Final Post: Growing Up In South St. Louis, Circa 2010

Sophia, Maeve, and Leo live in South St. Louis. They were born here and they will probably spend their entire childhoods here.

They will have a backyard that is barely 30 feet wide. Room enough for a galvanized pool, a swingset, a hammock, a deck, and a garden. They will have access to an alley through the back gate, and to the front yard and the street through the gangway. Mostly, they will play on the sidewalks in the front, riding bikes and scooters up and down the block all summer long. In the shade of street trees, they will sit on stoops and eat homemade popsicles that drip down their chins.

Their house was built in 1905 of red brick. It is a four-square construction and their bedrooms are tucked into the attic.

They will grow up in a city with one of the best public library systems in the country; the free museums and zoos are far better than a city of this size deserves. They will take public transportation and walk to south Grand to get ice cream. Their school is in a church basement ten blocks north of their house, sticking to its promise of being a neighborhood school. Full of city kids and city parents and everyone is just like them, only more so.

They might not have a yard worth mentioning, but Tower Grove Park is across Grand. And the Missouri Botanical Garden is just a mile or so away.

I thought for a long time I would raise my children in a rural location, homeschooling, going against the grain. But the longer I sit on the stoop here, the more deeply connected I become to my neighbors, the more I realize I'm a city girl. My kids are city kids. And I'm not afraid of that.

When we were looking for a house, Mary, my co-worker who lived on Hartford, whose sister Kate is Maeve's godmother now, whose niece Rachel made me the teacher I am today, said to me, "come join us in South City."

We did. And now those three kids of mine sit in my living room on a wood floor that is 105 years old, playing dominoes and watching a DVD and singing songs about photosynthesis. I feel finally like they, and I, are living an authentic life. We live here. We are here. This is who we are. Geography is destiny. Choose wisely.

30. Block Party 2008

We didn't have a block party last year. The most likely planners, my neighbors two doors down, had just gotten home from vacation and were tired. National Night Out is often so hot and humid and St. Louis. So we skipped it.

We won't skip it this year.

I hear that National Night Out came from the practice of sleeping outdoors in parks in hot summer nights. I can't even imagine doing that these days. And with all of us on the block in air conditioned brick cubes, there's no reason to.

But there are many reasons for block parties.

29. Bellerive Park to the River Facing South

And that distance out there where the earth meets the sky.

28. The Lindell Hotel

In Tower Grove, there are stones set up to look like ruins. They are. But they aren't from there. They're from the Lindell Hotel, which burned or was destroyed somehow, and remains of the hotel were trucked to Tower Grove and set up along a pool. With a fountain. And ducks.



It's strange how odd things become everyday when they become home. When we came here to take our wedding photos, it was bizarre: why was this in a park? What the heck is this??

But now we bike past them all the time. And tour buses filled with wedding parties wait for their turn to take photos.

27. Behind the Free Seats

One summer I came up to St. Louis with my brother. I think I must have been about to start my junior year of high school. We stayed at my grandmother's house in North County, and at some point in the stay, my Aunt Chris came by and picked us up.

My cousin Gina was in town, too, and she tagged along. We were a year apart in age but, I think, two years apart in school. We spent the day with Chris, who was younger than our fathers, an only child in the middle of a family of 8 kids. We wound up in Forest Park and found our way to this hall behind the free seats at the Muny:The show wasn't something Chris recognized, and we certainly didn't, but she said she'd bring us back that night. Sit in the free seats, separated from the paying customers by a chain link fence. We went back to my grandmother's house long enough to let her know what our plan was, and to pack a dinner. Days before cell phones.

The musical was "No No Nanette" which impressed me not at all. I don't remember a single thing about it. But it was a beautiful summer night, we were eating salami sandwiches and shoestring potatoes and cut up strawberries, and my parents were 900 miles away. So that in itself was enough.

I don't go to the Muny often, alas, because I have these kids and we get so busy. I've been to the Fox 4 times in the past year but haven't been to the Muny since Mike's grandparents died (they always came up a time or two each summer to see the show). And honestly, I probably won't go this year, either.

Because for some reason, sitting down closer to the front on a hot humid night, sticky and still, just isn't as fun for me compared to this mediocre musical from the free seats in a summer out of time.

26. House Tour B&B

I'm a house captain again this year for the Grand South Grand House Tour. Punishment for a job well done last time. My house is on of those acts of love, those houses people buy because of the staircase--never mind the obnoxious paint job and the teal carpeting. The owners are hoping to run it as a B&B, and I wish them success. I've stayed in a number of B&Bs--in central Missouri, in Eastern Nevada, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Ste. Genevieve--and what always strikes is what a collection of places fall under that title. If you think of the term "4 star hotel" you and I probably have similar concepts in mind--high rise in an urban setting, huge rooms, high thread count sheets, room service, valet parking. "Budget roadside motel" gives rise to other stereotypes--paper thin towels, 18 locks on the door, the wafting odor of curry, an outdoor pool you wouldn't wash your dog in. But B&B?

The first B&B Mike and I stayed in was a converted 1940s motel in Carmel. The center courtyard, the family-run atmosphere, the meticulous detail. The next was in Hermann, MO (a German settlement) and it was...German. Gruff. Looking down noses on the goofy young couple come to drink wine. And frilly. Way too frilly. Ste. Gen wasn't frilly but awkward--the room was awesome, the food even more so, but breakfast was served "European style" which in their translation meant I sat at a table with an older couple and the hostess (other folks were at other tables) since Mike had already left for the business thing we'd come down for. If you haven't met me, well, I've become better about talking to people as time goes on. But back then? Whoa. Nevada was another converted motel, this one from the copper rush days (I think). It was run down and just my style (which I often refer to as wabi sabi but is in reality "lazy"). Good coffee in the morning.

And our favorite, of course, is Rock Eddy Bluff on the Gasconade. We've only stayed in the proper B&B part of it once--the rest of the time we fend for ourselves in one of their other houses (like renting a cabin for the weekend). This place--the owners have such an eye for detail and a consistency of thought about what should be on the table, on the walls, in the rooms, even on the bookshelves (the past three times I've been there, I've read a novel--I mean, I started it the first time, continued the second, and finished it this past weekend). You never turn around and see something and wonder WHY? Why is that here?

The house tour B&B is different yet again. It is an amazing house--the staircase alone is worth the price of admission. There are collections of plates and glassware and Asian textiles throughout the house. I covet the back sunporch. But it has had a rough life and there are still signs of it--the third story staircase is rickety, and the house backs up to what was once a terrible block (but has improved, thus improving the whole neighborhood). The house was once a B&B, and then stood empty. It's been through several owners, and that's rarely a good thing. The owners have done quite a bit to bring it back, though, and I think it will be a success story in the end. I think it would be a nice alternative to a downtown hotel. You'd see a neighborhood that otherwise you might never even notice as a traveler to St. Louis. Coming to town for a wedding or event, it would be nice to come back to in the evening. And I hope it works for them. See you this weekend!

25. Jeffersonian Door

I have a Jeffersonian window. I don't know how it got its name. Perhaps Thomas Jefferson liked them. Maybe they were at Monticello. I don't know. A quick google search is futile. The only sites I can find are other St. Louis architecture blogs. Perhaps it's a colloquialism.

What is a Jeffersonian window? When closed, it looks like any other window in the room. It has a top pane and bottom, a lock in the center where they meet, and a handle that looks as if it would raise the lower pane up. Just like any double-hung window. But when you pull the handle up, you realize the window raises from the floor. The paneling below the window isn't attached the wall, but in the track with the lower pane of glass.

So you raise this up into the ceiling--the bottom of the window goes up at least to the level of the lock where the two window panes meet. It may be (mine is old, obviously, and I don't push and pry) that at that point both parts can continue up further into the wall, but my upper pane doesn't budge. So you have to duck a bit to walk through the doorway it makes, but you can walk through.

Mine opens onto a sleeping porch off my bedroom. We don't use it often because the cats can jump from the porch to the neighbor's kitchen window (we live next to a 2-family flat with an apartment on the second floor). Since I've played that game once with Hickory already, I'm not about to let them sun on the porch until I get it screened in. Which I will do--it's just a matter of priorities.

But that door is the reason we will never do a two-story addition to the back of our house. We might one day expand the kitchen and dining room. We might one day then expand the sleeping porch onto the addition's roof and make a deck. But I won't part with the door. My house has few intricacies of this sort. It is the Plain Jane on a block of Fancy Nancies. I won't take her Jeffersonian window away.