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.