Djurdjevic - Personal Photos - St. Louis, Apr 2007

23 Jan 2011

Updated April 29, 2007

Back in St. Louis...

Gateway to the West through a Giant Arch

Day 2 (Apr 29)

ST. LOUIS, Apr 29, 2007 - As soon as I walked out of my hotel on this Sunday, I knew it was going to be a hot day. It was just after 11AM, and the temperatures were already in the 80s (they ended up well into the 90s by late afternoon). But the weather was not too humid, so it was a nice day to drive around.

I met Karen's younger brother Clay in Creve Coeur, a western St. Louis suburb, who acted as my guide during about a three-hour exploration of these lovely neighborhoods. Here her is, for example, in Creve Coeur park, the first stop of our little tour. Clay is a personal trainer by profession and a weight lifter who had just had knee surgery after an injury last winter - thus a knee brace.

The part looked beautiful, basking in warm springtime sunshine (that in most parts of the country would qualify as summertime weather). It was only the absence of thick leaves on some trees that reminded us of the fact that this is still early spring.

This lovely park even includes a full size lake that looks man-made but is not. It is fed by two natural streams, one of which is but a trickle cascading down a potentially pretty waterfall (the rightmost photo).

This is where Clay showed me a plaque that explains how this town got its sad name (Creve Coeur means a "broken heart" in French). You can read it for yourself. I take it that this Indian maiden must have killed herself at this waterfall.

After that, Clay took me on a "treasure hunt" of his boyhood memories. He said, for example, he knew one of the very few places where you can actually get to the Missouri River. That's because "No Trespassing" signs apparently bar public access to it. I didn't ask why but could guess when we eventually did make it there.

After driving around for a while, we came across this ancient water purification plant. It seems to date back to the 19th century. High fences, such as the one above, surround it...

... as well as the neighboring farm property (above). The wooded ridge above that is an embankment on top of which a swanky Riverbend neighborhood is located (where Clay grew up). But before we got here, we did pass another "No Trespassing" sign. We ignored it, of course, though its existence did seem to surprise Clay. His "secret passage" was no longer free to public, either.

As soon as I parked the car, as if drawn by some sort of a river magnet, Clay rushed off down the embankment toward the great Missouri. I was marveling at how well he was moving, given that he had spent several months in an enormous cast after his knee injury.

The river looked muddy and angry. Many swirling pools of water in a fast-moving current implied heavy undertow. I grew up on a river like that, back in Serbia, I told Clay. Everything looked very familiar even though it was probably 7,000 miles away. I had lost some foolish friends to such whirlpools, and had healthy respect for rivers like this. Yet in summertime, when the water subsided a bit, I would swim across and back, I told Clay. Why? "Just because it was there," as Sir Hillary put it when asked why he climbed Mt. Everest. It's what boys do...

"Nobody swims in this river," Clay said. I could see why not. The "Riverbend" neighborhood got its name from a sharp bend in the river here. And given the soft soil, that mean many deadly undertows. I could now see why there were all those "No Trespassing" signs on all approaches to the river, including the new one that we ignored.

Within minutes of driving up that Riverbend ridge, the scenery was completely different. Lush lawns and plush homes on large lots lined the winding roads.

He said he helped his father plant many of these trees when the family moved here in the late 1960s, including that spruce at the end of the driveway. He said he had also planted that other big tree in front of the smaller house on the right, where he lived later on in life.

Our last stop was the Riverbend community club where Clay and his siblings swam, played tennis, and engaged in other sports and social activities. The pool is still empty, as you can see, as the swimming season in St. Louis is not what it is in Phoenix, but the lovely lilies below, white with a lavender touch in the middle, where ready to welcome the new generations of Riverbend kids and youth for this coming summer.

When I returned to my hotel and went to register for my conference, I learned of the tragedy in which the a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals (Josh Hancock) was killed in the early morning hours in a traffic accident on a nearby downtown freeway. I had a ticket for tonight's game against the Cubs. I also learned at the conference center that the game was canceled. So it goes...

Coming back to my hotel from a dinner this evening, I passed the arch again. This time, it was illuminated by a milky moonlight (see top right of the photo). The scene reminded me of my last night in Moscow a month ago, when the moon also appeared over the Kremlin and other sites...