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.

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.

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.

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.

5a. Sidewalk photos

Snowfall, March 2008

Block Party August 2007

Hot days Summer 2006

Block "Grandpa" comes to say hi.

Power outage day two, July 2006 (that's Mike in blue, by the way)

5. Sidewalk

Elliot says that places that don't have sidewalks do so to keep the poor people away. This used to make me laugh until I spent more time in suburbs and realized that, yup, sidewalks are few and far between. Not only in the residential areas, but near the strip malls and commercial districts. Huh.

Here there are poor people, obviously. I technically live in the inner city, although it doesn't look like it because "inner city" has many shades of gray that suburban dwellers (at least those who dwell there out of fear of the inner city) do not see. Yes, people are poor here--63118 has an estimated 35% of its population below the poverty line, which, if you live here long enough, know is a big fat lie. It should be much higher, since it's based on a false assumption of how people spend their money these days. 0f the estimated 30,000 people who live in my zip code, that's approximately 10,500 people living on not enough money.

But this is about sidewalks.

Our sidewalks are busy little places. There's a bus stop at the end of the block, so we do have foot traffic back and forth. Usually the same faces. And the park draws people west down our street with their dogs, to the dismay (or excitement?) of my visually impaired rottweiler. But most of the busy comes from children. There are 26 children under the age of 12 on our block, with one on the way. Everybody knows everybody else--there are no strangers hanging out on the stoops and sidewalks here. Passing through, but not staying.

Hopscotch, of course, makes an appearance. Picnics, too. Bikes and scooters fly by, making my bare toes nervous in the summertime. Lots of digging in the tree lawns leads to small piles of dirt and rocks. An occasional smashed brick. One day, Brent walked out to find a large orange traffic cone sitting on the sidewalk in front of his house. No one claimed it, and so it's part of gangway scenery now, brought out when needed for obstacle courses.

Being so close to Grand, trash blows up our way sometimes, and so there will be a mysterious hot-fries package lying on the sidewalk. Passers-by will also litter, always the cheapest brands of beer for us.

Every snowfall produces dads on the sidewalks, shoveling paths. Brent meets up with Mike meets up with Colin. If you're out first, you try to do at least a one-shovel-wide rudimentary start down the length from Ralph's to Corey's. Mike, as I said, will shovel, but so will I (I'm also the only wife/mom who mows grass, but that's another story). I like getting the heart rate up and moving the snow, since here in St. Louis, snow is a soft blanket of 3-6 inches, not anything scary or big. And the sidewalk I'm in charge of is 36 feet long. Not much.

I'm glad the developer, back in 1903-1905, didn't opt to copy Compton Heights and eliminate sidewalks from his plan. I think they make our street more alive. Without them, the kids would be in backyards, cloistered away from each other in their own private spaces. And Dara wouldn't have much reason to bark. And how she loves to bark.

4. Alley

I like alleys. All of our "services" happen back there--power lines, phone, cable, sewer, trash pickup. Many of us park back there, either in tight garages or parking pads. Every May, we gather as a block (the two halves of the block that share the alley--my side of Halliday and the adjoining side of Magnolia--and clean it. Due to this alley cleaning day, I met my neighbors behind me long before my neighbors across the street.

Our alley used to be brick paved, but our alderman had asphalt put down a few years back. We didn't want it, for various reasons (for some, because brick slows you down, for others, because we like the still-usable to be used). But traffic doesn't seem to go much faster on the asphalt--those threatening dumpster hooks are a good speed-bump--and it sure is easier to keep clean.

City alleys, with their dumpsters instead of private trash cans, are often victims of dumping crime--folks who don't know how or can't be bothered to haul away an old mattress, concrete chunks, construction detritus, or auto parts, like to dump them in the anonymous dumpsters. But my alley is patrolled by several neighbors who keep developers from cheating and have the direct phone line to the "dumpster investigator." But that's not all we do in the alleys.

Kids learn to ride bikes. We trade gardening secrets and produce. We sit on the bump that used to be an ash pit across the way and plot against the developer at the end of the street. We gossip about city politics. We clean up graffiti and watch each other's (literal) backs. We admit pregnancies and steal blackberries. Kids sneak from yard to yard.

My uncle Glennon took down a nasty weed tree that was on the border of our alley and our property this past fall. Now I have a view of everything that happens back there--people trolling for bulk trash that's set out once a month, the neighbors going to work. My kitchen window looks out into the alley and I find I spend a great number of tiny moments at that kitchen window.

People who live without alleys don't seem to get what the big deal is. My brother, down in suburban Houston, thinks it's a waste of space that could be more yard (hmm, and more to mow?). But I wouldn't trade it for more yard or a garage on the front of my house with a driveway. I don't want to drag a green waste cart to the curb and watch trash trucks drive down my street. And I don't want power lines in the front of my house, endangering the street trees. Put all that in back.

3a. Sycamore Photos

View looking east on Utah (sycamore just left of center)

Somewhere in Tower Grove South--this one is like one we lost on Halliday, with the twist and lean.

The sycamore--one of two or three left standing on my block--is behind the sweetgum (which just looks like "tree" here, I know, winter and all)...

Two girls play on a sycamore stump, from a tree taken down after a storm convinced the city forestry department that it was dangerous and ill.

3. Sycamore

Dutch Elm Disease killed the street trees in St. Louis. All the American Elms that lined our streets, and so many other cities' streets, were dead.

St. Louis responded by planting sycamores. The big bark-shedding white trees with leaves as big as two of your hands and the little "sycamore balls" as we called them growing up, with the puffy little seeds that floated off on the wind.

Sycamores grow fast and die badly. They shed limbs--onto your car. They are the tallest trees on the block, and then they get struck by lightning. The one that used to be behind us terrified me. I just hoped it would hit Steve's garage instead of my house. But when the developer took it down in favor of a 4 car garage for her "condo" building (4 tiny apartments, still for sale 2 years later), it changed all the shade and sun patterns in my yard.

Now, when the sycamores die, which they do, being over 30 years old on average, the city knows better than to plant all of the same tree. My street has more than just sycamores--American basswoods, some black oaks. Sweetgums, annoying ornamental fruit trees, and the cursed silver maples.

But I still like the look, however fate-tempting it may be, of a street lined with the same tree every twenty feet or so. It unifies things (although, in the case of south city, most of the houses look the same, too). I would never plant one on purpose, mind you (see two paragraphs above), but I like that they're here.

2. Stoop

In my "About Me" section below, I mention sitting on my south city stoop drinking coffee and chatting with neighbors. This is the view from the stoops on my block, down towards Grand Ave. You can see the double set of steps--the "stoop" in my definition is that first set that goes from the sidewalk to the level of the front yard. The second set goes up to the porch.

The first set of steps is the line between public and private space. Businesses leave fliers in the handrail of the first set of steps, but rarely come up onto the porch to deliver them. The mail, of course, is delivered at the front door (which is becoming more and more rare in America these days), but most interaction happens at the first set of steps.

We sit and watch kids play from there--the 5 or 6 moms who either live on my side of the block or know that's where the action is. And yes, I often have a coffee mug in my hand. The kids picnic on the steps, or right above or below them, smoothing out a blanket and producing picnic food from each house--peanut butter sandwiches, carrot sticks, leftovers from the night before, hummus and tortilla, fruit in season.

The stoops on my block are over 100 years old--the western half of the block was built in 1903 and 1904, and my house was the first one in 1905 on this side. The concrete is not in good shape. Mary's is crumbling dangerously, and mine is starting to eat out from underneath. Weeds grow in the cracks, and Trisha comes out with hot vinegar water to kill them (I pluck them from their homes and toss them into the street to be swept away on street cleaning day).

There are intermittent steps, too, that don't lead to the front doors of our houses, but to the gangways between them. This produces a cascade of stairs, I suppose you could call it, heading slowing down the hill towards Grand. The houses are so close, we can spread out between two or three sets of steps and still manage a conversation easily between kid noises and dramas.

It was on Mary's stoop that I sat when the gang walked up our street and attacked Joe and my husband. It was on Trisha's stoop that we ate take out ice cream on the hot 2006 power outage days. Standing on George's stoop, he told us about his wife's cancer diagnosis. We met Elizabeth's new baby from Korea after she brought her down to the stoop (again, the outside world meeting the inside).

Mine has the best shade of the houses on our side where we tend to congregate--that black oak and sweetgum keep the front of my house pretty cool, while Mary has lost a maple and Trisha an ash in the past three years. But it also is prone to mosquitoes due to the ivy growing right next to it. Since they don't bother me, that's where I usually start out on any given warm afternoon. I migrate, though, because conversation is more important than shade.