In my last blog Tank and I were St Louis bound. We left New York early in the morning, gliding our cases along streets that were still waking in the calm before the noise storm that is Midtown. We caught the NJ Transit and AirTrain to Newark Airport and were in the air at about 9 am. That's pretty early for us - we were munching the last of our cereal at 5.45 am. [And excellent cereal it was too: heritage grains - sound familiar? If you've drawn a blank please feel free to see Blackbird Pie for relevant details].
After the usual shoe removal, body scan (the US authorities must know that I buy supermarket underwear by now) and the pad down at Newark, we took to the skies and two hours later landed in St Louis. As we circled to come in for landing I spied the great gateway arch glinting way off in the distance. The gateway to the West...
Setting romance aside, it was HOT! Genuinely hot, not that if you stand in the sun for ten minutes you get a little warm. More like back home in Australia on a summer day. As I said to Tank, if we were at home I wouldn't set foot outside in this kind of heat (have better things to do than sweat, shame on me), but as Tank replied, when you're a tourist you do what you need to do. Precisely.
The Gateway Arch beckoned. We stood beneath it, snapping pics and being rightfully awestruck by its 630 feet of grandness and soaring silv'riness. You can ride a tram to the viewing windows and have a magnificent view of the Mississippi and beyond, but I'm not good with heights and well, it's an arch, people, as tall as a skyscraper but with none of the building... less said about my chickenosity the better (shame on me again).
Tank and I arrived in St Louis on a very special day - a day 154 years in the making! The unveiling of the Dred & Harriet Scott Memorial beside the steps of the Old Courthouse in downtown St Louis. Excitedly, we joined the gathering for this historic occasion.
You may know of the Dred Scott case. Dred Scott was a slave who sued for his freedom in the years leading up to the American Civil War. The case arose at a time when America was expanding westward and debating the future of slavery as both a moral and political issue for the Union. The complexities of the Dred Scott case are probably rightfully left for a blog all of its very own, but when you experience St Louis today, you can only imagine what it was like for the African American slaves being sold on the steps of the Old Courthouse, which faces out towards the Mississippi and its famous levee, now with the Gateway Arch on its banks towering over both the old and the new.
The immense joy and the pride of the citizens (and visitors) gathered was testament to the determination and courage of Dred Scott and his wife Harriett, and the influence they had on Abraham Lincoln, who took such interest in the case, and the significant effects of the case on the road to a war that would decide the fate of slavery and the Union forever. In the words of Abraham Lincoln: "a house divided against itself cannot stand".
We spent excellent time in the Old Courthouse, watching a doco on the Dred Scott case, admiring the impressive courthouse, restorations of the courtrooms of old, and absorbing the exhibits in the museum contained within. Just superb.
A great day to be in St Louis!!
Our second day in St Louis we spent researching for those upcoming chapters in Volume 3 and Volume 5 of The Legends that take place in St Louis, home of Jennifer Sullivan's brother, Frank Sullivan.
St Louis describes itself as a city of neighbourhoods, and we certainly saw a number of them. We love all-day Metro tickets and tend to make the most of them, on and off trains like they are our own personal transportation. This we did in St Louis. Unfortunately, you can't get to all the neighbourhoods of the city by Metro, you have to wear out some shoe leather for that, and this we did (I still marvel at our walk from Union to LaFayette Square - thank heavens there was some perfect-just-what-I-was-looking- houses and streets to snap and a great Italian meal at the end, oh, and cab ride home, phew, don't you know!)
So we walked our feet off. My favourite pair of shoes should have been retired after they got soaked (I'm talking major squish and squelch) on the Freedom Trail in Boston, but they dried out somewhat miraculously and took me around NYC, where they got soaked again in a late afternoon thunderstorm. Again they came good and walked the streets of St Louis. What are these super shoes I bought in Target last year?! Sadly, I think they might have fought their last campaign. And they do smell a bit. They're coming West with me and then home. I told Tank I won't let them die in a foreign land. Such loyalty and steadfastness commands respect in equal measure.
See you in The West!!
No comments:
Post a Comment