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.

24. Authentic Rehab

This past week at coffee, Ann mentioned that she and her husband were talking that morning about authenticity. What makes something authentic? They were talking about vacation spots and natural wonders and so forth--her husband is an architect whose focus is on such destinations. So we talked a bit about it for a moment, giving examples of what is and is not authentic. In the end, we couldn't define authentic, "but I know it when I see it."

"This coffee house," she pointed around us. "This is authentic."

As opposed to, say, a Starbucks, she went on, which is prefabricated. I knew what she meant.

I've been looking at houses with my sister Bevin lately, and some of them are authentic and some are not. Sometime we'll walk into a house and have the strange feeling that something isn't right. I don't mean some sort of sixth sense about the house or its former inhabitants (although I admit sometimes that happens, too). I'm talking about rehab projects.

There seem to be three types of rehabbers in south St. Louis (and perhaps nationwide or worldwide in cities of every age and type). First, those who strip the house of all its authenticity--in St. Louis, that means the woodwork, the plaster walls, mantels, doors, plumbing fixtures, kitchen cabinets, and so forth--and replace it with something out of a display home in the county. Baseboards shrink from 10 inches to 2. The bathrooms lose the clawfoot tub and gain a walk in shower. The floors are carpeted in berber or worse. Peel and stick vinyl in the kitchen with plain light wood cabinetry. Sometimes they go over the top with granite counters and gorgeous stone floors, but it still feels wrong. Bevin and I walk in, sometimes ooh and ah over bits of it (like the California closets, I mean, I could go with some inauthentic details in my closets), but always walk out with a shrug. Not the same thing at all.

Then there are the remuddlers. We've seen some doozies. Indoor-outdoor carpeting in the kitchen. Or bathroom. Refrigerators in the pantry. Faux fireplaces with 1970s-era looking faux-brick surrounds. Plastic tile on the walls. Closets of all sorts built in the wrong places. Windows you can see from outside but not from the inside--they've been covered up with drywall. Beams half-supported on jacks. Cheap vinyl windows. Gas lines that cut through ductwork. Two family conversions to single family homes that are simply a hole knocked in the wall--the old kitchen upstairs is a bedroom. With a kitchen sink and cabinets above a bed. Toilets in glass-brick walled bathrooms in the basement. I could go on. They are maybe authentic, in that they are authentic crap, but they are still crap.

Sometimes, though, we find a house that has been lovingly restored to its original magnificence (or better in some cases). Built in cabinetry around an arts and crafts mantel. Original wood floors in the kitchen. Clawfoot tubs with re-finished feet. Woodwork in dark colors, ceiling beams in the dining room, windows that are wood at least on the inside.

This last group, of course, is always outside Bevin's price range.

You pay for what you get.

Luckily, we have seen some relatively untouched places, maybe with a few mistakes, but not too much to undo or wish wasn't gone. The kitchen might be a Home Depot special, but the woodwork in the living room is intact. The floors are wide pine, like mine, in bad shape but with that authentic patina of a hundred years of feet walking across them. These are my goal when I look at houses with her. Find one with a new electric service, copper pipes, and an HVAC system younger than the Reagan administration. And then pounce on the dang thing before somebody ruins it.

That's how I feel about my house. Every time I lift off one more layer of Mary Chapman, I feel the house breathe a sigh of relief. Better now.

23a. Sylvan Springs Photos

23. Sylvan Springs Park

Our school picnic every year was a carnival. We had a parade from the parking lot down the road past the national cemetery and into the little county park. Carnival rides, picnics, and exhaustion awaited us. I remember, as a girl scout, being a color guard at the front of the parade in 5th grade. I carried the flag and got to hand it off to Nikki about halfway. We had to practice the handoffs without stopping the parade.

We set up in the main loop, families spreading blankets and grabbing up picnic tables. The Tilt-A-Whirl and Scrambler and all those take apart put together deliver on a truck rides were back a bit further. We had ride bracelets, of course, color coded string attached to our wrists with a metal clasp of the same color. Craig always thought he could counterfeit them and sell them on the side, but he never did.

We rode the rides and had lunch with the families and I don't think anyone ever got a sunburn because of the huge pin oak trees shading the whole place. The first two years, that was the extent of it, but in fifth grade, having changed out of the girl scout uniform and into more standard kid attire, having ridden the rides more times than I could count with Jenny Jennifer Misdy Nikki Christy, I walked away from the carnival with Misdy and over a little hill.

Misdy lived right behind the park, so it wasn't a surprise for her, but it was like discovering a mysterious little world. Over the hill was a bridge, a stone bridge, and beyond that, steps down into a stone courtyard. I stood at the top of them, taking this sharp little breath and staring at the courtyard. A spring ran through it, with tiny stone bridges and little alcoves and a spout in the wall on one end where the spring came out. Misdy knew about this place and it of course became a place of legend and fantasy. It was perfect for play about elves or fairies, and even at 10 I wasn't too old for that sort of thing. We went back to the carnival, but the next time I went over to her house, we spent the whole time in the courtyard.

I moved after fifth grade and didn't look back. Visits to St. Louis involved tourist destinations like the zoo and downtown hotels, not little county parks with mysterious stone courtyards hidden in the hills. I forgot all about it until I came up for a college visit with my high school boyfriend. I drove him down to Sylvan Springs Park and showed it to him, in the dark, on the way back to my grandmother's house after a trip to Ted Drewes (of course). We stood there in the stone courtyard, the spring no longer active, warning signs on the trees to keep us from drinking the poisonous sulfur laden water. Graffiti on the stones. The place in disrepair. But I'll hand it to him. He saw what I saw.

On the way back to the car he said simply, "if you come up to school here, be careful."

I took Mike by the park once, to see that the little courtyard had been partially restored. It was a World War II era biergarten for the troops stationed briefly at Jefferson Barracks (which my old grade school practically sat in--we could watch national guard troops do their thing while we were at recess). It was a place for parties, and a private group had restored it after a different generation of teenagers had used it for their own parties.

We took Sophia when she turned 4--I took pictures of her there in the biergarten. I could see on her face the same sort of wonder I must have displayed the first time I saw it. I guess I need to bring Maeve over this autumn. It's nice to be able to share something like that with them after all these years.