First Day At School
Today was David's first day at school. I dropped him off at a middle school in a VERY nice part of town, and the last I saw of him before I left was him pulling out a plastic chair next to a table filled with stuffed penguins. There were about five other kids there.
He was very reluctant to go. He cried when we left the house and said he USED to want to go, but didn't anymore. When we got there he wanted to take his Triceratops in, but then decided to leave it (him) in the car. So his big Saturday adventure is his first class ever...two of them, actually. One is Penguins, Puffins & Polar Bears and the other is An Expedition With Pooh.
Finding myself with three hours and no kids was stunning, so I headed over to Forest Park. I couldn't quite decide between the Art Museum or the History Museum, but eventually picked the latter. Mostly because I'd never been there before.
They were holding the Scottish Games right next door (And see, I said that without making any sheep jokes! How classy is that?) and of course there were bagpipes galore. I don't actually mind bagpipes (I know some people hate them), so it didn't bother me a bit. It was rather surreal, however, walking up to the museum.
Looking down, there are quotes about the importance of history and heritage, quotes which have been chiseled into big, granite slabs set into the bricking on the ground...and even most of the bricks themselves are chiseled with names of donors to the museum, the biggest and most wealthy of whom have actual brick-sized metal plaques installed into the mortar. Smaller attempts to be remembered by history. The museum itself is the Jefferson Memorial, built in 1914 (with the proceeds from the World's Fair, I'll have you know) with these huge, imposing columns and this gigantic, larger-than-life, seated statue of Thomas Jefferson looming ahead, with a vaulted entry way above your head and the whole while the bagpipes are wailing away, their sound reverberating off all the stone. Just...surreal.
So while my kid was in class, I learned a bit of St. Louis history. Now...for those who are uninitiated, the 1904 World's Fair was held in St. Louis. You cannot go for more than a couple of weeks here without hearing all about it, too. Native St. Louisians seem to focus their obsessive energy on two obscurities: 1) What high school everyone attended (apparently this allows them to pigeon-hole and categorize your social status, income levels, and relative intelligence instantaneously) and 2) the 1904 World's Fair.
Just merely MENTIONING the World's Fair will bring up all kinds of stories you never wanted to hear...whose great-grandparents went to the thing and who has the rarest souvenir and...oh my. It's really a point of pride for some folks.
I have never understood this in the least. My attitude, in fact, has pretty much been ''Get Over It!'' It did end, after all, more than 100 years ago.
I think learning the context of the thing helped out some.
St. Louis was not a great place to live back in the day. We as a nation, of course, made the Lousiana Purchase in 1803, (and no history book I ever read in school pointed this out, and neither did the museum, but...) mainly out of fear of France and the political whims of a somewhat short little man with a funny hat named Napoleon. Forget 'Manifest Destiny' and all that crap, that was cover for our desire NOT to become a colony of France just 25 years after winning our independence from the British. OK, so we gather up the Lewis and Clark team (who hate each other...also not mentioned by the scrubbed history books) and their lackeys to go figure out what the heck we just bought. Fast-forward.
In the 1850s, things took a turn for the worse. In February, a nasty cholera epidemic swept through the city. The city hospital had only 90 beds, which was a smaller number than the daily death toll from the disease. Some accounts say many thousands were killed by the cholera epidemic.
Things went from bad to worse when a fire alarm sounded on May 17th of the same year...the steamer "The White Cloud" sat burning. The Fire Department at the time consisted of nine hand engines and hose reels that promptly responded. The lines tying the boat to the dock broke, however, and the burning boat slowly floated with the current and set fire to twenty-two other steamers lying moored to the shore.
Finally it ran aground a quarter of a mile away, where the heat of the fire ignited a nearby building. The fire swept from building to building, flames leaping hundreds of feet in the air.
By daylight on May 18th the firemen were completely demoralized and exhausted. The city's water supply was wiped out, and the path to the river was blocked by flames.
Apparently 41 year-old Capt. Thomas B. Targee of Missouri No.5 grabbed a few buddies and they descended on the armory, taking away kegs of gunpowder. In desperation they began throwing the kegs into standing buildings and detonating the powder in order to blow up the buildings and create a fire break. They got three buildings blown up, but the fourth keg detonated prematurely and took Targee with it. The plan worked, though...the fire was finally stopped after destroying 430 houses, twenty-three steamers, nine flatboats and barges, the Republican, Reveille and Evening Gazette printing offices, the post office and three banks.
In 1890, a gigantic tornado came ripping through East St. Louis and St. Louis' south side, killing several hundred and leaving thousands and thousands without homes and jobs. Just three years later, an economic depression gripped the area, lending its share of poverty and despair
Is it any wonder then, when it was announced that the World's Fair would be held here 10 years later, that residents not only rejoiced at the money that would be coming in, but also scrambled like mad to prove that St. Louis was more than a disease-ravaged, burned-out pile of uninhabited kindling and driftwood sitting along the Mississippi?
The city went completely nuts. The Fair site, Forest Park, didn't exist. It was all wetlands. Undaunted by this fact, the finest engineers and Works Department employees got to work madly draining the wetlands. In an absolute fit of early Industrial-age egotism, the city went about building a site that would look as though it had stood for centuries, like the grand palace grounds of Europe. They erected nearly every building now standing at Forest Park in about 14 months. They created a sort of slag of limestone and cement and poured it into molds which were later cracked open and ''carvings'' of lion's heads and Venus de Milo wanna-be's emerged. This ornate stuff, called ''staff'' was hung on every corner and nook and cranny of every building they could think of.
In a nutshell, they managed to pull it off. They put forth a Herculean effort to create an impression of a history of class and culture which just didn't exist...and it paid off, as the world bought it. This spectacular sleight-of-hand has gone down in local history as The Real Deal. As if all the world's knowledge, culture and advancement suddenly sprouted up in Forest Park at daybreak on the first day of the 1904 World's Fair, admitting St. Louis into the rarified circle of the cultural elite.
Legends in their own minds.
He was very reluctant to go. He cried when we left the house and said he USED to want to go, but didn't anymore. When we got there he wanted to take his Triceratops in, but then decided to leave it (him) in the car. So his big Saturday adventure is his first class ever...two of them, actually. One is Penguins, Puffins & Polar Bears and the other is An Expedition With Pooh.
Finding myself with three hours and no kids was stunning, so I headed over to Forest Park. I couldn't quite decide between the Art Museum or the History Museum, but eventually picked the latter. Mostly because I'd never been there before.
They were holding the Scottish Games right next door (And see, I said that without making any sheep jokes! How classy is that?) and of course there were bagpipes galore. I don't actually mind bagpipes (I know some people hate them), so it didn't bother me a bit. It was rather surreal, however, walking up to the museum.
Looking down, there are quotes about the importance of history and heritage, quotes which have been chiseled into big, granite slabs set into the bricking on the ground...and even most of the bricks themselves are chiseled with names of donors to the museum, the biggest and most wealthy of whom have actual brick-sized metal plaques installed into the mortar. Smaller attempts to be remembered by history. The museum itself is the Jefferson Memorial, built in 1914 (with the proceeds from the World's Fair, I'll have you know) with these huge, imposing columns and this gigantic, larger-than-life, seated statue of Thomas Jefferson looming ahead, with a vaulted entry way above your head and the whole while the bagpipes are wailing away, their sound reverberating off all the stone. Just...surreal.
So while my kid was in class, I learned a bit of St. Louis history. Now...for those who are uninitiated, the 1904 World's Fair was held in St. Louis. You cannot go for more than a couple of weeks here without hearing all about it, too. Native St. Louisians seem to focus their obsessive energy on two obscurities: 1) What high school everyone attended (apparently this allows them to pigeon-hole and categorize your social status, income levels, and relative intelligence instantaneously) and 2) the 1904 World's Fair.
Just merely MENTIONING the World's Fair will bring up all kinds of stories you never wanted to hear...whose great-grandparents went to the thing and who has the rarest souvenir and...oh my. It's really a point of pride for some folks.
I have never understood this in the least. My attitude, in fact, has pretty much been ''Get Over It!'' It did end, after all, more than 100 years ago.
I think learning the context of the thing helped out some.
St. Louis was not a great place to live back in the day. We as a nation, of course, made the Lousiana Purchase in 1803, (and no history book I ever read in school pointed this out, and neither did the museum, but...) mainly out of fear of France and the political whims of a somewhat short little man with a funny hat named Napoleon. Forget 'Manifest Destiny' and all that crap, that was cover for our desire NOT to become a colony of France just 25 years after winning our independence from the British. OK, so we gather up the Lewis and Clark team (who hate each other...also not mentioned by the scrubbed history books) and their lackeys to go figure out what the heck we just bought. Fast-forward.
In the 1850s, things took a turn for the worse. In February, a nasty cholera epidemic swept through the city. The city hospital had only 90 beds, which was a smaller number than the daily death toll from the disease. Some accounts say many thousands were killed by the cholera epidemic.
Things went from bad to worse when a fire alarm sounded on May 17th of the same year...the steamer "The White Cloud" sat burning. The Fire Department at the time consisted of nine hand engines and hose reels that promptly responded. The lines tying the boat to the dock broke, however, and the burning boat slowly floated with the current and set fire to twenty-two other steamers lying moored to the shore.
Finally it ran aground a quarter of a mile away, where the heat of the fire ignited a nearby building. The fire swept from building to building, flames leaping hundreds of feet in the air.
By daylight on May 18th the firemen were completely demoralized and exhausted. The city's water supply was wiped out, and the path to the river was blocked by flames.
Apparently 41 year-old Capt. Thomas B. Targee of Missouri No.5 grabbed a few buddies and they descended on the armory, taking away kegs of gunpowder. In desperation they began throwing the kegs into standing buildings and detonating the powder in order to blow up the buildings and create a fire break. They got three buildings blown up, but the fourth keg detonated prematurely and took Targee with it. The plan worked, though...the fire was finally stopped after destroying 430 houses, twenty-three steamers, nine flatboats and barges, the Republican, Reveille and Evening Gazette printing offices, the post office and three banks.
In 1890, a gigantic tornado came ripping through East St. Louis and St. Louis' south side, killing several hundred and leaving thousands and thousands without homes and jobs. Just three years later, an economic depression gripped the area, lending its share of poverty and despair
Is it any wonder then, when it was announced that the World's Fair would be held here 10 years later, that residents not only rejoiced at the money that would be coming in, but also scrambled like mad to prove that St. Louis was more than a disease-ravaged, burned-out pile of uninhabited kindling and driftwood sitting along the Mississippi?
The city went completely nuts. The Fair site, Forest Park, didn't exist. It was all wetlands. Undaunted by this fact, the finest engineers and Works Department employees got to work madly draining the wetlands. In an absolute fit of early Industrial-age egotism, the city went about building a site that would look as though it had stood for centuries, like the grand palace grounds of Europe. They erected nearly every building now standing at Forest Park in about 14 months. They created a sort of slag of limestone and cement and poured it into molds which were later cracked open and ''carvings'' of lion's heads and Venus de Milo wanna-be's emerged. This ornate stuff, called ''staff'' was hung on every corner and nook and cranny of every building they could think of.
In a nutshell, they managed to pull it off. They put forth a Herculean effort to create an impression of a history of class and culture which just didn't exist...and it paid off, as the world bought it. This spectacular sleight-of-hand has gone down in local history as The Real Deal. As if all the world's knowledge, culture and advancement suddenly sprouted up in Forest Park at daybreak on the first day of the 1904 World's Fair, admitting St. Louis into the rarified circle of the cultural elite.
Legends in their own minds.
posted by Kelly at
12:50 PM
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