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.