St. Louis Memories (Chapter Four)

David A. Lossos

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This website has gotten so big I've had to divide it into pieces. Submissions that I received from 2001 through 2003 are posted at Memories Chapter One (2001-2003) , those I received in 2004 are posted at Memories Chapter Two (2004) , those I received in 2005 are posted at Memories Chapter Three (2005) , those I received in 2006 are posted at Memories Chapter Four (2006), those I received in 2007 are posted at Memories Chapter Five (2007) and current memories are being posted at Memories

For all you former "Altar Boys": "Ad deum qui laetificat juventutem meam."

(Missouri Sales Tax Tokens, commonly referred to as "mils". Red ones were worth 1/10 of a penny, green ones worth 1/2 a penny)


This twenty-five cents would get you a double feature and a bunch of cartoons to boot.

On April 4, 2001, I posted a few memories I had of growing up in St. Louis. I received so many great replies that I thought I'd post some of them here.

Original Post from Dave Lossos

I remember when my phone number was Mohawk 2343
I remember going to see a double feature at the Ritz Theater for 25 cents.
I remember coming into the movie in the middle and eventually saying to the person I was with "This is where we came in".
I remember the way to get your friend to come out to play was to stand in front of their house and yell their name (was this a St. Louis thing?).
I remember the first time I had the nerve to wear "bermuda shorts".
I remember getting all the news I needed from a St. Louis publication called "Prom Magazine".
I remember (as a ten year old) being sent to the corner tavern to get my grandma a pail of draft beer.
I remember riding the Grand Avenue electric street cars.
I remember riding my bike in Tower Grove Park (even after dark!).

Responses from Anonymous - 1/4/2006


I went to stix school lived at sarah and lecede went to the congress theater on olive street on fri nights for a dime....2 cowboy flicks 2 cartoons and a serial{the rocket man was one I am 63. I am looking for info on my great grandfather died in 1916 buried in marcus cemetary on gravouis

Responses from Jan in Canada - 1/4/2006

I've not been back since 1968. I expect everything I knew is gone.
I lived in Webster Groves, phone number Yellowstone 5 0938J which became WOoodland 2-0062.
I remember running to see a train when it was a diesel on the front, later on if it was a steam locomotive.
Going to Washington University by the #11, University or the #14, University Clayton streetcar.
Elect Poncho-- a bit to elect a janitor President of the WU student body.
Living as a newlywed in Gasslight Square and reading my bad poetry aloud in the Laughing Buddah Coffe house.
The night the Buddah burned.
The St Louis main library at 12 and Locust, especially the huge card catalog. I could spend hours following the SEE and SEE ALSO cards. Sometimes days.
SAVE THE OLD POST OFFICE, Did they? I moved to Canada that year.
The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra at Keil Auditorium
The Muni Opera and the Zoo
The Missouri Historical Society
The Moorish room with a real fountain in the Art Museum.
The Cascades.
Velvet Freeze Ice Cream sodas,
The river lapping the old cobblestones at the foot of Chestnut street. The Admiral with its shiny aluminum sides where thousands of steamers had docked.
Eads Bridge.
Drinking 5 cent cokes at soda fountains.
Riding the Hodemont Trolley late at night along its quiet, private right-of way. The last streetcar on the 11 route. Funny, but the car I most often rode to school is now in Toronto.

Responses from Mike in San Diego - 1/8/2006

GREAT site! Just want to add some of my memories . . .
I grew up all over the county, but mostly Overland/Berkeley area. Moved west in '64.
HA7-0077. Early on, a party line.
Our next-door neighbors, the Ericksons, had an air conditioner in their kitchen - spent a lot of summer afternoons there, trying to cool off, after wiffle ball in the back yard.
Selling Post Dispatch at the corner of Brown Rd and Natural Bridge. Got upset when the price went from a nickel to 7 cents, because we'd have to carry a bunch of pennies for change, and then got happy when we realized that a lot of people would tell us to "Keep the change" from a dime.
A special treat to be allowed to ride my bike to school at Kratz Elementary.
Double Butterfingers for 7 cents (?) after school.
Early on, watching the sparks from the overhead wires of streetcars after a snowstorm downtown.
Four of us ordering 100 White Castles, 4 orders of fries and 4 Cokes after a basketball game, and not even getting a second look. (By the way, the frozen ones here in CA are only good for reminiscing - can't beat the real thing.)
Going to the public library in St. Ann (down the street from the Airway 4-Screen) to work on term papers, because it was the closest "big" one.
Playing Little League ball at ABC Park in St. Ann, when only one field was lit. The best team in the league was the Blue Flames, sponsored by Laclede Gas Co.
Sometimes stopping at the American Legion fish fry on the way home for fried catfish.
A trip to visit relatives in St. Charles was an all-day trip, and seemed to take forever to get there.
Walking a couple of miles to the tennis courts at Ritenour High in 100 degree-weather, because we were pretty sure there wouldn't be too many people and we'd get a court.
And a lot more that others have mentioned.

Responses from Chuck N. DesLoge, Mo. - 1/13/2006

Hi Dave, My Daughter sent me your site Last Night, and I am truly amazed at all the memories that have been brought back to me.
Although after reading every entry on all 3 pages, I am sorry to say I could not find anyone from my neighborhood.
Alter Boy I was. I was a member of Old St. Patrick's Church on 6th & Biddle in Downtown St. Louis.
I was born at Faith Hospital Feb. 7th 1943, and lived at the Neighborhood Gardens at 8th & Biddle. I attended St. Patrick's Grade School, and DeAndreis High School. I did my post Grad work at Offalon Tech and David Rankin.
I loved everyone's comments about yelling from outside to get a friend, was there any other way?
In remembering places of interest, I too remember the Lowes as well as the Ambassador theatre, But I remember going on Sundays to my Grandparents house on Salisbury St. and Grandpa would give me and my sister 50 cents a piece and we would go to the bremen show.
I remember well the Katz Drug Store downtown, If everyone remembers the old tv's tubes that you could take out when they wore down, we took them to katz as they had tube testers and new tubes there. Everyone mentioned various bakeries around the city, but for me the very best Glaze Donuts ever made came from the California bakery.
I to remember Art Hill in the Winter, the Christmas decorations at Famous and Stix, all of that was within walking distance for me. We walked everywhere, even walked to Fox show and sportsmans park. We could have rode a bus or something but we didn't have that much money but we sure had a lot of energy. The last time I was at Sportsman I seen Wally Moon hit a ball so very high in the air it seemed to stay up their for at least a minute, and when it came down it just cleared the outfield fence for a homer.
I remember Busy Bee Pool Parlor downtown before he moved it to Grand ave. I too remember Chain of Rocks park for school picnics. I can remember going across the street to Orlandos bar with my wagon to get a case of beer for my father, I think I was 8 or 9. I can remember a devastating Ice Storm which I believe was in may in the early 50's.
I Caddied one summer at the Forrest Park Golf Course before Bermuda shorts were allowed haha. When I Married, I moved to South St. Louis, living on Virginia ave , Alabama, and Loughborough St's before buying in Crestwood. I dearly loved growing up in St. Louis, I just wish the world would slow down a little and pick up some of the values we all shared back then.
I could ramble on and on but I would just be repeating a lot of what I read, I just want to tell you what a fantastic site you have and Thank You very much.

Responses from Bill Mulder - 1/18/2006

I grew up in the Clifton Heights Area surrounding Clifton Park. Went to Mason School and Southwest High School.
Remember walking to the Columbia Show, taking the Tower Grove Bus and Grand Avenue Streetcar to the old Sportsman Park. Getting all dressed up (heels and all) and taking the bus downtown to window shop at Famous, Stix, Scroggs, Woolworths, Kresege's, etc. We did this in grade school, and our parents let us!
Riding our bikes to Forest Park to go to the Art Museum to see the Mummy with the toe sticking out.
Spending a summer's evening in Forest Park watching the "colored lights fountain."
Ronnie's, 66 drive in with playgrounds, hayrides, miniature trains, and even a caged bear!
What about the Highlands? Has any roller coaster ever been as much fun as the Comet? What about the Flying Turns, a/k/a The Bobsled.
Roller skating at the Arena before the tornado destroyed it. That portion of the arena was rebuilt as a bowling alley.
Remember running after the milkman's truck and asking him to throw ice to us in the summertime.
Getting into the movies for 10 cents, buying popcorn for 10 cents and candy for a nickle.
Spending the day on the Admiral when they had a band and huge dance floor when it actually floated down the Mississippi.
LUIGI'S PIZZA

Responses from Kathy Chase,Port Orchard,Washington Quiltedowl@aol.com - 1/24/2006


Hi! Great Sight.Here's my two cents.I first lived on Farrar Street down new the Krey Packing House,then we moved to 2108 Destrehan St.Our family moved there in 1958.When Dad died in April 2005 we sold the house & found out it was built in 1865 as a farm house. The kitchen floor was an old barn door.Boy when we walked pass Krey's that place smelled awfull..When we walked by the pens we use to stop and yell-"SOO-YEE" & those pigs would go bananas.Bremen Show was the place to go for a movie,I can recall it costing ten cents & the last time I went it was a dollar.Atleast one weekend a month we went to Hodges Rollar Rink.Those were the days.We use to ride the bus out to River Roads Shopping Center for Cherry-Cokes & Fries.Oh! Don't forget Crowns Soda Fountain down on 14th street.They had those individual juke box in each booth.They sure made great shakes.Are they stll there?I went to Most Holy Trinity School.I was there from 1957 to 1964.Those Nuns were something else especially the one who wore red Keds tennis shoes on the play ground.Hey is anyone still around? Then I attened Cental High School.I remember when Martin Luther King Jr was killed.That was really something. I remember ridding the electric street cars with my Aunt Ann to go see Santa Clause at Famous & Bar.Down on Sallsbury Street there was a bakery Dad stopped at on his way home on Sundays & got this bread-cake.It was rectangular & about 2 inches deep.It was covered in icing & those small round spanish peanuts.Boy was it good.It's ashame the recipe for that cake wasn't past on to someone.Hey remember Cordes Hardware Thats were my Dad got all his hardware.There use to be a drug store on the corner where Mom would send me to buy a can of powdered baby formula.Right were the pond is in Hyde Park today,there use to be a very well used Baseball Dimond & field.Every weekend there was always a game going on.The pond was suppose to be for fishing but it didn't turn out so good.I remember slidding down the Pole in the Firestation at Salisbury & Mallencrodt Street,right at the corner of Hyde Park.I remember when there was a very large wadding pool in the park where the Fountain is now.The base of the fountain was the center of the pool.My Dad worked for 42yrs with the Mississippi Glass Co.It's ashame you don't have that kind of loyalty appreciated today.I saw the furnaces when I was a little girl.It was something to see that hot moltaned glass & the long convayerbelts,where the sheets of glass rolled along.Man this has really gotten me started remembering a lot.Hope you enjoy my memories.

Does anyone remember the Hot Bread Pretzel Sticks sold out at the Circle? Boy were they good. You should have seen our car of 8 stopping to get Pretzles.

Thanks for the memories.

Responses from Ed Wicklein, Albuquerque - 1/24/2006

I was pleasantly surprised when I received an E-mail from my sister in Little Rock with an attachment that took me to St. Louis Memories. As I looked at it, I was astounded tht it had all of these memories of mine, so I will not include in my notes the long list of same events, places and things. Since finishing my education I have lived in Indiana, Michigan, Nepal, Wisconsin, (Pacific) Missouri, Nebraska and New Mexico. When I finally decided to retire at age 70 (9/1/04) we moved from Belen, NM a few miles to Albuquerque. However, we are seriously considering moving back to metro St. Louis, in spite of the humidity. I did not really expect that the year of my retirement would be the same as the retirement (dissolution) of my home church, Clifton Heights Presbyterian, just as so many Protestant and Catholic Churches in the city and county have, sadly, had to be closed. At least, we have purchased graves at the New St. Marcus Evangelical Church Cemetery on Gravois and River Des Peres Drive. My wife, who is a native of Canada, and lived much of her early life in California, is the one who is really pushing us to move to St. Louis. We do get back regularly and keep in close touch with friends, classmates and relatives, and do SWHS reunions.

I, and my brother and sister, grew up in Clifton Heights at 6119 and 6117 Southwest, the block of Mason School, in flats built by my contractor maternal grandfather, as he also built the house in which my mother was born at (I think) 6109, and the flat at 6040-2. My mother recalled when the neighborhood was cornfields and forest and there was a farmhouse at 6040-2. She attended Southwest Grade School (which became Mason Branch and is now a commercial bldg. on Clifton, Southwest & Magnolia) until Mason was built where she continued. At that time, McKinley was the only South side high school. Other members of the family attended the new high schools as they were built and our neighborhood was placed in those districts, in order, Cleveland, Roosevelt, and Southwest. Our family roots in St. Louis are deep. My maternal ancestors first came to Madison County, IL in the 1830s from Tennessee and the Hudson Valley, and my surname ancestors emigrated to Red Bud IL from Thuringia (Ger.) in 1838. My first ancestor in St. Louis City emigrated from Westphalia (Ger.) in 1851. My maternal grandfather, was a (mostly masonry) contractor and the last job he had was rebuilding Soulard Market after the tornado of 1929 (?) blew it down. My grandparents began to build in Clifton Hgts. about 1906. My grandfather's family settled in Wabash, IN after emigrating from the Palatinate (Ger.) in 1866 and my grandmother was from Benton Harbor, MI. My paternal grandmother and her siblings were born and raised at 110 Elm St. after moving from South 2nd St., and the family had a cooperage at 121 Elm. They had emigrated from Flensburg, Schleswig-Holstein in 1868. I have a photo of 121 Elm (courtesy of the Nat'l Park Service, which photographed the entire Gateway Park area before it was torn down). That block is now located under the footings of the South leg of the Arch. In 1890 my paternal grandfather came to St. Louis alone at age 9 to work on the river boats which is how he met my grandmother who lived just one block from the River front. On some nights, I can still listen to KMOX AM on the car radio in spite of the mountains on the East side of the Rio Grande Valley here. Now, I remember the following:

Going to the Art Museum to see the "Berlin Masterpieces" exhibition, which was probably a violation of international law.

Playing "sandlot" football on the divider on Hampton Ave., no longer possible because the city planted trees on it.

At age 15, working in the 1904 World's Fair refreshment stand (now torn down) at the St. Louis Zoo for 62 and 1/2 cents an hour. Unlike today, you could only get a job there through a "connection". The connection was that my father's trucking firm delivered sacks of Embro popcorn to the Zoo from Manglesdorf Seed Company near Broadway and Chouteau. I got to go behind the "scenes" of the feedings in various buildings and the chimp show. I still have a souvenir book from that summer (1950) when there were two pandas at the Zoo.

Playing tennis at the courts in Forest Park off of Hampton.

The Mason School picnic parades around the block, of which I have at least one photo.

The Chinese man who would carve your name on the Duncan Yo Yo you bought at the deli. across the street from Mason School. He did various tricks with it.

Playing in Fruin's lot at Tamm and Southwest, as the mansion there burned down before I was born, I believe. We would go through the storm sewer that went under Scullin Steel to River Des Peres and there was an old small mine car from the former clay mine there at the elbow of the sewer. Once in a while we would come across a large black snake in the lot.

The great summer playground programs at Mason School, the wading pool, play equipment, and dramas after dark (there were floodlights) before Daylight Saving Time.

Why do I see no children in the area when I visit the neighborhood now?

My grandfather buying live chickens at Pic-A-Chick on Watson, bringing them home to kill and dress.

Great landscaping (now gone) on the lawns of Mason and other grade schools.

Going to Browns' games (I still mourn the move to Baltimore.). About 6 years ago we were in line for the boat to Catalina Island in Newport Beach, CA when an older man asked me, "Where did you get that St. Louis Browns' cap?". He told me that he once worked selling refreshments at Sportsman's Park.

Drawings for groceries once a week, and the ads on the screen at the Macklind Theatre. Tower Grove streetcars which could not continue from Tamm to Maplewood because of Southwest hill.

Teaching myself to ice skate on the pond at Clifton Park at age 18. (I still have those racers, but prefer to use figure skates now.)

Swimming at the Maplewood and Forest Park Highlands pools.

During World War II, the blackouts at night for mock air raids when my father, who was a civil defense auxiliary fireman would take his white steel helmet and gas mask and head to the fire house on Arsenal Street (on foot as no cars could move as they would have to use lights anyway).

I recall taking the Missouri Pacific Railroad, as a cub scout, to Camp Irondale for the week-end, and as we passed under Jefferson Barracks along the Mississippi, we could look up and see German prisoners of war behind the fence, as we also saw them working in the fields in Gumbo, now part of Chesterfield.

The Ringling Bros.-Barnum and Bailey Circus in tents at the NW corner of Southwest and Kingshighway.

Bringing scrap for the war effort to Mason School yard.

Buying war savings stamps and bonds at school

Miss Spindler (I think) 4th grade teacher at Mason who joined the Marines and no one ever her from her again.

A farmer bringing eggs to our house to sell every week or two.

The St. Louis Christmas Carolers Ass'n

The Interchurch Reformation Day services at Kiel.

The horse watering trough (then with flowers in it) in the middle of the intersection of Broadway and Chouteau.

Casa Loma Ballroom.

Just about everything we needed within a short walk: barber, grocery (2), pharmacy (2), deli (2), physicians (2), beauty parlor, grade school, churches (4-5), etc.

While riding along with my father's truck drivers to deliver freight to the railroad freight depots in East St. Louis, we had lunch in the lunch rooms in the rail yards. The walls of the lunch rooms were lined with illegal slot machines. After Stevenson was elected governor, the state troopers came in and destroyed them.

Two weeks at Boy Scout Camp Irondale every summer at something like $9.50 per week. I believe the cooks were loaned by Famous-Barr Co.

The burdens of racial segregation: One Sunday afternoon, as a teen-ager, I was teamed with an elder from the black Berea Presbyterian Church to visit South side churches about the denomination's youth program. He was (as I recall) the business manager of the black newspaper, the ST. LOUIS ARGUS. We had to go without supper because no restaurant would serve him. The year the federal court ruled that the St. Louis School Board could not ban married female teachers after it had been sued by two teachers who had married. I think it was 1948. I only knew 3 teachers who then did marry, one at Mason and two at Southwest.

7th or 8th graders from various churches who competed as teams against one another on biblical content on one of the local radio stations.

The first Science Fairs, of which my home room teacher at SW was the founder: Norman R.D. Jones.

New Orleans French Quarter style housing in the area around 2nd and Victor Streets East of South Broadway, now an industrial area.

Having to memorize sayings or Proverbs in the 6th grade, some of which I still use, "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider its ways and be wise." Prov. 6.6 "A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger." Prov. 15:1

Having to write on the board many times, "I must not talk in room 4" or to do math "checks".

Getting sick at a rehearsal for a joint Grade School chorus at Roosevelt High School.

In my adult years, when back in town in the 60s, Gaslight Square.

Singleton Palmer and His Dixieland Six playing in Gaslight Square and at a Jazz service at Christ Church Cathedral.

The Illinois Terminal Inter-Urban to and from Springfield, Il which ended below the ST. LOUIS STAR-TIMES building.

Symphony concerts for grade school children at Kiel Aud.

The scenes along Market St. in the Mill Creek Valley area before it was condemned and town down, the heart of the black community with the Star Theatre, churches and the Fulton Fish Market.

The soap box derby races on the Highway 40 Expressway East of Hampton Ave.

On Memorial and/or Armistice Days, large parades of the military from Jefferson Barracks, Lambert Navel Air Station, Scott Field, plus World War I and Spanish-American War veterans. Public bath houses, at least one across from Soulard as I recall.

Watching the boards at the old St. Louis Stock Exchange downtown, with my grandfather. With other kids from our neighborhood, being sent by our mothers for ballroom dance classes at the Fred Astair Studio at the Chase Hotel, for which I have been eternally grateful, but not then.

The Eugene Field Home (and his poems taught in school)

Newspaper drives

Vess Cream soda over Vanilla Ice Cream

The Campbell House

The Old Rock House (Manuel Lisa Fur Warehouse) on the riverfront, which I was told was lost during construction of the Nat'l Park due to the utter stupidity of someone who told someone else, "I know where there is a lot of rock for your fill in a warehouse" (the carefully marked stones for rebuilding the historic building on site).

Floating twigs down the street gutters on rainy days.

Smashing balls from Sycamore trees on the sidewalk.

Playing "flip cards" (Baseball cards) by throwing them against the school wall and the one closest to the wall got to keep all of the cards thrown that time. The best was to get the card to lean against the wall. The practice was against school rules.

Pea shooters.

The model airplane field South of Oakland, about South of the Forest Park Highlands grounds. Finally, while living in Kathmandu where I was pastor to the foreign community, our Mason School 3rd grade teacher showed up on a NEA tour. You just can't get away from St. Louis.

Responses from Bill Leahy - Jonesburg MO 1/25/2006

Great site Dave...I'm trying to finish some stories on events dating back to the mid-fifties to early sixties from my days in the St. Louis Police Department...It seems that writing the stories was the easy part. Now I have to figure out what to do with them!

I could send you one entitled "Growing up in St. Louis", but it is much too lengthy for this site. It is interesting how many of us from that era are nostalgic about the same things; the old movie theatres, the gents sharpening knives or selling strawberries or lugging those old newspaper wagons. I seriously doubt my grandkids would ever consider earning spending money by cutting grass with a push mower or delivering groceries in a wagon.

Enjoyed hearing the names of Ed Bonner and the original disk jockey, Gil Newsome. They forgot Ed Wilson from WIL who broke all those "sinful" rock and roll records on the air. Unfortunately I still remember all the words to the Ralston jingle that Tom Mix used to sing...ended with "take a tip from Tom, go and tell your Mom, Hot Ralston can't be beat. Perhaps by spilling all that out on your web site, folks can free up room for current things we all need to remember.

Wanna hear the Cream of Wheat song?

So much for the St. Louis orange Threadneedle shoes that weighed ten pounds each, the French roll sport coat from Kenner's that HAD to be worn with a Mr. B (Billie Eckstine) flared collar shirt and dancing at Club Imperial. The only regret I have is not holding on to that '57 Oldsmobile, the likes of which now fetches big bucks in the Las Vegas auctions. I still have the juke boxes filled with all those Sun label records and I'm just as sure that my kids think I'm lost in a time warp.

Looking back is a lot more enjoyable than it was living back then with the good nuns working us over with a yard stick at St. Philip Neri up in Walnut Park. Sorry, I'm not telling any Alter Boy stories.

Anyone out there from that old neighborhood can reach me at bleahy1@socket.net. Thanks again Dave.

Responses from Carol 1/28/2006

LUIGI'S PIZZA! Oh my. There was nothing better (Cusanelli's was 2nd) I have many happy family memories from Luigi's.

Clifton Park, I received my engagement ring at Clifton Park. I loved the homes surrounding Clifton.

Went to Cleveland high school, lived in Shrewsbury. My husband went to Southwest. Sounds like many of us traveled in the same circles, at the same time. Fun, wasn't it?

Responses from Terry Toenges 1/28/2006

Let's see... I came along a couple of years after WWII. First home was an apartment on Russell, close to Grand.

Dad got reactivated for the Korean War, so mom and I stayed with Grandma on Utah. Grandma worked at Woolworth's on Cherokee Street.

When Dad got back, we moved to Winnebago, next to the Iowa Buffet, which was run by Hank and Vicky Koziacki.

I went to Froebel school - Froebel Froebel stinking stable.

I remember Cherokee Annie and the knife grinder guy. Grandpa taking me to Sportsman Park to see the Cardinals.

We moved to Kansas City for three years, then back to St. Louis. This time on Oregon by Winnebago. Went to Froebel again.

Snuck into the Melvin Theater a few times. Going to the Dairy Queen on Chippewa and Nebraska. The confectionary across from Froebel on Nebraska and Winnebago where I would spend my lunch money on the pinball machine and candy.

I remember my dad pulling up in the alley in a new '56 Ford that was purple and white and he was test driving it.

Down to the A & P store on Jefferson for shopping. Going downtown for Christmas to look at the windows.

Taking the streetcar and the bus. Dad drove a streetcar for a while. He drove a Vess soda truck, too.

Being a patrol boy. Riding my bike down to the Mississippi and the other way, down to Southtown Famous (I got in trouble for that one.).

We moved to South County when I was in 8th grade and lived on Mohattan. I went to Mehlville. Hung out at Velvet Freeze on Kingston and Telegraph.

Used to go to Hall Street drag racing. Cruised Lemay Steak and Mcdonald's at Lemay Ferry and Lindbergh. Went to the 9 0 5 there, too.

Explored Cliff Cave. Climbed the water tower in Jefferson Barracks. Played in Apache Creek, by Sylvan Springs Park.

There was a supposedly haunted house on Mentz Hill where we partied. Drinking late at night out by the White House Retreat on Christopher. Craig's Twin Pools and the go-kart track. Hayrides at Hillcrest swimming pool. Sneaking in South Twin Drive In.

Enough for now.

Responses from Jim Keith (Clinton and Sherman School and Roosevelt) 1/28/2006

Hey all you Memories fans...

At 62, things run through my mind.....maybe yours too.

KINGS...Times out !, You're IT. Halvesies and Dibbs..... How about, Royal Crown went to town, Pepsi-cola knocked him down, 7 Up picked him up and Dr. Pepper fixed him up.

What about those little tunes that GOOD boys and girls would never sing.....WHISTLE WHILE YOU WORK....HITLER IS A JERK....MUSSOLINI ....and so forth. Or, THERE'S A SKEETER ON MY and the favorite of many in June...SCHOOLS OUT..SCHOOLS OUT...TEACHER LET THE MONKEYS OUT.

When you finished an apple................ APPLECORE...VOLLEYMORE...WHO'S YOUR BEST FRIEND.

ENIE, MEENY MINEY MOE....

ONE POTATO , TWO POTATO, THREE POTATO - FOUR

I have way too much time on my hands.

Responses from Anonymous 2/5/2006

Sunday FREE rock bands at the Forrest Park Pavilion
Just Jeans
Hopping Trains on the TRRA line
Christmas tree forts
Getting run out of the fountains at Northwest Plaza
Hitch hiking EVERYWHERE
The Rainy Daze
The Factory in St. Charles
The Arena Annex
Bettendorf Rapps grocery stores
Hanley-Carson-Springdale-Graham to Florissant
Midland without pavement
The Varisity Theater
Selling papers
Wagner Electric

Responses from Dave B, Lilburn, Georgia 2/5/2006

Did you ever reflect that we almost always referred to any of the big three St. Louis department stores only by their first names: i. e. Famous, Scruggs and Stix? I have recently reflected on the post-mortem outrage that Mssrs. Barr, Vandervoort, Barney, Baer and Fuller must still feel, out of the neglect we showed them. And do any of you remember the fourth also-ran store, way over on Easton (now MLK); Carson-May-Stern? Was that May a disgruntled May Company relative? And, out on The Hill, we could go spend money at Fair Mercantile, probably well into the 1970s.

I mostly remember the signature initials SVB had as their logo, with lots of curlicues in the script. I often confuse my memories between SVB and SBF, although I do remember going to all three. Famous-Barr was always the most visited, and could be because they were much bigger and had all of those "suburban" locations like Southtown, Northland and Clayton. I'm not sure that either Stix or Scruggs was still in business when the suburbs became invented in St. Louis. My mother used to sing the Famous-Barr jingle, probably from the forties: "Hocus, pocus, Sixth and Locust" so that if I ever got lost downtown, I could remember where F-B was, and go to the Playroom where I could be reunited. That pre-dated the Greenlease kidnapping.

I do know that the concept of camparison shopping was introduced to me by my mother and aunt when they'd go from store to store, seeing which had the same item for a cheaper price. This took time and great effort. Apparently, the whole idea of price matching had not taken hold at that time. So, if there was something that they wanted, then my impatient little boy legs would be dragged all over each of the Downtown stores, up and down elevators and escalators, inevitably to the first three stores, and finally back to the cheapest, just to save something significant (probably a dime, at that time) on a pair of gloves. If all of that exercise kept me skinny until I turned 25; then I know it made me cheap (to this day).

The good part was that any of the three department stores took the metal Charga-Plates and they could put it on credit (payable in full at the end of the month). Since your trip downtown was probably done by bus or streetcar, you could easily have the packages delivered (free?) by the green Railway Express trucks the next day. I don't know if it was true, but I have heard that each of the three department stores had access to a series of underground tunnels that went all the way to the Railway Express building near the main Post Office, across 18th Street, near Union Station. Even in the worst weather, store packages went fast and stayed dry.

I bet if KETC ever did a Living St. Louis feature on these big downtown department stores, both in their heyday and as they faded from existence, it would draw a wonderful viewer response. Shopping then was much more like a safari, instead of the chore it is today. Unfortunately, as we aged folks go, most of us would only be able to remember a few of the wonders of the toy departments. And the magic that they gave, from the vantage point of a three and a half foot tall kid. The eighth floor at Famous was as close to heaven as I thought I could get, at least when I was seven.

Responses from Alan Traynor, Orlando, FL. 2/5/2006

I grew up calling it Vandervoorts, cause that's what my grandmother always called it. Most people, I guess, called it Scruggs, and the official name, of course was Scruggs, Vandervoort, & Barney. I well remember being taken there on shopping excursions as a kid, then later taking the bus downtown on my own to explore. I don't know why, I always thought Scruggs had a special edge, different from Famous and Stix (or The Leader, as my grandmother called it....remember that?.....Stix, at one time, advertised itself as "The Grand Leader" (of department stores, I guess) so everyone of the older generation called it "The Leader." But this is about Vandervoorts. Vandervoorts had a wonderful toy department. And at Christmas time, they had a little kiddies train up on the toy floor, near the elevators, with a little snow scene and a train you could ride around a small loop. And the toy department! Scruggs seemed to have a rather "upscale" selection of toys....I remember thinking of them as "European" style toys. I do not know why I remember it thus, but they did have a different selection from the other stores. Or maybe it was simply the way the toys were displayed. My very favorite stuffed animal came from Scruggs. The stuffed animal was an orangutan made by Steiff....it was on sale, I hasten to add!!....and it was in the genre of "yes" monkeys....a wire mechanism connected to the tail allowed one to nod the head up and down and turn from side to side!!) It was called "Tricky" and I STILL HAVE HIM!! I remember, I was on my way, with my mother, to the puppet shows....more on that in a minute.....and I saw Tricky in the case and just fell in love with him. We went into the puppet show, and while I was waiting for the show to start, my mother sneaked out, on some premise of using the ladies room, no doubt, and bought Tricky (she must have had other packages she could hide him in) and I never suspected until I unwrapped him on Christmas morning. Now, the puppet shows....Gee, for years I could remember the name of the couple who ran them. (Someone has robbed my memory bank!!) But they were a lovely couple of professional puppeteers (I wish I knew their history...they must have worked for some big concern in puppetry.) Anyway, they did marionette shows....a different show every week, as I remember. In the auditorium of Scruggs off the Toy Department was a stage and regular plush theater seats. The auditorium stage was closed in with velour drapes to frame a smaller stage, elevated and itself decked out in fine red velour drapes. When these drapes opened, beautifully painted backdrops and furnishings set the scene for all manner of fairy tales that were acted out by the elaborate marionettes. I seem to remember that, while there might be several marionettes on stage at a time, involving many puppeteers out of sight, all the voices were performed (on microphones) by this one couple. These were very special shows, and I so looked forward to seeing them. I know we didn't go every week, but it was always a treat when we did.

Responses from Anonymous 2/5/2006

I was raised in East St. Louis for while when I was young too. UP 5-0471. 948 North 37th St. Over near Washington Park. It's a small world I guess. That was long before the arch. I found this web site while trying to find a recipe for the peanut coffee cake we used to get at a bakery in St. Louis, every Sunday Morning. It was sooooo good. Haven't had anything like it since. And there was also this old style cheesecake we got there at the bakery. Oh well. Days gone by I guess...no luck finding the recipe.

Responses from Ed 2/8/06

I grew up by Kingshighway and Manchester, Close to Dogtown, Close to "The Hill"
I remember when highway 40 didn't go to Kingshighway
I remember the park at Oakland and Kingshighway that had a bicycle track where they held professional races.
I remember Pagliacci's at Manchester & Kingshighway
I remember playing "Broomball" at Willmore Park

Responses from Anonymous 2/9/2006

Oh what memories,I remember living right down from Katz drugstore off of Jennings Road and natural Bridge I believe it was Crenshaw ave.Of course we moved liked gypsy's all over St.Louis.My Dad and Uncles worked for the Suburban Cab Co.right at that corner and I sold The Post dispatch right at that corner also and everyone would watchout for me because I was a 9 yr.old girl Mom could look out the window and ask me to bring a Quart of milk before I come home.When I turned 11, I went to work at the Goody-Goody cafe right there on Natural Bridge close to the Chevy plant.I went to Garfield elementary school for awhile I also went to Normandy jr.High.We lived in Wellston right on Evergreen ave. went to school on the top of the hill on Evergreen.I remember Lindsey hall,would run over to Hillsdale to visit relatives.I remember having,the strip throat so bad that the Dr.came to our house and that was right where hwy 70 is today.My Aunt and Uncle lived in West Florissant and every 4th of July we would all go over for a big BBQ and that's when all us cousins would get together,the adults would drink beer all day and us kids played til who knows how long.That was a big thing back then big get together with family,we played tag.caught lightning bugs and put them all over ourselves so we would glow.I remember the milk trucks delivering milk in the mornings,coal for your furnace.I even remember the Mr. softee truck my Dad drove for awhile in the summer months.We used to go to MY little Margie's on Sundays now this was a tavern that had a tavern on both sides of the street to my best recollection one was open 6 days a week and the one opened on Sundays.The Wellston loop where the Katz drugstore was and Woolworth's was across the street.There was a small coffee shop right there and the cabbies always set in there drinking coffee waiting for someone who needed a ride at the loop.a small white building.I cannot remember the name of it.But it was a pretty neat place.Oh I remember the confectionaries,when our folks moved us from the city to Wentzville Mo. I thot I would die what a different lifestyle.But we ended up staying out there which I grew to love the fresh air and all but it took some getting used to,Of course I got married and moved away to Fla. So when we go back wow!! the changes wouldn't even know it,I bring my grandchildren with me occasionally and tell them about those days and of course they think I'm ancient,But it really wasn't that long ago?Maybe the memories are what make me feel young again.Thanks so much for your site Dave you sure have brought back a lot of good memories.

Responses from Anonymous 2/9/2006

To coin a phrase.."what a SITE!!!" I log on to this site infrequently and am spellbound by the endless cobwebs that linger in all of your minds. Memories, a most vital substance, as pertinent as DNA. On the this very site, a few years ago, I was rambling on about my childhood and growing up in South St Louis. I mentioned an old Muistang I had owned, complete with ID number. To my astonishment, a contributor of this site located that very car. I have since traced said Mustang to its current owner- of 20+ yrs- the car has survived! {As the late "Wicked Pickett" belted out- "a nineteenSIXTYFIVE"-[2+2]} It was through this site the connection was made. I now seek another connection, for another passion of mine- and many of yours- vintage stock car racing in the St Louis region.

At a time when the local "jalopy" racing at WALSH STADIUM on OAKLAND AVENUE to the transformation of regulated, serious, and well-organized heated "heat" races and "features" as the crowds shifted to LAKE HILL SPEEDWAY, off Marshal Road, in VALLEY PARK.

As I beg your indulgence, this posting comes as a cry for help in research for a program to be presented that will feature St Louis stock car racing. The program - tentativly in conjunction with the St Louis History Museum- will highlight the years after WWII to the late 70s. It is the intent to specificaly center on WALSH STADIUM and LAKE HILL SPEEDWAY, St Louis' dicadent racing venues from 40 yrs ago. Other than obivious sources, such as local racing fan clubs, and remaining drivers from that timeframe, ANY information will be most apperciated. If you sold programs, worked the concession stand, drove as a class champion, or only saw competion once or twice, any info is welcomed. As of date, NOTHING exist on Walsh Stadium nor Lake Hill Speedway, regarding local documentation. From sitting on bleachers, to helping in the pits. No matter how minute, memories of ANYTHING related to either of those simple, yet majestic facilities, which spellbound ALL classes of St Louisians, [and laid the foundation for the current asphalt asylums of NASCAR] is vital. This program will NOT focus on NASCAR, rather local seedlings of racing's purest form, and the energy & dust those jalopies stirred in the carnival-like atmosphere of tracks they raced on. Memories that hopefully continue to go round n round. Again, I apologize to all the readers and their time capsuled memoirs. Yet, I strongly feel the St Louis racing community has provided many a family oriented "action packed" evening, deserving a bit of recognition as a part of St Louis genealogy. I look forward to rekindling those memories in a factual, first-hand, light-hearted presentation of St Louis stock car racing. Sharing your memories, any photos or programs, will prove invaluable in my research! St Louisians- "START YOUR MEMORIES!!!" Your emails are desperately yet definitely encouraged at ahouuuga@fidnet.com.

Responses from Terry Corbet 2/12/2006

Google took me to your site. The detour from a question concerning military service in St. Louis during WWII has now gone on for more than three hours. While that is mostly a statement concerning the slow reading speed of 'old eyes' dealing with a CRT as a rather unsatisfactory replacement for what we learned in our "Dick and Jane" workbooks, it is also, obviously, a testament to the success of your ever-growing "St. Louis Memories" pages. I should download and concatenate them so I can do text searches to test my memory, but instead I am just going to rely on my reading of all three pages. I don't want to submit material that has already been covered, and I think I am not. But first, a preface, which may be in order so that you can easily edit as you see fit:

I am your contemporary from Kirkwood. While I am pleased to see that some of your material comes from that, and other, suburban communities, we must admit that growing up in 'the city' and in 'the county' were rather different experiences. So, if you want to keep accurate recollections of growing up in St. Louis pure, maybe you have to take what I offer of 'city' experiences as being those of an 'outsider' and what I offer of 'county' experiences as being irrelevant. If you do choose to exclude this, my feelings will not be hurt in any way. If your do find these additions useful, please use them as you see fit.

01. The guy who remembered Threadneedle St. shoes may remember two closely-related 'in styles'. First, when you bought the shoes, the last thing you would do would be to wear them to school new. They had to be 'broken in'. I remember the 'treatment' -- we rubbed them down with lighter fluid almost completely ruining the careful tanning! Any of us who has had to deal with purchasing Air Jordan's for our own kid's may have forgotten that $14.95 at Boyd's [sorry these were never marked down and sold in 'the basement'] was just as impossible for our parents with their post-war incomes. Imagine how they felt after struggling to help us get them, only to see us wreck them in order to get 'just the right old look'.

Long before "Old Navy", at the same time as "Threads", we decided that Levi's could never be worn even after the obligatory three washings to shrink them down to the right size. At the most extreme, I distinctly recall an evening watching my older brother's group of friends peering into the side-loading, vertical-spinning innards of the Bendix washer where they had just put their brand-new Levis and about a quart of Clorox! Now I stress, this was my 'older brother' [he's a 1936 kid] and his graduating class wore 'Mr. B' shirts! Before you reconcile this group of idiots to the dust bin of history, I must note that the lead guy in the competing group was a kid named Lyle Waggoner.

02. There was another ritual with leather that no one seems to have recalled. Most, of course, remember the Cardinal and Brown baseball players, but they seem to have forgotten Neat's Foot Oil. When you finally saved up enough for your Marty Marion [sorry, I think mine was Wilson, not Spalding] mitt, you had to 'break it in' by rubbing it with Neat's Foot Oil and tying it up with a baseball in 'the pocket' and sleeping with it under your pillow for at least a week before going out for those Khoury League try outs.

03. This is the proper segue to one of those 'county' versus 'city' differences. When we would get in the car for the Sunday trip to Blow Street to visit the first-generation, immigrant grand-parents in South St. Louis, we would sometimes divert through the allies where the caged cork ball courts could be found. To us, that always meant we must have been near Red Schoendienst's home.

There were, to my knowledge, no formal cork ball courts anywhere outside the city limits. So, our games were a bit different. We did have a cork ball bat, and we did try to increase our eye-hand coordination against opposing pitchers with bottle caps. But, instead of Indian Ball, which I also, on occasion played, our normal game was 'Street Ball'. It's primary merits were: you only needed two guys, but if you had three, you could still play. And, you didn't need a field; you didn't even really want a field; you played in the street. The batter just hit balls -- no pitcher. If he hit a fly ball, and it was caught, he was out, and lost the chance to bat. If it was not caught, he got to hit again. If he hit a grounder, it had to be fielded cleanly. If it was bobbled, he got to continue hitting. It the grounder was fielded cleanly, the fielder got to bowl the ball as hard as he wanted -- overhand or underhand -- bounding down the street where the batter had to lay down the bat across the incoming path. If the ball didn't hit the bat, the batter got to continue as batsman. If the ball hit the bat, and the batter fielded the ricochet cleanly, he continued batting. If, however, the fielder managed to hit the bat and the batter could not field it cleanly, the fielder moved to batsman.

04. A second 'city-county' dichotomy stems from those trips. Whatever the route -- was it Gravois? -- somewhere near that boundary of Hampton Creek, either just as you came 'into the city' or just as you 'went out to the county', I confess I cannot recall, there was an important sports facility that no one seems to have mentioned. I first recall stopping there because it had a golf driving range. As partial repayment for not being too fussy over the not-very-exciting visit with 'the grown-ups', we got to stop and 'hit a bucket of balls'. Maybe they were there from the beginning, but I think the invention of the 'batting machine' was a bit later. So, a bit later -- maybe the '50s rather than the '40s -- we also stopped 'at the border' to hit baseballs in a cage.

05. Since my grandparents were German on one side and already deceased Scots on the other, I don't have any recollection of going to "The Hill' and looking for variant baseball games. But what I can tell you, that seems to have been lost even though some of you can remember Charlotte Peters and her half-witted sidekick, is that baseball players could not live on their salaries. So, except for the guys at the top, they all had 'summer jobs'. Joe Garagiola did TV commercials for Feld Chevrolet and sometimes visited the show rooms. I long cherished a catcher's mitt he gave me as he was heading off to spring training. My Boy Scout troop leader took us for a week-end hunting trip one winter where I sat on Red's lap while Marty was in the back seat. I tell none of these tells to toot my own horn; the facts say nothing about me. They are just additional evidence of the different world we were fortunate enough to inhabit in different times.

Another route from 'the county' to 'the city' was Highway 40. Now 'the boundary' as I recall it, was demarked by the edge of Forrest Park where, just past an island housing a gas station and a restaurant 'looking like it came from the old country' was the entrance to a tunnel that for some time was known as the 'Red Feather Express'. Then, coming up on the right, where The Highlands had been, was another of those anachronisms of the times, Musial and Biggie's Restaurant. Sometimes Stan would be there; he would be there when we would gather for the annual Khoury League awards -- being there for kids who dreamt of baseball was part of the job.

06. The reader will note that I have not been a St. Louisian for a long, long time; some of these recollections must be slightly off in respect of some detail or another. With that risk, however, I offer another fact that seems to have been left out. You have, of course, been blessed by a long history of outstanding sports announcers. While he is not a St. Louisian, there must be a reason why the best, Mr. Costas, has made that his home. It certainly must be a source of pride to have watched the Buck family heritage, even as you also watched Skip evolve from Harry. But, do you know why Tim McCarver is so good? Go look at the tradition of the catcher as 'the color guy'. Tim learned from Joe, but Gabby Street was in the booth with Harry before Jack!

07. This is strictly Kirkwood, or at least somewhere west of Maplewood. Two or three blocks east of Kirkwood Road on Manchester was the most amazing establishment -- a putt-putt course with three separate 18-hole layouts! I cannot remember the name, but whomever came up with depositing the ball in some Clown's mouth or some Windmill, never could imagine 'the real deal'. The final hole at 'the real deal' was at least 150 feet in length -- even Tiger wouldn't have been able to make the green!

07. I'll get out of the way with this last item -- what's with this post-modern Steinberg Ice Rink! I took a bus somewhere downtown to go to the "Winter Gardens", or did we just invent that colorful name? I did not invent the fact that as a Patrol Boy in the winter of '50, after one of those amazing 'ice storms' we used to have, I actually skated the mile to school. If that is not ludicrous enough, of course, the only skates we had were 'racers', no fancy hockey skates with a sensible curved front end! Sure they have ice and snow in other areas, but none quite like the ice palaces created in a St. Louis winter.

On that same street, in one or more of those great St. Louis summer thunder storms, as soon as the lightening would subside, we would pull out the inner tubes and float down the street to the storm drain right in front of our house. I didn't know him then, but later it was my good fortune to meet the man who wrote:

"I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone."

Your pages of reminiscence speak as poetically of a time and place where less was more and floating on an inner tube in a storm drain was all that could be wished for.

Responses from Joe @ jlskcd2005@aol.com 2/17/2006

"Holy Cow...IT IS... a Home Run"! Your web-site, that is!

The memories came flooding back! I was raised in Arnold (ATlas7-2311)...attended Bishop DuBourg High (54-57).

Let's see now, good memories...summertime swimming at "Spring Forest", or the Riviera Pool.

Being an alter boy at Immaculate Conception Parish and "Praying for the conversion of Russia" ...said after each Mass.

Meeting and shaking hands with movie actor Pat O'Brien at an Auto Show...being more impressed though,by the new "Pinin Farina" styling of the new Nash on display...around 1953 or so. Also meeting 'Killer Kowalski', the wrestler, at the 'Kiel', and learning that he was a nice guy...out of the ring! Actually college educated, or so I was told.

Going to Grant's farm to watch the Clydesdales being groomed...and checking out the Civil War rifle barrel fencing...being told by Security that they were Confederate rifle barrels...fence erected upon the orders of General U.S. Grant.

Ice skating at Winter Gardens with pals and two really cute teenage girls approaching us with their find...a severed finger laying on bloody cotton in a small fancy jewelry box...our utter astonishment at this and then she laughed & "wriggled" the finger (actually hers). We feeling very stupid and very "taken in ".

Waiting for the school day to end...in order to get to the Drug store near Hampton & Eichelberger to check out the latest "MAD" magazine to hit the stands..maybe even buy it, if I had an extra quarter!

Waiting for Boyd's to have a "Threadneedle" shoe sale...normally $22.50, sale price would be $18.50 (Wheew! A lot of cash back then) I still have a pair in the closet...still wear them once or twice a year, I swear it! They'll never wear out. Argyle socks, "Ivy League" Chino trousers, tapered to a very tight fit at the ankle. Very narrow black suede or white buck belts, Mr.'B' shirts w/tiny gem collar studs, V-neck sweaters...the rich kids would wear Lamb's Wool or even Cashmere sweaters. Suede jackets of every hue, also pale blue denim jackets w/ dark blue knit collar & cuffs (baseball warm-up style), and on and on.

Working part-time job, after school hrs., at Fred P. Rapp's supermarket in Lemay...and after work going to Cusanelli's down the street for the World's best pizza, cut in small squares and cheese which clung to the roof of your mouth for hrs. afterwards.

Cruising Steak n Shake at Hampton & Gravois in my 48 Chevy coupe (Stylemaster)"lowered and leaded in" w/split manifold and "glasspacks"...checking out the cool cars. If one of the cars "challenged" you, within a minute or so, it was a race down DePeres drive. I got my first set of traffic tickets from Officer John Leukens, a motorcycle cop, on Hampton Ave. in 1956. Later, in 1962, I joined the St. Louis Metro Police Dept. and guess who was my first street Supervisor? Sgt. Leukens did NOT remember me and I left it at that!

"Concrete" malts at Ted Drewes on Chippewa, night parties at Francis Park, basically beer and soda, "grass" was something that grew on lawns.

"Death Certificates" at Wild's "Palace of Poison" in Lemay, buying tamales from 'Tony' the Tamale Man (I still vividly remember how he looked), on Gravois by the Used Car lot where I would hang out with my cousin, who had a part-time job there.

Getting an occasional "Coke and Twinkies" at Johnny's Market on Gravois near St. George's Parish.

Listening to DJ Chuck Norman and singing along with Vic Damone as he sang "On The Street Where You Live", as I would "tool" down the street where "She" lived.

Dave...keep up the great work...OK?

Responses from Anonymous 2/17/2006

This was too much. So many memories. I just found the site and spent a wonderful Sunday afternoon reading. I lived first on Quincy St., in So. St. Louis. My grandparents built the house in 1908 and whenever I visit I drive by. My grandmother's sister and husband lived next door. My mother and uncle and cousins grew up there and so did my sister and I. We knew all the neighbors for a few generations, but everyone was rather formal then. We all called everyone by Mr. or Mrs. and never used adults first names.

On Halloween we had to memorize a song or a poem to recite to get our treats and I never remember saying, "trick or treat". My grandfather was a blacksmith and he sharpened the sharpening tools of "Tony and Scissorgrinder" man that everyone talked about. Whenever Tony would come to our neighborhood, my grandmother would bring him a cup of coffee. I felt so important since I felt I knew him personally. I remember bums coming down the alley and begging for a sandwich and cup of coffee which my mother would make and have him sit on the backporch steps to eat. I watched through the screen door.

I attended Gardenville School, as did my mother and other relatives, and Cleveland High School. My first phone number was a Flanders number.

Ah what fun this has been.

Responses from Bill Rogers 2/19/2006

I remember . . .

The Naborhood Link News published in Lemay.

The Lemay roller rink at Bayless and Lemay Ferry.

Buying gasoline from a Mars service station at ten cents a gallon and receiving a free glass.

Attending the Lemay movie theater and winning a basket of groceries in a drawing on a Friday night.

Hitch hiking from Lemay all the way to CBC on Clayton Road.

Buying a “pine tree float” at Wilde’s Palace of Poison.

Our first telephone as Lockheart 7360.

Living next door to a beacon on a lot on Ruprecht in Bella Villa. (Lemay)

Living on a street that had 52 kids within one block all within 4 years of age. What a great neighborhood.

Playing baseball on the Heine Meine ball field before the Lemay Baseball Association was formed.

Reading the minutes of the organization meeting of the Lemay Baseball Association – which I still have. (My dad was one of the charter organizers)

Swimming parties at Spring Forest and Spring Lake.

Swimming at the Forest Park Highlands.

Riding the Flying Turns at the Highlands

Bowling at the St. Andrew Bowling Alley in Lemay.

Dating my first girl friend at Notre Dame High School.

Working at the Fred P. Rapp grocery store on Lemay Ferry.

Playing baseball at the Greens, Porkies, Heine Meine, Jeff Barracks, Forder School, Bayless School, Titanium field.

Watching the Veiled Prophet Ball and Wrestling at the Chase on our 5” TV set with the bubble magnifying glass to enlarge the picture.

Setting up chairs in our living room theater style so my aunts could come over to watch the Veiled Prophet Ball – and my dad popping pop-corn for everybody.

Listening to Frank Eschen narrate the ball program.

Seeing Lou Thesz and Gorgeous George at various wrestling matches and on TV.

Watching TV test patterns just for the heck of it.

Attending Rubicam Business College on South Grand Ave. – where I met my wife.

Participating in the cub scout and boy scout jamboree at the Arena and dressed up as Snow White and using grapefruits as part of the get-up to fill out certain parts of the costume.

Watching the Harlem Globetrotters play the college all-stars at the Arena and barely beating them by 2 points.

Collecting autographs of the St. Louis Browns and Cardinal ball players as they walked under the stands at the old Sportman’s Park.

Watching Joe DiMaggio hit three home runs off the scoreboard against the Browns at Sportman’s Park.

Attending Stan Musial’s last game.

Attending the first All Star Game at Bush Stadium in 1964 (?) with the temperature at 104 degrees.

Listing to Ed Bonner, Gil Newsome, Jack Carney, Miss Blue and others.

Air raid tests during WW II and my dad being an Air Raid Warden

Driving my first car a 1939 Plymouth.

Going to movies at the Lemay, Southway, Longwood, Michigan and Crest movie theaters and the Attic which was also called “The Dump.”

Being a CBC honor guard at various functions around town when CBC was a military school.

Remembering the newsboy yelling, “Morning Globe . . Paper.”

The St. Louis Star Times which was one of three daily newspapers in St. Louis.

Buying tamales from street vendors.

Tony Gagliarducci, the knife sharpener, who would clang his bell as he walked the streets.

Getting chunks of ice from the milkman as he delivered milk . . . and left the milk at your front door.

Getting change for a quarter so I could buy a coke for a nickel.

Riding the St. Louis County Bus line for a dime. Yes, there was a county bus line.

Seeing German prisoners raking leaves in Jefferson Barracks.

Responses from ml 2/22/2006

My six brothers and sisters and I grew up in South St. Louis in the area of Meramec and Pennsylvania. We all went to St. Anthony's grade school. We girls graduated from St. Anthony's (my graduating class had a total of 47 students!), and the boys from either St. Mary's or SLUH. Here are the memories we share when talk about growing up -

Yes, Tony the Sicssors Man. Ding, Ding, Ding - CLUNK! You could hear him coming for blocks. Just enough time for Mom to collect the knives and scissors and wait on the porch.

The paper boys with their wood carts and big metal wheels - "Morning Globe Paaapperr!". Selling at the paper stands on Meramec or Grand was considered a promotion. If you could work your way into the one in front of St. Anthony's or Winkleman's Drug store you were at the top of the corporate ladder.

Let's take a stroll down Meramec, starting around Broadway and working up to Grand Avenue. Climbing the bluffs at Bellerieve Park (which was strictly prohibited by all adults). Goofing off at Minniwood Park - later in the 70s you could actually cross over Broadway and get something from Burger Chef (remember Burger Chef and Jeff?) and then sit under the pavillion and eat. Moving up a few blocks was Gebken Benz Funeral Home where everyone you ever old person in the world was laid out and the procession to St. Anthony's for the funeral mass took about 30 seconds. Across from the funeral home was Deharling's grocery store. Many a trip down there to by 2 packs of Old Gold Cigerettes for Mom with fifty cents in my hand. Art, the owner, worked behind the meat case. Being from a large family they knew us well. Sometime in the late 60's they were robbed and Art was shot during the robbery. We lived in a flat on the next block up Meramec (we later moved a half block away to a house on Pennsylvania). Mom sat on the porch and watched the fiasco unfold. Being the only one without chickenpox in the house at the time, I was allowed to sit with her. (I was terrified a man with a gun had come into our neighborhood.) Playing in the alley - every day all day. Kids would stand outside each other's gates and Sing in the same tune - "Oh (name of child)". If there were siblings, you just strung them all together and lingered for a few notes on the last name. "Oh Janet, Oh Greg, Oh Jean, Oh Heleeennnn". The kids across the alley were "public school kids" that enlightened us to all we were missing as Catholics. We would run when Henry walked down the alley. Henry had one shoe built taller than the other and we were afraid of him because of it. SILLY. Heading up Meramec was Schumacher's funeral home - Not known for it's funerals but more so for the parking lot on which my brothers used to play bottle caps or fuzzball. The girls would rollerskate because black top was at a premium in the neighborhood.We would steel flowers from the dumpster after funerals. Then there was St. Anthony's High School, the Church (remember the Corpus Christi procession each year? I do because it always fell either on or around my birthday in late June. The Knights of Columbus would dress up in their high feathered feora type hats and they would play bagpipes both in church and in the procession. The pastor would lead the procession while we all said the rosary. We would stop in front of designated houses to pray in front of alter type displays the owner's would erect for the day. As kids we dreaded the day each year. It was summer vacation and HOT and the last thing we wanted to be doing was pray in front of alters with rosarys in the heat with our parents.). Roller skating on Thursday nights at the St. Anthony's roller rink - what sagas took place there. Lets see - the cheap donut Shop, the Post Dispatch delivery site in a storefront where the paperboys would get their boxes and papers for the day, Podjge & Son's's Shoe Repair and St. Louis Bakery. On the corner, Biermann's Tavern. Biermann's was more familiar to us then it probably should have been. My Dad tended bar there fore many years. We were always stopping to "cash a check". We would be bribbed with a Brown Cow soda, peanuts, pickles or juicy fruit gum while waiting for the "check" to be cashed. Winkleman's, the Dime Store (anyone recall Mr. Poncho the manager?), the Red Wing shoe store (where we would get a token with each purchase to use in the machine that would produce a "golden egg" from Polly the Parrot containing a prize), then Schumaker's Dry Goods Shop. On the last block before Grand was a short cut through the Clark Gas Station to Ted Drews. Of course if you saw a Lucky Strike's cigarette pack on the ground you would step on it and smack the person next to you proclaiming "Lucky Strike - No Strike Back" .

Miscellanous memories include the confectionary at the end of our alley (sat on corner of Nebraska and Gasconade) - main purpose - penny candy and Hostess goods. Unbelievable hours spent a Marquette Park. Swimming, tiny-tots, tumbling, crafts, dance class (and dance shows), SOFTBALL, smoking cigarettes and the Sno-Cone lady and man in the old white station wagon. The Octoberfest where you could smell the potato pancakes for several blocks. Games in the alley included something we called "Chase" or "Headhunters". A few kids were the chasers or headhunters while the rest were the chasees. Parimeter included the four block area surounding Meramec, Pennsylvania, Gasconade and Nebraska. No yards, houses or grages allowed. We played house or school in someone's yard and when it rained, the events were played out in someone's garage. (On a strange note, my sister and brother in law rented their upstairs to the "Tamale Man" who walked his tamale cart along South Broadway. When they hadn't seen him for days they checked upstairs and found him dead.) And finally, I recall the night Augustinian College burnt down. My Mom and Dad were out for a rare night alone when one of my brother's friends frantically rang the doorbell. When they told him that "Augie" was on fire, they made me and my sister stay in the house while they went up the block to check it out. We could see the flames through our front window and were freaking out when our parents, who had heard about the fire from someone at the restaurant, came home to free us. After hosing down both my Grandma and our roofs for hours so the flying embers wouldn't catch our houses on fire, my dad walked us through the hoses and firetrucks telling us we would remember this forever and probably never see another fire that big. He was right. I have vivid memories of the steeple falling and the Ohs and Ahs and "Oh No's" coming from the streets as it crashed to the ground. Firemen running - geez it was scary. I still recall the vibration of the fire trucks from our bedroom all night. We couldn't sleep knowing the firemen were still there keeping it under control. The neighborhood stunk like burnt wet wood for a long time after.

What a great place to grow up. Thanks for the memories everyone!!

Responses from Anonymous 2/23/2006

I remember buying stick pretzels in brown bags from people on Natural Bridge Road in Berkeley on our way to White Castle, Our Thornhill phone number with a party line (so you couldn't stay on a call long because someone else might need the phone & someone might "listen" in Skates that clamped onto our shoes Collecting soda bottles to turn in for money so you could buy candy TV stamps and Eagle stamps Going down the hill on a cardboard after a snow Using a big cardboard box for a play house Making a chain from Doublemint and Juicy Fruit gum wrappers Starlight Ballroom on St. Charles Rock Road in Overland - the place to go to meet people The White Bakery truck delivering my first "bought" birthday cake A birthday party without clowns, McDonald burgers, pizza and prize bags Public school kids were evil compared to Parochial school kids who had no religious upbringing - now we can't pray in schools or anywhere public Girls wearing a Kleenex on top of our head when they forgot their chapel vail Going to Turners on Woodson Road every week to get the top song list for the week and the words to a feature song Being able to understand every word to a song, knowing all the words which by the way, were never repeated again in the song When driving from Bridgeton to Cherokee Street seemed like an all day trip And driving from Bridgeton to O'Fallon when my brother moved to the first subdivision being built there - another all day trip Playing "who stoled the cookies from the cookie jar" during recess Playing dodge ball and having relay races Physical fitness tests every year at school

Responses from Doug 3/22/2006

I remimber going to Cool Valley in Fuegeson,going to Wetlake park at three ,seeing it mostly distroyed by fire. I remimber the oblong ferris wheel at Chain of Rocks,"The Swooper"& wishing I could ride the old coaster there.I later found out it had the same name as the one at the Highlands,"The Comet".I also remimber riding the Bobsleds/Flying Turns at the Highlands. & how thrilled I was at hearing Knobles' Grove,a smallish amusement park in Penna .is building one this year.

Most of all I remimber how fantasic I felt when the first wave of e mails came in to me after I made a web site dedicated to the Highlands& finding out how much that park ment to ya'll& all the wonderful comments you people sent me. I love reading this web site! (Comment from Dave Lossos: The website Doug refers to concerning the Forest Park Highlands can be seen by clicking here)

Responses from Dean B. circa (1957 - 1967) 3/27/2006

The Peavely Dairy Milk Man

Playing little league baseball with some kids having metal cleats and others with sneakers; depending on how rich your folks were. There were certainly no liability risks for the Kourey league.

Games ts Sportsmans Park where the parking lot attendant would give us the balls hit over the wall.

The original Parkmoor and the large mural on the wall of everyone going to Parkmoor by flying, running, jumping, parachuting, trains, etc.

Making out at the Varsity or Tivoli theatres.

Sledding at Art Hill on wooden sleds with metal runners

Lee's Grill in Clayton

Trying to hop the train going through Richmond Heights and having the Caboose guy throw "ice water" on you to keep you off. We were 7 - 8 years old!

Putting nails on the train tracks to see how they got squished.

Fist fights "off school grounds" that were actually fist fights; no knives or guns.

Taking the Delmar bus downtown to see the Stones in 1965; give or take a year.

Billy's Head Shop in the Loop.

Dudley's Bar on Delmar by the old train station. Being taken their by my parents when we were around 10 - 12 years old. It was ok to take your kids to the neighborhood bar and watch them smoke & drink. Now this is probably one of the very few "bad" things you could do back then.

Driving / steering the car while sitting on my Dad's lap.

No seat belts.

Drive in movies. Didn't do much movie watching.

The Mayrose bacon or ham commercial on TV.

Drivers Ed: 1 car length of every 10 miles of speed.

Cars without power steering and with clutches.

Gas for 25 cents per gallon.

Being dressed as twins with my brother, even though we weren't.

Seeing Mitch Ryder at Rainy Daize

Responses from Anonymous 3/29/2006

This is a GREAT website! I am really enjoying reading all the memories. The following are some of my memories of STL:

Living on Destrehan Street in Hyde Park

Clay School and listening to how my saddle oxfords sounded walking on the brick sidewalks to the school

The old 5&10 cent store on Salisbury; my grandfather would always walk up there with me when he came up from the Ozarks and he would always buy me a small toy

Walks to Hyde Park with my grandfather in the fall of the year and watching all the squirrels in the park

Bethlehem Lutheran Church, where I was baptized

Going inside Holy Trinity Church with my aunt and wearing a handkerchief on my head to make sure my head was covered

Walks with my mom and dad up to the Bissell and Grand water towers

The Pevely milkman with the horsedrawn cart; my dad and I were walking up Destrehan one day when I was 3 years old. I spoke to the horse ("Hi, horsey."). The milkman quickly ran in back of the horse and said: "Hi, little girl." My dad didn't think I saw the milkman run back there, so he told everyone the horse spoke to me. I never told them anything differently.

The ice man delivering the blocks of ice to our apartment.

The ragman and the scissors man.

Going to Crown Candy with my dad on Friday nights after he got paid and while he ordered a thick milk shake, the lady always gave me a small cone. I loved looking at the glass candy counter. I felt tiny in that place then.

Moving to the Central Westend a few years later when my dad and his two sisters bought a two-family flat and a bungalow that was in the rear of the property.

Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church & School at Union and Wells.

Roller skating and bike riding in the summer.

Vacation Bible School with my friend at Hope Congregational Church.

Walks to Forest Park in the summer. It would take all day, but we loved it.

The Muny in the evening.

Playing canasta with my aunt and her family every night in the summer. She lived on Arsenal, across from Tower Grove Park. She was the first in our family to have a window air conditioner in her den and a large color TV. Every night, after my dad got off from work, we would all go down there. The guys went to the den with dinner and beer and watched the baseball game. We stayed out in the kitchen with my aunt and played canasta.

Watching my mom and her friend make jelly from our grape arbor. Then we went to her friend's house and they canned veggies.

Lutheran High School Central, at Lake & Waterman. Running up Waterman every evening to make sure we caught the VERY slow Union bus. It came only once an hour.

Northland Shopping Center and my two favorite shoe stores-Bakers and Burts.

Walking into Wellston and shopping at J.C. Penney and Woolworth. We usually ate at the lunch counter. I usually got a turkey club sandwich with a Coke.

Walking down to the Sears Store at Kingshighway and M.L. King (then known as Easton).

Riding the Easton streetcar downtown.

Eating Jack Salmon at Howard Johnson's on Kingshighway and Natural Bridge.

Going to the circus at Public School Stadium.

Trips to the zoo with the school.

Lander Company on East Adelaide. My dad worked there and I worked there during summers.

There are so many memories and all of these writings have helped me recapture some of them.

Responses from Jack H. Frazier 4/4/2006

Great Site. I grew up in University City Number was PArkview 5-2108 Lived on Wilson Ave right by the High School. I remember the Steak & Shake on Olive St. Rd. My grandparents lived in Chesterfield where Chesterfield Mall now sits. Highway Forty was two lanes. There was a four way stop at the intersection of Olive and Lindbergh. Toby's shoes in the Delmar Loop. Kourey League baseball for kids. The soda fountain at Nissners across from Famous Barr in Clayton. Howard Johnson's in St. Ann where they had all you can eat fish. They came around with carts filled with food. Holloway House cafeteria on Forsyth in Clayton. Chuck- A- Burger on Pennsylvania and Page. Famous Barr's Way In shop to buy Bell Bottoms. Chess King at Northwest Plaza and the Bull Shed on Euclid for boots. The Spectrum on Big Bend. Velvet Freeze on North & South. The Beverly Theatre and then the Fine Arts. Now a Chinese Restaurant. Seeing the Peppermint Lounge with the Piano keys around the top on Delmar & Skinker. Heman Park, Jackson Park. Hanging out at Clayton High school's Depot on Friday Night. University City High school's Wigwam at the Community Center on Friday night's. Tropicana Bowling on Clayton Rd. West Roads shopping center on Brentwood & Clayton Rd. Toddle House restaurant.

Responses from Bob Reeds 4/4/2006

I grew up in South St. Louis, living on Jefferson Avenue and later Salena Street just down from the brewery. Great memories of that era as they used to bring out the horses for exercise and no matter how many times people had seen them, the A-B horses always drew a crowd as they brought them down Arsenal. Another favorite memory of that time is when an Italian friend of my sister lost some kind of bet and had to push a potato up the street to the brewery---with his nose! Imagine getting on your knees and doing that. Drew quite a crowd! Playing street baseball. Going to school with Wally Lamm whose family owned Lamm's Potato Chip company and going with him after school to get fresh baked chips! Sitting outside at night waiting for the tamale man to come by with his cart and walking with my sisters to the corner bar to fetch my Dad a pail of beer. At age ten, we moved to Lemay and the rest of my favorite memories took place there.

Hancock Elementary, Hancock Junior High and Hancock Senior High were the schools I attended in Lemay. Great friends who I still hear from and do a newsletter for the Class of '57. Playing ball in The Grove just off East Velma. Playing ball at Heinie Meinie field and for the St. Louis Briquettes team at age 13 when we won the county and city championship. It was the first team I played for that had uniforms that resembled the Cardinals! My first team was Sall's Boys sponsored by Sall's Bar. I remember going to St. Louis Browns games as a member of the Knot Hole Club and often our team managers would take us to a game. Of course, even today, the Cardinals remain my favorite baseball team.

Other favorite memories of St. Louis include the Muni Opera, the big theaters downtown where you took a girl you really wanted to impress, the wonderful department stores with the decorated windows at Christmas time. My mother worked at the Stix, Baer & Fuller store for 30+ years. I worked there part-time as a teenager. My father commuted to Maloney Electric Company in North St. Louis for 42 years. The Veil Prophet parade held in October when it often got so cold you could barely stand still. Working as a pin-setter at the St. Andrews bowling alley. Working as a summer delivery boy at Kunkel's Market on East Velma and Broadway when I got my driver's license and driving their Nash Rambler station wagon that wouldn't go over 45 when I was out making deliveries. Sitting outside on their stoop in the evening with best buddies and watching all the girls walk by in their short shorts. That was always fun! Wild's Palace of Poison and the great owner Art Wild who was so nice to us teens!

I left St. Louis (Lemay) to join the Air Force after high school and haven't lived there since. In fact, I have now lived in Colorado for over thirty years after retiring from the Air Force. But St. Louis is still MY town and my family often kids me about it because I still talk about St. Louis and the memories. Thanks for your wonderful site and the great memories!

Responses from Mary Fels 4/14/2006 - Memoir #1

Grew up in a 2-family flat on far South Kingshighway. Gardenville School; Cleveland High; Mizzou (one year); Meramac Jr. College; Washington U (finally a degree in 1983). Married in 1958. Lived in Audobon Park, Rock Hill, Kirkwood. Three kids. Left St. Louis in 1983 (after 50 years). Live now in Arlington, Texas, but St. Louis will always be home.

"Famous Revisited"

When my teenage daughter (of the exotic foot size) complained she couldn't find shoes anywhere in our usual suburban shopping malls an idea bloomed in my head--an idea of returning after many years to downtown Famous-Barr where, it seems in retrospect, I spent most or my formative years.

"The only thing I can find that will fit me are old ladies shoes,"' she wailed.

"Hush," I said. "We'll go downtown to Famous. It will have what you want. Good old Famous."

I quote my mother-the World's Leading Authority on Famous-Barr. When I was a kid in the late 30s and early 40s, Famous was her entertainment, her hobby, her club. her friend. She'd go two, maybe three, times a week, sifting through, exploring, sampling--sometimes even buying--its myriad delights from the 9th floor to the basement. And whenever I was not in school, and always on Saturdays. she'd take me with her. There was always an attraction: Dollar Day (Basement), a pots-and-pans demonstration (Housewares, 7th Floor), an end-of-the-month clearance in house dresses (Ladies Ready-to-Wear. 4th Floor). She knew the merchandise better than Morton May, himself, and developed a deep faith, which she passed onto me, that Good old Famous could satisfy every need.

So, one bright Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago, I piled the kids into the car and took off down Highway 40 to see if Famous could still measure up after all these years.

It was good to be downtown again. We made the wide turn off Market onto Seventh Street--cramped. narrow Seventh Street, where the tall buildings blocked out the sun, and the neon signs on the bars arid offices glowed all the brighter for being in shadow. There were changes; the Forum Cafeteria was gone, the Ambassador was closed, and look at that great black Mercantile Tower. My hayseed kids from the suburbs rolled down the windows and stretched their necks to see the top of it. But Famous was there, square and glistening white in the sun.

All the big stores downtown had their own personalities. Famous was your favorite aunt: solid and plump, and she wore too much jewelry, but she laughed a lot and gave you hugs and always pressed a nickel in your hand. Scruggs (only snooty rich people in the County called it Vandervoort's) was a dowager, understated, but with Class. When you needed a wedding gift for the boss' daughter, you went to Scruggs. And the smart shoppers said when Scruggs had a sale, it was really a sale. Now it's gone. Grand Leader (Stix) was a school teacher-quiet, dignified, gracious. When you came to visit, she expected you to take the chewing gum out of your mouth and act like a lady.

We made the circuit-down Seventh, over Washington. back up Sixth (poor, seedy, down-at-the-heels 'Sixth Street), back to Market and down Seventh again to the parking garage. We parked. took the elevator arid went across the bridge over Olive Street into the store. There's a scruffy snack bar on the bridge, and it smells of frying hot dogs and popcorn. A discordant note.

The correct way to enter Famous-Barr is to go through the grand brass revolving doors on the Seventh Street side--preferably to go around twice if Mother doesn't yank you out first. We usually come by bus; but when times are flush, we take a Service Car--a long black limousine that gathers up ladies with shopping bags and whisks them downtown in style. It costs 20 cents (twice as much as the bus). but it stops practically at our door. and we don't have to transfer.

Sometimes, right before payday, it's a struggle to find even bus fare. Mother sends my brother and me scrounging through coat pockets and under radiators and through old pocketbooks and down the sides of the couch cushions looking for change. If we can only get downtown we can always put our lunch on the charge.

Once, when Mother's need to check our a sale was intense, and the house wouldn't cough up a penny, she hitched a ride with a plumber who had fixed one of our faucets and was heading back downtown. She put on her hat and her white gloves. climbed in the cab of the pickup and rattled off happily, while the pipes and wrenches bounced in the back.

I sent the kids up to the 8th Floor (Luggage, Records, Toys and Games) to treat myself to a half hour of browsing. I looked around and breathed it in. Too bright, too garish, too noisy. too crowded. I loved it. A few things were in different places, but mostly it was the same. There were black salesladies now--that was different--but they were like all the Famous salesladies I ever knew. They stood in pairs. arms folded, gossiping, carefully avoiding the eye of every shopper. But once you broke through and grabbed one, she called you "honey" and turned the store upside down to find what you wanted.

I took the escalator to the 3rd Floor (Shoes, Hats). Shoes were there but where were the hats? There used to be a great garden of hats extending over practically half of the 3rd Floor. Now I saw only a little counter of wigs; nobody wears hats anymore.

There are many vanity tables, with chairs, scattered around the floor. Each with a large mirror in front. with narrow mirrors at the sides tilted toward the center. Mother settles in one of the chairs, carefully placing her shopping bag at her feet. She straightens the collar of her good size 16¼ blue gabardine and leans to take a tug to her stockings and line up the seams.

"I don't know what I'm looking for, exactly," she tells the saleslady. "Why don''t you just show me what you have."

My brother and I look at each other and groan. There are ten thousand hats. "Nothing too expensive," she adds.

The saleslady nods understandingly, and bustles off. They are playing a game, and both know the rules. She returns with an armful of hats--bizarre hats, ridiculous hats. There are cloches and derbies and sailors and toques. Mother tries them all on, one by one. There is a Greta Garbo hat with a deep crown. the brim extending over one eye. Mother sucks in her cheeks and narrows her eyes for the desired effect. There is a Scarlett 0'Hara creation with a great floppy brim, and she opens her eyes wide and bats them several times provocatively. At last--at long last--there is a little black velvet number with a bit of fine veiling in front and a lovely brown and black feather that curls over one cheek.

Her eyes grow soft and she and the saleslady say simultaneously: "Aaahh." She looks to the right, and to the left,.turns around. holding the hand mirror to admire the back.

"Now that one," says the saleslady, "really does something for you."'

"Yes," says Mother, but she has the hat off and is fumbling for the price tag. $3.98. "Oh." she sighs "this is a little more than I wanted to pay. I don't know."

The saleslady is ready. "But it looks so pretty on you, honey. Why don't you just lake it home. and if your husband doesn't want you to keep it, you can bring it right back."

End of game. Daddy will never make her bring it back.

I made a leisurely descent down the escalator to 2 (Men's and Boys' Outerware, Suits, Topcoats, Sportswear). In the grip of ancient habits, I stopped to rummage through a table of shirts Reduced for Final Clearance. Mustachioed young men in natty shaped suits and jazzy ties buzzed around a nearby cash register. What had happened to the quiet gray little men in their decent brown suits that used to own this floor? Perhaps there were still a few of them left--back in a corner among the 48-Shorts.

I had arranged to meet the kids at-where else?-the escalator on the Seventh Street side on the Main Floor. The trick is to find a spot which commands a view of the up and down escalators as well as the bank of elevators on the Olive Street side. Old hands can manage it.

I watched old ladies in long ratty black coats, and kids in jeans and T-shirts, and young mothers dragging fretful toddlers by their hands. Years ago, there had been a magnificent marble soda fountain that graced this section or the store. They used to serve ice cream there in footed metal dishes, and when you scooped up a ribbon of thick dark fudge along the lip. the sound of the spoon scraping on the metal would send a delicious shiver down your spine.

I watched chic girls in polished boots and expensive Calvin Klein skirts, a giggling foursome of ladies in pants suits, and two sallow mean-eyed youths who had obviously just escaped from jail and were on their way, no doubt, to swipe all the diamonds from Fine Jewelry. I watched other people, like me, shifting restlessly from one foot to the other, waiting, waiting at the main floor escalator.

Mother propels me through the revolving door and marches me to the railing by the down escalator. She surveys the mass of shoppers.

"Well," she sighs, "Aunt Grace was supposed to meet us at 11, and she isn't here yet." I glance at the square clock suspended from the ceiling in the center of the store. It says 11:15, and we're a little late, ourselves, but I keep my mouth shut.

"You stay here and keep an eye out for her, and I'll be back in a minute.! have to take back my library books."

Famous runs a rental library tucked in a corner of the 9th Floor, stocked with a vast supply of romances and historical novels. and Mother is hoping to unearth a Faith Baldwin or Frances Parkinson Keyes she hasn't read yet. She plunges into a sea of ladies and is gone.

I watch the people going up and the people coming down. In an alcove over the door is a great stuffed bird with wings outstretched, his name emblazoned above, "Eagle Stamps." I gaze into his fierce eyes. We are old friends and have spent many hours together .

At 11:30 Aunt Grace arrives. "Where is your mother? "she asks indignantly.

"She'll be back in a minute." I say. "She's getting some new library books. 'I notice she already has a shopping bag with several packages in it. Aunt Grace fidgets restlessly for a moment, then takes off. "I have to pick up one thing from the basement," she says over her shoulder. "Stay right here." At 11:45 Mother returns, disappointed to find only me. I tell her of Aunt Grace's mission to the Basement Economy Store. "I'd better go see if I can find her, " she says. "Don't move from this spot."

At 5 to 12, both arrive from opposite directions. Aunt Grace is almost, but not quite. speechless with exasperation.

"My God. Hazel" she cries, "where have you been? I've been standing right here since 11 o'clock waiting for you." "Well, I don't know how you could," my mother replies, "because I've been standing on this spot waiting for you for almost an hour!"

I keep my mouth shut.

"Well, we'd better get some lunch," Aunt Grace says. "I've got a lot of shopping to do."

We head for the 6th Floor (Lamps, Books, Art, Needlework, Tea Room). "Not bad,'1 I think. Sometimes it takes longer.

The kids arrived at last and we got down to work. We started in the vast Ladies Shoe Salon on 3. Nothing. They sent us to Children's Footwear on 5. Nothing. But the woman there suggested the Basement.

Ah, the Basement--the noisy, chaotic, low-ceilinged Basement. My home. I was 14 years old before I got a pair of shoes that wasn't from Famous Basement. Rich kids got Stnde-Rites from the 5th Floor; I preferred Buster Browns from the Basement. Rich ladies got Red Cross oxfords from the 3rd floor; Mother chose Enna Jetticks (that's right, Enna Jetticks) from the Basement.

I looked eagerly for that memorable brand, but it is no more. The tables were piled high, as always, but now with a jumble of white joggers from Taiwan and brass-studded wedgies from Hong Kong. When I finally captured a sweaty harassed salesman, he could find nothing for us in the right size.

Back to 3, This time we found a buyer who said, "There's a little shoe department on the Main floor that sometimes carries unusual sizes. Look there."

Arid, of course, we found just what we wanted, I knew good old Famous wouldn't let me down.

The kids were tired. After only three hours! My mother and I would come, sometimes, at 10 in the morning and shop until they blew the trumpet to close the store at 5:30, And stand up in the bus all the way home. Kids today have no stamina.

"Wait just a minute," I told them. "I have to duck over to Cosmetics for just one minute." They groaned.

The Cosmetics Department is at the 6th and Locust corner of the store. It's all shining mirrors and crystal, all beiges and roses and corals and blood reds and tiny jewel-like bottles with atomizers sitting on round mirror trays. Painted ladies who look like movie stars wait behind the counters.

The Cosmetics Department is in the path to the bus stop. and we always pause here before going home. There are sample bottles of perfume on every counter. Mother and Aunt Grace feel that if Mr. May is so generous as to offer these goodies to his friends. it would be ungracious to refuse.

They are picking their way through, already reeking of White Shoulders and Shalimar. when Mother spots a huge bottle sitting on a tray.

"Wait a minute, Grace, "says Mother. "I gotta try that one."

We stop and turn. Mother has pointed the atomizer in the direction of her ample bosom and given the bulb three enormous squeezes.

"Ugh," she says, "too sweet," and absently brushes her front with her gloved hand. Lather and bubbles rise up on her coat. She rubs harder. More lather. More bubbles. She looks at the label for the first time.

"My God." she says softly, "it's bubble bath." The harder she rubs, the more bubbles appear

A crowd is beginning to form.

Aunt Grace is laughing uncontrollably. Tears are running down her cheeks, and she is leaning helplessly on a counter, legs crossed. (Aunt Grace's weakness is well known in the family; you make her laugh at your peril.)

Mother is alternately convulsed and panicked. She grabs her sister and gasps, "Quit laughing, you damned fool. and do something!"

Aunt Grace finally pulls herself together, extracts a large flat package from her shopping bag. Mother presses it to her bosom. and we exit to Sixth Street, trailing tiny bubbles.

I cased the Cosmetics Department. I wanted only good stuff. I dabbed a little L'Heure Bleu on the left ear lobe, a little Joy on the right; a spray of Chanel #5 for the right wrist, a touch of Je Reviens on the left. For old times' sake.

It was time to go home. We found the car and headed West into the sun. The kids. gasping, rolled down the windows to escape my overpowering scent.

I longed for the bus with its waves of heat rolling from under the seats and the Esther L. Fox (Superfluous Hair Removed Permanently!) advertisements over the windows to read and ponder. I missed the fat old ladies with faint moustaches who, if they found seats, would make their laps available to bundles and small children to help out the standees. I missed the smell of wet fur and face powder and chocolate petit fours from Busy Bee.

But listen, honey, you can't expect everything to be the same.

Responses from Mary Fels 4/14/2006 - Memoir #2

SUMMERS PAST

Godfrey, Illinois wasn't much when I used to go there as a child in the early '40s: a scattering of houses, a couple of white-steepled churches, a post office housed in the back of a grocery, a sandwich shop and tavern, a small brick high school in a dusty yard, and up from the hard road half a mile, the tracks and depot. It was hardly big enough to call itself a town. It was a whistle-stop then, five or six miles north of Alton, an hour's drive across the river from St. Louis, where I grew up.

Why does it have such a hold on me? I close my eyes now and smell its coal dust smells and hear its echoes. I spent large parts--the best parts--of my summers there when I was 8, 9, 10 years old, staying with aunt Corie and Uncle Elmer in their little house right on the edge of the railroad tracks.

I was a city kid, roller skating on the sidewalks, catching the streetcar to the Cardinal games, having lunch in the tea room at Famous-Barr downtown. But I'd leave all that like a shot for the chance to spend a few weeks in Godfrey. In the country.

Little fields of corn or alfalfa or soybeans, cow pastures, big vegetable gardens separated the houses there. I'd wake in the morning to sweet country sounds: cows bawling, cackling chickens, twittering birds. there was a pump of some kind out of sight up the track tapping all day long. "Tap," it would go, "tap," "tap-tap-tap-tap," "tap-tap-tap." I kept trying to work out some pattern in those taps. Never could. Like our days. No pattern. Just long, hot, lazy days with nothing to do and a million things to do.

The real attraction, though, was the trains, which regularly--gloriously--shattered our rural tranquility. They roared and screeched and hissed and clattered by, a mere 20 yards from the house, shaking the floors and walls, rattling the cups in the pantry, spreading a daily layer of soot on table tops and window sills, spitting tiny cinders in my hair, filling my imagination and dreams, providing drama and enchantment--a source of endless fascination and delight.

They rumbled past all day and all night. We were on the Alton Road's main line from Chicago to St. Louis, and during the war years the traffic was almost unceasing. Always when I first got there I'd bolt awake wide-eyed and terrified a dozen times a night as one of the monsters roared by, but by the third night I could sleep through earthquakes. I would become a railroad kid. Not even the teeth-rattling crack of switching cards could startle me. I loved those trains, loved them all. We had long rambling, clanking freights, boxcars painted with mysterious long numbers in the corners, their glorious names blazoned on the sides: Lackawanna, Chesapeake & Ohio, New York Central, Santa Fe, Southern Pacific--a whole geography lesson of names.

In between were grimy tank cars, flat cars with bulky mysterious shapes shrouded in tarpaulin (secret weapons we figured). All were pulled by huge black steam locomotives. We had sleek fast streamliners with white-coated dining car waiters lounging in the vestibules enjoying a smoke. They always waved. Engineers usually waved also; conductors sometimes. Boys in troop trains always waved. The windows of the troop train would become a blur of khaki arms.

But what for me was a kind of child's paradise was for Aunt Corie, I realize now, something else: a place of endless hard work chasing coal dust and grime, a place of very little money, a place shared with a demanding, often cantankerous husband 10 years older than she, a place of a grinding loneliness.

She would, every chance she got, escape to the city. She'd come over on a summer Saturday to indulge in a little shopping in downtown St. Louis department stores, then climb the bus to south St. Louis to spend the weekend with our family. Starved for conversation, she'd keep my mother up half the night talking on the front porch.

Along about Sunday afternoon, she'd say, "Hazel why don't you let the kids (my brother and me) come back and spend a week or so with me? They won't be any trouble." Pause. "And it's getting on to blackberry time." That was enough. I'd be up gathering shorts and tops and pajamas and one nice dress, just in case. And Daddy always gave each of us a dollar bill for spending money.

On Monday morning, lugging our oilcloth suitcases, we would trail Aunt Corie as she expertly threaded her way through the turmoil that was Union Station in wartime. She would march ahead, parting the crowds with her formidable satchel, casting a venomous eye and all-too-audible epithet on any hapless young man in civilian clothes. "Slacker!" she would hiss, "Draft dodger!" If her son were in the Marines, how dare they walk the streets!

Uncle Elmer's lifelong employment as a telegrapher with the road entitled Aunt Corie to a pass powerful enough to wangle all three of us a free ride. She would flash the magical pass at the gate and we would skip, our heels twanging on the granite pavement, through the vast, cool, smoke-smelling shed to a far siding to No. 11, a dusty, two-bit, three-passenger-one-baggage car milk train that would transport us to Godfrey.

We clambered aboard, happily breathed in the sooty, attic-like day coach smell. We patted the balding plush seats with white linen antimacassars (even on an old wreck like this, the linen was clean and starched). We pushed levers to adjust the seats. We loved the sudden lurch that began the slow backing out from the shadowy, vaulted station. The trip was always mercifully long--eating up maybe an hour and a half or two hours for the 30-mile journey to Alton. We stopped for everything: mail bags off, milk cars on, passenger--mostly train people like us--off, and on, a 20-minute wait on a siding for something important to go through. So we had ample time to pace, stagger, lurch up and down the aisles, treat ourselves to a dozen drinks of sooty-tasting icy water from paper envelope-cups at the end of the car, gaze out the windows, wave at anything that moved.

We would get off at the depot in downtown Alton within spitting distance of the Mississippi. My brother would hurl rocks from the levee into the muddy water as we waited for the dinky bus to take us up to Godfrey.

Our bus wound past the grain elevators on the river front, labored up the steep narrow streets of Alton (the last excuse for a hill you'd find before the flat prairies of Southern Illinois), out of town on the hard road, stopping at last at the Red & White store. We'd check for mail at the post office in the back, maybe buy a quart of milk to take home. There was a long block of half-paved road from there to the tracks, always lined, as I remember it, with lilac and snowball bushes, and clumps of tiger lilies and honeysuckle twining on all the fences. We turned at the depot, then down the cinders to the house..

It wasn't much of a house: white asbestos shingles outside, four tiny rooms within. The kitchen was dominated by a large, round, black oak pedestal table. Five or six high-backed wooden chairs, a monitor-top electric refrigerator and a big, enameled coal oil stove completed the furniture. The smell of coal oil clung to the house, our clothes, our hair--a good smell for me to this day. It evokes Godfrey--and pies.

There were all kinds of pies: blackberry cobblers and fresh peach and apple crumb and strawberry rhubarb with thick, sweet juices oozing over crusts so short they crumbled to the touch. Uncle Elmer was a quirky old man with a few passions--indeed, addictions--that demanded satisfaction: strong coffee, Lucky Strike cigarettes, Coca Cola and pie. He worked the 4-to-midnight shift at the Signal Tower and demanded at least one piece of pie to take for his dinner, another when he came home late, and by God, Aunt Corie better have them ready for him. Accordingly, she rolled out at least one masterpiece, sometimes a couple, every day of the world.

Behind the kitchen was Uncle Elmer's bedroom, forbidden territory to all. He worked late, slept almost until noon, and would not tolerate any women or kids messing with his newspapers and magazines. Separating his room and Aunt Corie's room was a tiny bathroom with a porcelain claw-foot tub. We washed off the soot there every night before bed in one inch of cold water with a bar of red Lifebuoy soap.

I bunked in with aunt Corie; my brother had a feather-bed pallet on the living room floor. The little living room with a fake oriental carpet and aging brown plush sofa and overstuffed chair was generally ignored. All socializing took place in the kitchen in winter, the screened-in front porch in the summer, made magic by the lush green vine that enclosed it on three sides. Aunt Corie had started that vine from a shoot years earlier, and it grew and spread and grew and spread. She had a way with plants; she could make a croquet wicket bloom if she had a mind to.

The porch was cool and green. Sunlight filtering through the leaves winked and danced on the linoleum floor. Uncle Elmer had constructed an elegant wood porch swing that took up one end, and on a sultry afternoon I would fetch a feather pillow and one of the ancient books from the case in the living room--"Tarzan of the Apes," "The Girls of the Limberlost," "Brewster's Millions"--lie in the gently swaying swing and read the day away.

But most days we were up and about, busying ourselves with homely little chores and diversions. We'd help Aunt Corie drag a wicker basket of wet clothes from the wringer-washer in the cellar and hang them flapping on the lines. We'd pull some weeds from her vegetable garden or gather up tomatoes or snap beans or lettuce, whatever was ready. We'd practice tight-rope walking on the rails of the train siding closest to the house; we'd poke around the cow pasture behind the house ("You kids watch where you step now!" she'd call. We'd walk a V-Mail letter to the post office or accompany her to a neighbor's on the other side of the tracks to buy some eggs or a couple of squawking chickens for Sunday dinner.

When Uncle Elmer decided conditions were exactly right, or he was in a mood to fool with us, he would take us to the pond beyond the pasture to pick blackberries. We had our clean 3-pound lard buckets, our snake sticks (any inch-thick branch we could lay our hands on, and any moccasin better look out if he saw us coming), long pants, long-sleeved shirts, anything not covered by cloth smeared with citronella.

We'd drag home hours later sweaty, dirty, pricked, scratched, maddened by chigger bites, penetrated by ticks, dying of thirst, teeth clogged with tiny blackberry seeds, but joyously triumphant with overflowing pails of dark purple berries. And dying to go again next day.

Some mornings a single boxcar would stand temporarily abandoned on the siding nearest the house. We'd clamber up the ladder, the cold iron rungs gritty in our hands, up and up into the sky. The cars were wondrously tall. A wooden walkway, about a foot and a half wide, ran the length of the cars--wide enough to walk with care, but deliciously scary. We'd walk it once to prove our courage, then perch at the center in lofty eminence to gaze at the world: the depot, Uncle Elmer's Tower, Mr. Doty's little store across the tracks, the house and garden, the pasture, the mass of trees concealing the pond, the tracks stretching straight ad flat into infinity.

Some days we'd go to town, faces scrubbed, hair combed, shoes polished, our spending money tucked into coin purses and carefully hidden deep in a pocket or purse. Aunt Corie would ease herself into her girdle, put on a little flowered something she had run up on the machine, finished with stockings, white shoes, a little black straw sailor and a circle of rouge on each cheek. We'd pick our way delicately over the cinders and down to the hard road to wait for the bus to town.

We had the afternoon before us. Aunt Corie looked longingly at the window displays of the Vogue, but saved her shopping for Young's Department Store, where she'd try on a few hats, spray on a little free cologne, buy a pair of stockings or remnant of yard goods, poke around for sales. We kids were docile, captivated by the system of little metal boxes carrying receipts and change that shot up and down and across the ceilings in pneumatic tubes.

We always finished up at Woolworth's--our treat. An agony of deciding. 'The balsa airplane or the paddle ball? The tin teapot and teacups or the Jeannette McDonald paper doll book? Money would finally change hands, and having once broken the dollar bill, we'd recklessly blow ourselves to a chocolate sundae at the fountain.

Sometimes on Uncle Elmer's day off he'd treat us to a movie in Alton, if there was a good picture at the Grand. A good picture was one that promised tap-dancing--another of his passions was tap-dancing movies. We saw them all: Fred Astaire, of course, and the Nicholas Brothers and George Murphy and Ann Miller and Eleanor Powell. Most were in Technicolor and Technicolor was a treat in those days.

We'd take the late afternoon bus back from town. As we walked up from the hard road, Uncle Elmer would draw his round nickel railroad watch from his pocket and squint at it a moment. "About time for No. 3," he'd say. And in a moment a whistle would pierce the air and No. 3 would flash by highballing-it down from Chicago.

And so we'd pass the summer days, sometimes on excursions but mostly poking around, exploring, making things, taking things apart, scratching bites, walking the tracks, picking at scabs on elbows and knees. Sometimes we'd have a contest to see who could swat the most flies in 15 minutes. sometimes we'd brig out a galvanized washtub, fill it with water and splash in it for an hour.

Along about 4, Uncle Elmer came up from his workbench in the cellar to go to work. He'd gather up his supper, his pie, his Cokes, his lantern and off he'd go up the tracks to the tower. I see him in his blue chambray work shirt and pants, black suspenders, stooped a , a little frail but with a shock of straight gray hair swept back from his high forehead. I see his trainman's cap with the brim bent in a perfect curved V. I hear his whistle. Always the same song, "Memphis Blues." (I was grown before I learned it was a real song and had a name.) The haunting, lowdown, sweet-sad notes would hang for a moment, then fade in the late afternoon quiet.

Later, Aunt Corie would fix some supper for the three of us and after we'd cleared up we'd mosey outside. We'd uncoil the hose from the shed out back and watch the spray make rainbows in the dying sun as she watered her petunias and snapdragons ad marigolds. I see her in her faded housedress and runover shoes, holding a petunia in her outstretched hand, making soft chirping notes, enticing a hummingbird that used to arrive every evening.

"Come on, Aunt Corie," we'd say, "you can't make a pet out of a hummingbird."

"Hush," she'd whisper, "you'll scare him." It would dart here and there, circle, hover, swoop and finally, its tiny wings beating furiously, pause at the flower in her hand, insert its long beak and sip, as we sucked in our breaths in wonder and delight.

As darkness fell, we'd drag out canvas lawn chairs to the front yard and sip sweet iced tea and fan ourselves and slap at mosquitoes and listen to Aunt Corie tell us funny or sad or spooky stories about when she was a girl.

Sometimes Uncle Elmer would come home during a lull between trains for a Coke or an extra pack of cigarettes. "You kids can come up to the Tower for a while if you want to," he'd say. We always wanted to, but we'd never go until invited. We walked a narrow line with the old man, and we knew he would not suffer savages gladly. We addressed him with "Yes sir" and "No sir" and never touched his newspapers or his pie or his Cokes, and never, ever, slammed the screen door in his presence. Thus proving ourselves civilized. We were tolerated, maybe even liked.

The Tower was a frame one-room affair about 8 feet by 20, perched on high stilts right at the edge of the tracks just beyond the depot. Most of the room was taken up by long cast-iron levers that controlled signal lights and switches. When a train's arrival was imminent, Uncle Elmer would spring gracefully from lever to lever, pulling some, releasing others. Nearest the door was his ancient, scarred wood desk. A green shaded bulb hung suspended from the rafters, and directly beneath was the telegraph equipment that filled the room with constant clatter.

Attached to the wall over the desk was a diagram of the track layout for the surrounding area, with a tiny light bulb marking each town. As a train approached they would light in sequence....Roodhouse....White Hall....Jerseyville....Godfrey.

We would play at the bottom of the Tower steps, chasing lightning bugs, until no more light was left. Then we'd troop up the wood steps to the Tower room, all in deep shadow now except for the bright circle around the desk. The telegraph would clatter, and Uncle Elmer's lean fingers would dance on the keys in response. The small lights on the map would begin to wink on.

"Looks like No. 8 will be along in a few minutes. Let's go down and wait for her."

He'd write a few words on a slip of paper, roll it into a cylinder and reach for a long-handled Y-shaped bamboo pole hanging on the wall. He'd twist the note expertly in the center of the string, looping the ends of the string on each prong. If I were very lucky, he'd say, "Ill let you hand up the orders if you're real careful and do just what I tell you."

A great compliment. A great responsibility. And scary.

At the bottom of the steps we'd point to a set of rails. "She's coming on that track yonder," he'd say, "and you kids might be able to hear her pretty soon." We'd kneel on the ties and press our ears to the cold steel. Faintly, ever so faintly, we'd hear--feel--a trembling, a thin high singing, a suggestion of the roar to come, as you hear the echo of the sea when you put your ear to a shell. The tremor would grow to a vibration, the vibration into a hum.

Up and down the tracks , the signal lights would glow red.

"Now, he'd say, putting the bamboo in my hands, "You stand right here" (only a few feet from the track!) "and when you see the light from the engine you hold it just so" (arranging my arms at the proper angle) "and don't go waving it around, but hold it steady." I knew I would, equally terrified of being crushed under the wheels and of the old man's displeasure.

We could hear her now as we waited in the darkness, a dim roar growing louder and louder, and then the long mournful whistle echoing in the darkened countryside. We'd see a tiny pinpoint of light far down the tracks growing larger, brighter, into a piercing beam as my brother jumped up and down with excitement and Uncle Elmer twirled the lantern round and round, making a glowing circle in the darkness. I would watch, transfixed, heart pounding, my trembling arms extended, clutching the bamboo stick for dear life as the massive engine grew larger and the sound swelled to an ear-splitting, screeching, grinding roar.

And then it was upon us, sucking my breath into its power and enormousness, its mammoth wheels higher than my head. I'd vaguely feel a little tug as a hand reached from somewhere above to snatch the string, vaguely be aware of a "plop" behind of the Chicago newspapers thrown from the cab hitting the cinders.

But mostly I'd be caught, suspended a moment in delicious terror and awe and exhilaration that had no equal. I'd slump exhausted as the boxcars and flat cars and tank cars creaked and rattled past. And then it was gone.

Uncle Elmer would gather up his newspapers and lantern. "Come on now, kids, I'll walk you home." All was quiet now, except for the crickets and locusts chirping a summer song, the crunch of our footsteps on the cinders, a few snatches of "Memphis Blues." His cigarette glowed a dull orange, and the swooping lantern made mysterious shadows on the tracks as we walked.

Sundays would bring a couple of carloads of relatives from St. Louis. We'd set up tables in the front yard, and my brother and I, armed with swatters, would massacre scores of flies drawn by the fried chicken and mashed potatoes with milk gravy, and sweet corn and green beans and sliced tomatoes and wilted-lettuce salad my mother and aunts carried from the kitchen. And pies.

After dinner the grown-ups would settle in for a long, furiously contested game of croquet in the back yard. They would play the afternoon away with cries of triumph and anguish, brilliant shots, terrible misses, insteps cracked with mallets, foolishness and laughter.

They'd play until darkness fell and they began falling over wickets and losing the wooden balls in the vegetable garden. Then we'd pack up and collect treasures and a big hug from Aunt Corie, then back again for one more hug. She would stand in the darkened front yard lit only by the glow of the yellow bug light suspended under the eaves, waving until our car turned by the depot and we were lost from sight.

Responses from Mary Fels 4/14/2006 - Memoir #3


AN INDIAN SUMMER HALLOWEEN

St. Louis weather was often cold and rainy in late October when I was a kid in the 30's and 40's, but once in a while just a few days before Halloween a warm front would come drifting up from the south bringing Indian Summer. Kindergarten kids with orange colored-paper jack-o-lanterns and black witch's hats fluttering in their hands would peel off sweaters and jackets as they danced home from school. The warm breeze would swirl the crackling sycamore leaves covering the sidewalks, and the late afternoon sun would cast an amber sheen on the dark red brick of South St. Louis.

On South Kingshighway where I used to live, kids would be out racing up and down on their bikes taking care of important Halloween business. Miss Allen's confectionery across from school carried wonderful half-face masks (eyes only) in all colors at two for a nickel, and both kinds of candy apples--caramel-coated, and cinnamon hard-red-candy-coated. Baker's dime store, preferred by all the boys, offered full-face masks, a preponderance of which were of the zombie/ witch/ Dracula/ Frankenstein persuasion, all a ghastly green. They had the cheapest candy corn, and they featured a vast selection of wax lips, fangs, buck teeth, and multi-colored face dye. Most important of all, they had vats of dried peas, and pea-shooters. The Indian Summer Halloweens would throw everybody into a frenzy. The heat would generate some winners, some losers. Fairy princesses, Sonja Henies and drum majorettes would be delighted, relieved that for once they would not be required to wear corny winter coats over their splendor. Clowns in yards of heavy cotton and hoboes whose costumes depended on their fathers' old wool suit coats assumed they would fall over dead from heat exhaustion. But the event was worth the risk. Because when I was a kid, Halloween was one of the really big days of the year--right up there with Christmas and School Picnic Day at the Forest Park Highlands. It was partly the fun of dressing up, partly the anticipation of a big bag of free candy which did not have to be shared with brothers or anybody. But mostly, I think, it was the sheer joy of going out into the night with no supervision, prepared for danger and adventure (more imagined than real) to engage in a little mild mischief, to be masters of the neighborhood for one night.

There was such an Indian Summer Halloween in 1943 or 1944 when I was ten or eleven. All day we worried, as we did every year, that clouds would roll in and dump rain on everything. Mothers would be reasonable about a little drizzle, but a downpour would keep us inside.

We watched the skies and conferred with our confederates of the evening, planning routes, plotting vengeance on enemies, worrying about our costumes, dodging peas shot from illegal pea-shooters. Pea-shooters were tubes of tin about a foot long with wooden mouthpieces on one end. Every mother in every house was certain that some poor child's eye (probably her child's) would be put out before the evening ended. They begged and pleaded and warned against and sometimes forbade--as the school did--peas and pea-shooters. In vain. Every kid had a couple of shooters and a brown paper bag of hard dried peas. Every kid had a mouthful of peas which they propelled, ptoooo!.....ptoooo! through the mouthpiece. Sometimes in our excitement we swallowed a few peas, sometimes we cut our lips or fingers on the ragged edges of the cheap tin, regularly we got stung on the arms and legs and neck with pea missiles, but nobody ever got an eye put out.

My gang for the evening--my best friends, Joyce and Joan, and I--met many times during the day, making last-minute plans. Our fantasy was to find the arch-fiend, Willie Schmidt, alone that night, stun him first with peas and then punch him into insensibility. Willie was a plump boy with little piggy eyes whose sole aim in life was to make our lives miserable. He not only stole our jumping ropes, he threw them into the garbage; he put library paste on our chairs; he regularly stuck out a surreptitious foot to send us sprawling down aisles in the schoolroom; he poked sharpened pencils in our backs. We thought he looked like Herman Goering--not a young Herman Goering, but Herman Goering--and we wanted to destroy him.

And we had to determine which neighborhoods to hit. My Aunt Grace, who lived a few blocks away, was an attractive possibility. Uncle Al had friends with a candy distributorship and Aunt Grace not only had, but gave out, Hershey Bars, a rare (in war times) and much coveted delicacy. Further down the street from Aunt Grace was a row of large ritzy houses whose owners were capable, we felt, of giving out large ritzy treats. But to get there we had to walk past the cemetery right off Gravois, and although sophisticated kids like us didn't believe in