike and I married, but I was confirmed there and both my girls were baptized there. Leo will be next month. I have sunk a lot of my time and energy into that parish. I used to teach at the school. Right across from the church is the closest library branch to my house, the gateway to any book I might have a whim for (interlibrary loans are lovely).

South of this little area--from my house to my church, basically--things get grungier. There's a Schnucks I don't shop at. A White Castle and a Kentucky Fried Chicken. A Walgreens. Grand and Gravois, it's like, the closer anything gets to Gravois, the dirtier and scuzzier it seems to be. And south of Gravois? Hit and miss. Shuttered old businesses, some residential, one of the two Ted Drewes Frozen Custard locations, Merb's Candy. Turning the bend at Meramec, you get to the area where Mike and I lived, down by St. Mary's High School. The UCC church on the corner is now a mosque. The bakery is a florist; the National Grocery is a Walgreens. Things tumble from one thing to another, and if you don't live life on top of it, you are struck by how much has changed. But things have changed up where I am, too.

Grand ends in Carondelet Park, which I remember from childhood more than I experience as an adult. Loughborough is the termination of Grand, which by that point is a neighborhood street with four-way boulevard stops instead of stop lights. The houses are newer than mine, smaller. It's the way to my Aunt Sarah's house, but otherwise, it's not on my regular route anywhere. I blame the aforementioned Gravois. I just hate that whole area and don't drive through it (and it's too far to walk to get anywhere worthwhile).

I take Grand every day. My one-way street terminates at Grand, and I'm forced to take it northbound. Grand goes everywhere I go, until I turn.