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.