High Voltage Has Disappeared

It was the first tourbus I had ever rented.  There were thirty-six people on board who were looking forward to seeing all the things I had promised them on a tour of the Near North Riverfront.  This was a working neighborhood in St. Louis, five miles long, and deserted on a Saturday.

The bus started up, crossed under an Interstate, and whizzed by the first place I wanted to talk about: a motorcycle place that creates “ratted out track bikes.”  I realized that I had asked the bus company for a bus with a bathroom on board, but I had not asked the bus company for a driver who could read my mind.

The two-hour tour became a dance: I had to tell the driver how fast to drive, where to turn, and when to stop --- meantime using the bus microphone to tell people what we were passing, while trying to remember that I was facing a different direction from the passengers and that my right was their left…

Among the things I had promised people that they would see:

            Where the uranium was refined for the bomb dropped on Hiroshima

            A shredder that could turn a Ford F-150 into tiny strips of metal

A dive bar that featured spaghetti wrestling on Thursday nights

            2 water towers built by Walt Whitman’s brother

            A dive bar where you could drive your motorcycle right into the bar

            A street that turned into a drag strip at night

            The locale where Kier Dullea (of 2001: A Space Odyssey) made his first movie

            The site of what had been St. Louis’ largest Indian mound

            The street corner where the leader of McGinty’s Rats was machine gunned to death in 1943

I also promised people that we would make two photo stops: at High Voltage and at American Timber Salvage.

Things were going fine until we hit two enemies of efficient touring: trains and entrancement.

The industries at the Near North Riverfront don’t work on Saturdays, but the railroads do.  This neighborhood is like a model railroad layout: the trains are remote controlled and have no humans on them, not even an engineer.  And the trains are long.  The tourbus had to stop and wait and wait for a train to pass.

The bus parked at the levee and we all walked through the floodgate to see Missouri’s first documented Underground Railroad site. In 1855, six slaves rowed across the Mississippi River here, hoping to obtain freedom on the other side.  

We walked to the Freedom Crossing Interpretive Center which was in an old Coast Guard station, staffed by enthusiastic AmeriCorps volunteers.  The center had a platform where you could overlook the river.  The tour people lingered on the platform, entranced by the history of the spot and entranced by the swiftly moving river called “The Father of Waters.”

I had to plead with people break their trance and walk back to the bus; we had more to see, including St. Louis’ most colorful building: High Voltage Tattoo.

The bus continued on.  We saw a place to buy used school busses, an abandoned railroad trestle that will be turned into an elevated park like the Promenade Plantee in Paris, a Buddhist compound, and the sculpture studio that created Bad Outlet (an educational mascot for Pacific Gas and Electric).

Over the microphone, I read a review from Yelp written by Emily of San Diego: “I have never been so excited to have a taxicab drop me off in front of a nondescript building in a desolate industrial area in a town I am unfamiliar with.”  The bus then drove by Smokio’s, the barbeque joint that Emily was praising.

I got the passengers pumped up.  We are now three blocks from High Voltage.  We are two blocks away!  Get your cameras ready!!  You will want to take photos of High Voltage!!!

The bus stopped.  I gasped.

High Voltage had disappeared since the last time I saw it.  The once-colorful building was now painted a bland tan.  No more medieval flanged maces.  No more tattoo needle dripping blood.  No more clown and devil flanking the doorway.  Disappeared.

It was a lesson for me.  A tourguide’s goal is to show people things that are new to them.  But a city is always changing, and there will be things that are new to the tourguide.

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com