Look Up While Walking Downtown

I was standing in front of the Mississippi Valley Trust Company in downtown St. Louis while leading a walking tour.  A guy on the tour asked me to tell him about the mermaids.  I thought he was pulling my leg. 

Mermaids in downtown St. Louis?  Really??

Then he pointed over my head, and there were two mermaids on the building we were standing in front of.  I was stunned, because I have been leading tours of downtown for 15 years, and I had never noticed the mermaids.

I had not noticed the mermaids because I had never looked up while standing in front of the Mississippi Valley Trust Company.  What else had I missed because I had not looked up while walking downtown? 

The county library had asked me to give a lecture on downtown architecture.  I decided that the theme of my talk would be: Don't Pass Me By: Look Up While Walking Downtown".

So, I took a camera downtown, and started photographing the tops of buildings.  I made some discoveries.

I discovered that there was a soldier in a gas mask on the Soldiers Memorial.

I discovered buildings that mimicked their neighbors.  The new AT&T building has setbacks at the top, just like the old AT&T building next to it.

I discovered a parking garage with giant stars of David.  Or maybe they were hexagrams: one showing air pointing up and earth pointing down, and another showing fire pointing up and water pointing down.  I will never know for sure because the garage was built around 1915, and the architects are long gone.

I discovered that sometimes architects drew your eyes upward by varying the rhythm of windows.  I photographed the four-story-tall Tiny Bar Building --- not just because I know the owner, but because each of the four stories has a different window pattern.

Mostly, I discovered that nineteenth-century buildings liked to have an ornate roofline, mid-twentieth-century buildings liked to have no roofline, and contemporary buildings like to have a little bit of flair.

The contemporary Metropolitan Building has a little bit of flair:

The mid-twentieth-century modern Laclede Gas Building has no roofline at all:

The nineteenth-century Bee Hat Building has an ornate roofline:

The Bee Hat Building made me worry.  I was giving a talk at a public library.  Would a picture of buxom ladies staring down at pedestrians offend some people in the audience?  I worried that I would be kicked off the public library lecture circuit.

I took the risk.  I included the Bee Hat Building in my PowerPoint show.  I put my show on a memory stick, and went off to the public library to fire up the projector.

I waited for the audience to arrive, still worrying about the Bee Hat photo.

The first people to arrive were two women in their sixties.  They came early so they could get front row seats.  When they sat down, one of the women looked at me, and asked, with great anticipation, “Are you going to show us the ladies with the big boobs?”

I stopped worrying.

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Ringo Starr sings "Don't Pass Me By" - a 3.5 minute YouTube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lkkRB0bGhU

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  Send an email to ParadiseDouglas at gmail.com to find out how to purchase a copy by mail.

Never Say That Vampires Are Fictional

Somehow, the St. Louis Paranormal Research Society got wind of me.

They heard that I lead Saturday morning vampire tours in St. Louis, and decided that I would be a suitable pre-séance speaker for their Halloween Night paranormal extravaganza, called Dark St. Louis.

What the Paranormal Society did not know is that my vampire tours are light-hearted, based on the novels of Laurel K. Hamilton, who describes a thriving vampire community on St. Louis' waterfront.  I even promise the people on my tour that they will get to see an actual vampire.  Yes, they will see a vampire standing in the window of the Wax Museum on the waterfront....and if they complain that he does not move, I point that vampires can’t move when it is broad daylight.

When the head of the Paranormal Society called me up to invite me to speak at their event, I made an enormous faux pas.  I said: "Yes, I lead vampire tours, but vampires are fictional."

Never, never, never say "vampires are fictional" to the head of the Paranormal Society; he gets all bent out of shape.

Response: "Vampires are REAL.  I have seen people drink human blood."

Obviously I had touched a nerve.  I knew best to not get snarky and ask the guy: "And these people you saw drinking human blood, were they 800 years old?"

I talked to another member of the Paranormal Society.  “I lead vampire tours, focusing on Laurel K. Hamilton’s books about fictional vampires.”

Response: “There is a lot of truth in fiction.”

Then I asked a woman from New Orleans if vampires are fictional.  She did not get bent out of shape; instead she gave me a comprehensive overview.

Response: “Folklore around the world has references to vampires, which would indicate that vampires do exist.  Today, there are people who drink human blood, and call themselves vampires.”

Dr. D. J. Williams (photo above), a sociology professor at Idaho State University, actually did a study of eleven self-identified vampires.

So, for my pre-séance talk at the Halloween Night paranormal extravaganza, I needed to avoid vampires, avoid fiction, and avoid the drinking of human blood.  

I chose the topic: "Dark Moments in St. Louis History".  I covered plagues, the secret spraying of St. Louis children with zinc cadmium sulfite by the United States Army, grave robbing, river pirates, the torture of St. Louis citizens by British mercenary troops, exorcism, and various gruesome deaths.

I also told the audience what the next dark moment will be.  The uranium used for the atomic bomb was refined in St. Louis, and the radioactive waste from the refining process was buried in a landfill in a suburb in 1945.  Currently, there is an underground fire in another landfill working its way straight toward the radioactive landfill.

My conclusion: after so many centuries of misfortune, it is no wonder that St. Louis is a hotbed of paranormal activity.  Hearing this must have pleased the head of the Paranormal Research Society.

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Nosferatu, the classic silent movie about a vampire, was re-mastered in 2013.  Here is a 2-minute trailer for the film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LOOhc2eML4

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  Send an email to ParadiseDouglas at gmail.com to find out how to purchase a copy by mail.

Jack The Ripper Died In St. Louis

Because I live in St. Louis, I am convinced that Jack the Ripper died in St. Louis.  He died on May 28, 1903, at St. John's Mercy Hospital.

His name was Francis Tumblety, and he was so appreciative of the care he received that he bequeathed his jewelry to the nuns who ran St. John’s Mercy Hospital.  The jewelry consisted of:

     - One cluster ring of 17 diamond stones 

     - One 5 stone diamond ring

     - Two imitation set rings

Tumblety grew up in Rochester, New York.  As a young boy, he made money selling pornography to the people who traveled the Erie Canal.  

As an adult, he moved from city to city.  He called himself Dr. Tumblety and made his money by selling an ointment he concocted called “Dr. Tumblety’s Pimple Banisher”, which promised to make old faces look young and beautiful.  

Tumblety sported a long moustache, and dressed elegantly.  He was often seen riding a white steed accompanied by two greyhounds on a leash.  

It seems odd that such an ostentatious man would own two cheap imitation set rings.

For a few years in the early 1860's, Tumblety lived in St. Louis, in the Lindell Hotel - the largest hotel in the world at that time.  He held card playing evenings in his hotel room, inviting only men.  When one of his guests remarked about the absence of women, Tumblety would grow livid. He would speak about how he deeply detested women, especially fallen women.  Then he would show his guests his medical museum: two cabinets filled with glass jars.  In each jar: a uterus.

In 1888, Tumblety was not living in St. Louis.  He was living in England, in the Whitechapel section of London.  Whitechapel was the locale of the five Jack the Ripper slayings in 1888…slayings of five prostitutes, or in the parlance of the times: "fallen women".

Scotland Yard arrested Tumblety, not for the slayings but for “gross indecency between men” on November 7, 1888.  He posted bond and slipped out of England to catch a ship from France to New York.  Scotland Yard sent two detectives to New York on a ship from Liverpool.  The Liverpool ship arrived before the French ship, and the two detectives met Tumblety on the dock when he reached New York.  Scotland Yard sent a supervisor a few days later.  But the policemen from Scotland Yard had no authority to arrest Tumblety on U.S. soil.

After November 7, 1888, there were no more Jack the Ripper slayings.  The fact that Scotland Yard would send three personnel to North America pinpoints Tumblety as a prime suspect.

There is now an official word for the study of Jack the Ripper: ripperology.  Each ripperologist has their own favorite prime suspect.

I am not a ripperologist, but Tumblety is my own favorite prime suspect.  Not just because of the St. Louis connection.  But also because of Annie Chapman, Jack the Ripper’s victim number two. 

When police examined Annie Chapman’s body on September 8, 1888, they saw that her uterus was missing.  It had been removed intact.  Also, missing from Annie Chapman’s left hand: two imitation set rings.

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Sherlock Holmes meets Dr. Tumblety (7 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xGFqS4ulac

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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

Gesticulating In Gratitude

The roads in Hawaii are mostly two-lane.  

We were on vacation, driving from Kailua-Kona to Hilo, when the car behind us wanted to pass.  We slowed down and pulled to the right to give the car lots of room to pass.  After the car passed us, the driver stuck his arm out the window and gesticulated at us.

What was that?  Was he mocking us?  

The driver had extended his thumb and his pinkie and had curled his middle three fingers to his palm.  And he shook his hand.  I started to get annoyed, but then I remembered something I read in a travel book about how Hawaiians use a certain gesture as a way of saying thank you.

The guy who passed us was giving us a Hawaiian thank-you wave.

St. Louis has a thank-you wave.  You simply extend all five fingers into a flat palm and move it right and left, like a windshield wiper.  The Hawaiian wave is more dramatic, probably because you can drive with your car windows open all year round in Hawaii.

I like being courteous to my fellow drivers in St. Louis.  And I like to have my courtesy acknowledged, but I only get a thank-you wave about fifty per cent of the time.

Every morning when I drive to work, I get an opportunity to be courteous.  There is a Mobil On-The-Run convenience store at a busy intersection.  If the light is red and there are six cars waiting for the light to change, the entrance to the On-The-Run will be blocked by the sixth car.  People who just bought their gas, coffee, or breakfast cannot leave the On-The-Run.

Unless the sixth car is me.  If I see five cars waiting for a red light, I will stop early so there is a big gap between the fifth car and me.  That way people can drive into or out of the On-The-Run.

Many people recognize my act of courtesy.  They wave their hand at me as they drive through the gap I created.  One driver, however, was busy consuming his breakfast as he drove, so he waved his breakfast as me: a 16-ounce can of Bud Light.

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A favorite Bud Light commercial: "The Clothing Drive":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8znLXlD33No



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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

Please Do Not Smoke The Declaration Of Independence

                     

I help Charles Koehler teach a class at St. Louis Community College.  The class is called "Re-Live the 1904 World's Fair". 

The Fair was held in the largest urban park in the country, Forest Park, not very far from the College.

Our job is to make the Fair come alive for the attendees.  Charles, who is an audio-visual expert, has taken stereopticon pictures from the Fair and figured out how to project them in 3-D on a special silver oxide screen.  The attendees put on 3-D glasses and look at the buildings at the Fair 109 years ago.

"Building" is an understatement.  The smallest building was 8 acres in size; the largest was over 20 acres. So, they are called Palaces.

And there was not enough steel in the United States of America to build the Palaces at the St. Louis World's Fair.  The Palaces were built of wood frames covered in staff, a material that can be shaped and sculpted.  For the class, Charles pulls a piece of staff out of his pocket and holds it up.

He mentions that staff is a mixture of plaster and hemp.

Industrial hemp used to be a major export of Missouri, centered on the port town of Glasgow.  The wealth from hemp helped build the mansions of Glasgow overlooking the Missouri River.

Industrial hemp has many practical uses: rope, cloth, paper.  Then there is a type of hemp which is not industrial; it is recreational.  Charles has to explain that the World's Fair hemp is not the type you smoke.

However, the Federal government has declared both types of hemp illegal to grow in the United States.

One morning, I heard on public radio that the Declaration of Independence was printed on paper made from hemp.  I mentioned that fact at lunch that day, and I also mentioned that I have been puzzled why industrial hemp is banned in the United States.  

Someone at the lunch table knows a botanist who is gives expert testimony in the Missouri court system.  It turns out that industrial hemp is virtually indistinguishable from recreational hemp.  For court rulings, you need a complete plant, roots and all, to distinguish the two types of hemp.

Hence, it was simplest for the Federal government to just ban all types of hemp.  Industrial help became a controlled substance in the 20th Century, and the glory days of Glasgow, Missouri were over.

While Charles is holding up his piece of staff in class, I ask him how he found it.  He explains that he was walking through Forest Park on a sunny day and there was some construction going on.  He looked in a ditch and found the staff, long buried since the World's Fair Palaces were demolished in December 1904.

I then spoof Charles and tell the class that the real story involves being under cover of darkness and the wearing of infrared goggles and the use of a small pickaxe, accompanied by the sound of police sirens as Charles escaped from Forest Park with his staff specimen, which contains a controlled substance.

Hemp once boosted Missouri's economy.  Now it is something to smirk about.  I sure hope nobody tries to smoke the Declaration of Independence.

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A 1-minute video of Judy Garland singing "Meet Me In St. Louis":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JARDvdrAxk

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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

An East Coast Guy Living In The Middle Of The Continent

I am reminded that I am living in The Middle Of The Continent every time I watch the nightly news on television, every time I am outside on a summer afternoon, and every time I drive on a road with a lane closure.

Back on the East Coast, the Eleven O'Clock News comes on at eleven o'clock.  Here in the Midwest, the Eleven O'Clock news comes on at ten o'clock.  One channel even does the Eleven O'Clock news at nine o'clock.

Since the trend is for people to go to bed right after the news, that means that St. Louisans go to bed earlier that East Coast people.  And get up earlier.  That suits my metabolism just fine, but it was not my pattern back East.

Back on the East Coast, you would swelter on a summer morning, but around 1:30 PM, the temperature would start to fall.  You could feel the sea breeze.  The Sun would heat up the land and by 1:30 PM the land would be warmer than the sea.  The land air would rise, and be replaced by cooler air from the sea.  So, the temperature would fall. 

When I am standing outside and sweltering on a summer day in St. Louis and I notice that the time is 1:30 PM, I do not expect the temperature to fall.  I expect the St. Louis temperature to keep rising into the late afternoon.  There is no sea nearby for the Sun to heat up.  The only relief the Midwest can look forward to is watching the Sun drop below the horizon.  That’s when the Midwest temperature will start to fall.

Back on the East Coast, the drivers know how to merge when a highway has a lane closure.  When East Coast drivers see a sign saying “Right lane ends – 2 miles”, they wait 2 miles and then the two lanes merge.  There is a common merge point.  A driver from the left lane lets in one driver from the right lane; the next left-lane driver lets in the next right-lane driver, and so on.

This means that an East Coast merge is expected, measured, co-operative, and safe.

Midwesterners see the “Right lane ends – 2 miles” sign and the right lane drivers start to merge immediately.  They do not wait; each right-hand driver darts over into the left-hand lane whenever they spot an opportunity.  This creates hundreds of merge points.  This means that a Midwest merge is unexpected, erratic, individual, and unsafe.

I have to follow this pattern because Midwesterners consider it arrogant to continue driving in the lane that will end.  I do not want to be the object of road rage if I wait until the merge point and try to get in the left-hand lane.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has a regular column about traffic, highway construction, and transportation news.  A former New Yorker wrote a letter to the columnist, describing how East Coast people merge at a common merge point.  The St. Louis columnist could find only one response when faced with such a sane, safe, and common-sense way to merge.

The columnist, who lives in The Middle Of The Continent,  responded: “This is not New York.”

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Here is a newspaper report on the famous 1996 U. S. Geographic Survey Expeditionary Force, whose goal was to discover if the land between New York and California was inhabited: 

http://www.theonion.com/articles/midwest-discovered-between-east-west-coasts,1686/

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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

A Therapy Dog In Dogtown

Petey proudly wore his “I AM A THERAPY DOG” tag on his collar. 

He had earned his therapy dog tag by passing a rigorous test --- a test to see that he could be touched by strangers, to see that he could ignore something on the floor when he was told to ignore it, to see that he would not freak out when three hospital patients clanged their walkers on the floor simultaneously. 

He was certified by Therapy Dogs International, who gave him two million dollars of liability insurance.

Petey had a job and he loved his job, which was raising the spirits of mental patients of Forest Park Hospital in St. Louis.  The hospital serves a St. Louis neighborhood called Dogtown, which has a large Irish population.  It was one of the few hospitals in town that welcomed therapy dogs.

It only took one visit to the hospital for Petey to figure out that the hospital door was weight sensitive and he could open it by himself.   He learned that once inside the hospital, he had to turn left, and trot down the corridor that led to Ward One South, and wait for someone to let us in.

Petey knew that inside Ward One South were patients who wanted to pet him. 

Not all patients, however.  Some patients were afraid of dogs, some patients were uninterested in dogs, and some patients were insulted that they were offered time with a dog rather than time with a doctor or nurse.

I quickly learned two things about a hospital pet therapy visit. 

First thing: always squat.  A patient was normally sitting down or lying down.  If Petey was next to the patient, the patient was confused, not sure whether to look up at me or look down at the dog.  So, I squatted.  That way I was on the same level as the dog, and the patient had a single focal point to look at.

Second thing: never ask questions.  Patients get asked a stream of questions all day long by doctors and nurses.  When Petey came, they got to ask me questions, a welcome turn of events.

One of the nurses in Ward One South told me that Petey was perceptive.    If Petey sat facing away from the patient, it meant the patient was physically ill as well as mentally ill.  If Petey sat facing the patient, it meant the patient was physically well.

We went once a month.  At the end of each visit, Petey (who lives in a vegetarian household) was treated to a real beef hamburger from the hospital cafeteria.

Over time, even Petey noticed that things were changing.  The hospital was sold to a group of investors.  Floor by floor, the wards were closed down because they were not viable.  Forest Park Hospital was two miles away from the number-one-rated hospital in Missouri, and it could not compete.

Originally we reported to a volunteer coordinator.  After the volunteer coordinator was let go, we reported to the chaplain.  I don’t know what happened to the chaplain, but we wound up reporting to a three-ring notebook.

Ward One South survived these cuts.  The cafeteria did not survive.  So, a nurse would bring in a McDonald’s cheeseburger for each of Petey’s visits.

Then the number of beds in Ward One South was cut in half.  Petey noticed this.  With fewer patients, he was just going through the motions.  He knew he was not going to get much petting.  He became focused on the McDonald’s cheeseburger.

Then Forest Park Hospital closed for good. 

Petey can look back on a grand  therapy career.  He lifted many people’s spirits.  He got reticent patients to start talking.  In one case, there was a patient who was mourning the death of her daughter --- when Petey visited her, she realized that she had been confused – it was her daughter’s dog who had died, not her daughter.  The staff on Ward One South was elated to see the change in the patient.

I think Petey, just like the people in the Dogtown, is sad to see that Forest Park Hospital now sits abandoned.  However, a tree still grows on the hospital lawn.  It was a tree planted in memory of a therapy dog who, just like Petey, worked on Ward One South.  

The tree is a dogwood. 

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The Dogtown St. Patrick's Day Parade makes a brief appearance in Here Is St. Louis Two.  Look for the soldiers in the bright green berets. Video by Grain. Music is "Heartbeat" by Highway Headline.

http://vimeo.com/70904697

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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