Highline And Lowlife

I read that only three cities in the world have one: Paris, New York, and St. Louis. These three cities have parks created from abandoned elevated railroad lines.

When we were in New York in September, we walked New York’s elevated park, called the Highline. Lots of people were walking the Highline. It was great fun to be above ground at second-story level. We could look into buildings. We could look down at New York’s street life: food trucks, street festivals, temporary roller skating rinks, restaurants, art galleries. We could look outward at vistas full of skyscrapers.

The New York Highline changed about every block. Sometimes you walked down the middle in between plantings on both sides. Sometimes you walked on one side and the plantings on the other side were wide enough to almost look like a field. At one point you came across wooden chaise lounges with people sitting on them enjoying the sun.

The plantings amazed me. They appeared to be drought-resistant native plants chosen because they do not need maintenance. These plants were thriving.

Here are 3 Highline photos: the chaise lounges, peeking into a building, a vista of skyscrapers.

The history of New York’s elevated railroad park is inspiring. It was a grass roots effort, first to prevent demolition, then to get the park funded. The history of St. Louis’ elevated railroad park is also inspiring. It was a grass roots effort, promoted by bicyclists.

Last weekend, the dogs and I walked St. Louis’ version of the Highline. It is called the Branch Street Trestle, and the differences with New York’s Highline were profound.

No one else was on the Trestle. It is a paved surface that is uniform block after block. There are no plantings.

The Trestle sits in an area called the Near North Riverfront, which is isolated from the city by an Interstate highway. The area does not have art galleries, street fairs, food trucks, or skating rinks.

The Near North Riverfront is used for storage: road salt, oil drums, strange wrapped things that look like giant sea scallops. Hardly anyone lives there, and very few people work there because you don’t need many workers to maintain storage facilities. However, these few residents and workers must like to drink because you pass a number of seedy bars to get to the Trestle. Actually, “seedy” is too kind a description of these bars.

Here are 3 Branch Street Trestle photos: Petey and Sierra roaming free, giant scallops, a vista of rusty chemical storage tanks.

One reason there were no people on the Trestle is that few people in St. Louis know about it, in spite of the fact that the Trestle leads right to a bridge where you can walk across the Mississippi River and wind up in Illinois. I plan to do some publicity, and when warm weather comes next year, I will lead a walking tour in the Near North Riverfront.

The walking tour will feature the elevated park and the seedy bars, so the name of the tour will be “Highline and Lowlife”.

- . - .- . - . - . 

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

The United States Army Trusted Me

Two events told me that the United States Army trusted me when I was a typist for the 109th Aviation Division at Fort Lewis, Washington.

The first event that told me I was trusted: the Army gave me a Secret security clearance.  This was the level right below Top Secret.  I was thrilled to get the clearance, not because it meant I could type secret documents, but because it meant I could read secret documents stored in the 109th Aviation Division’s vault.

The thrill dissipated quickly.  I was shown the Secret Document Vault: it was just a filing cabinet with a lock on it.  When I typed my first secret document, the information in it did not seem very sensitive.  The enemy could probably find out just as much information by going to the nearest gas station and buying a roadmap.

I never got a Top Secret clearance.  Maybe Top Secret documents held sensitive information that could do us harm if it fell into enemy hands.  Or maybe there was nothing sensitive to say about an aviation division that spent most of its time trying to keep 120 helicopter mechanics busy while there were only 5 helicopters for them to maintain on all of Fort Lewis.

The second event that told me I was trusted: the Army gave me a key to the barracks bulletin board.  I needed the key to put the KP roster on the bulletin board.  Everyone on the 109^th Aviation Division was an avid reader of the KP roster, checking it to see when they would have to pull kitchen duty.

However, I had my suspicions that people did not read anything else on the bulletin board.  I got a chance to confirm my suspicions.

Fort Lewis is a large fort.  I was being transferred to a unit on North Fort Lewis, far away from the 109^th Aviation Division. 

Before my transfer, I sat down at an Army typewriter and created this notice:

IT HAS COME TO THE ATTENTION OF THE COMMANDING OFFICER THAT PERSONNEL ARE RAISING CHINCHILLAS IN THEIR FOOT LOCKERS.  THIS PRACTICE IS TO STOP IMMEDIATELY.  ANYONE CAUGHT TAKING EXTRA LETTUCE RATIONS FROM THE MESS HALL WILL BE SEVERELY REPRIMANDED.

I posted the notice on the bulletin board and asked a friend to let me know how long it remained there. 

I turned in the bulletin board key, put my duffel bag on my shoulder, said good-bye, and got on the bus to North Fort Lewis.  My friend said that the chinchilla notice stayed on the bulletin board for five weeks before somebody took it down. 

My suspicions were confirmed.

- . - .- . - . - . 

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

It All Started With Dishwashing Powder

I looked forward to breaking some gender barriers when I signed up for a special class offered by my junior high school “Boys Home Ec”.  Us guys were going to learn all the secrets of home economics: how to sew, how to iron, how to cook.

Sewing was kind of cool because you got to run a sewing machine. I made a barbeque apron. I even got the machine to spell out “What’s Cooking?” on the front. I thought it was wonderful and worthy of commercial production.

Ironing was, however, the opposite of cool. It was tedious, dangerous, and difficult to do well.

Knowing how to iron came in handy when my mother had to spend a year in Ohio taking care of my brother’s family after my brother and his wife were involved in an automobile accident. I ironed my father’s laundry for him. I was doing OK with the ironing until I tried ironing my father’s nylon stretch socks. The Boys Home Ec class never taught us how to get the melted rubber off an iron.

Cooking was the coolest part of the class.

The first thing we cooked was broiled apple sauce sandwiches. We took a slice of white bread, spread apple sauce on it, sprinkled brown sugar on top, and put it under the broiler until the brown sugar got bubbly. I thought the result was yummy.

At home that evening, I offered to make apple sauce sandwiches for my mother and father. Unfortunately, they were too full from dinner to try one. In fact, they were so full for the next couple of days that I finally stopped offering.

The real highlight of Boys’ Home Ec was learning to make pizza pie from scratch.

You mixed flour with some stuff, added live yeast, and put a dishtowel over the bowl. Under the dishtowel, the yeast did some magic and the dough puffed up. Next came the physical part: you got to punch the dough down. It was soft and fragrant as you formed it into a compact ball.

Things got more physical. You needed to activate the gluten in the dough. In the restaurants in town, they worked the dough by spinning it and tossing it up in the air. This was beyond the dexterity of a typical eighth grader, so our teacher had us play catch. We tossed the dough back and forth. Definitely cool.

Yet, there was danger in cooking. The class was divided into kitchens: four boys in the blue kitchen, four boys in the yellow kitchen, etc. One day we made biscuits. The boys in the blue kitchen announced that their biscuits tasted terrible. One day we made cookies. The boys in the yellow kitchen announced that their cookies tasted terrible.

The teacher figured out what had happened, and tracked it down to a boy in the red kitchen. He had sabotaged the other kitchens by putting dishwashing powder in their flour canisters. His name was Harry.

Last year, I helped our high school reunion committee track down our classmates for our 50^th Reunion. I found Harry’s current address. It was “In Care of the North Carolina Department of Corrections.”

A life of crime…and it all started with dishwashing powder.

- . - .- . - . - . 

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

The Sunshine Walked Beside Her

I had a couple of hours left in Minneapolis before catching a plane back to St. Louis. This was enough time to visit a friend, Barb Ivey, who had been admitted to the VA Hospital, which was conveniently located on my route to the airport.

Barb Ivey’s son worked for a while at Wells Fargo when I worked there. He introduced me to his mother,

She had once been married to a man who worked in a most exotic location: the television transmission station on top of the Empire State Building, making him the highest person in New York City. But divorce came, and she had the strength to raise her children by herself, and she wound up in Minneapolis.

She became my friend.  I was drawn to her because her smile and the twinkle in her eyes made it clear that she savored life.  Plus, it was fun to know someone from a different generation.  We tried out ethnic restaurants.  We went shopping.

Once, I had a visitor from The Bronx.  When Barb met him, she asked him what part of The Bronx he lived in. He said, “Not too far from the neighborhood that Jonathan Kozol writes about in his new book”.  Barb amazed the fellow by reaching in her purse and pulling out a copy of Jonathan Kozol’s book.  It was just like watching a magician pull a rabbit out of a hat.

The vast VA parking lot was jam-packed.  I magically found the one empty parking space left.  I took the space and walked into the lobby. “What room is Barb Ivey in?” The receptionist looked a little shaken by my request, checked her computer screen, and said “She was discharged yesterday.”

I went on to the airport, boarded my plane, and later received an email from Barb’s son telling me what had happened on the day before I went to the VA hospital.

Barb Ivey had made a decision to go off life support. Her family gathered around her hospital bed.  The email said that when she was taken off life support, it was a peaceful transition.

When I finished reading the email, a song came on the radio: Tecumseh Valley. One line in the song grabbed my attention: “The sunshine walked beside her”.

I wondered if this song was sent to me by Barb Ivey the magician, reassuring me that all was well after she had discharged herself from the hospital --- after she had discharged herself right off the planet.

- . - .- . - . - . 

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

Bricks Rock

A comment on a St. Louis Internet message board said: "Bricks rock!" The comment was put there by someone who had come on my brick tour.

When I told my bank teller that I was going to lead a brick tour, she was incredulous. "Will anybody come on your tour; who would want to spend time looking at bricks?"

The answer: forty-three people and two dogs came, and I made them look at bricks.  Actually, I made them see bricks.

The city of St. Louis sits on all the materials you need to make a brick: limestone for building kilns, coal for heating kilns, fine clay for producing high-quality brick. A brick that was produced in St. Louis from St. Louis materials is a happy brick.

In contrast, I suggested that people take a good look at the new baseball stadium downtown. The stadium bricks are dull and unexciting; they are unhappy bricks. They were made in Ohio.

My tour progressed through a neighborhood built by German artisans in the 1870's. Almost all of the buildings from the 19^th Century are still standing today.  As we walked, I pointed out: paver brick, face brick, glazed brick, ripple brick, and dairy brick. All of these bricks were St. Louis bricks, they were happy bricks.

At one point, however, I realized that the forty-three people and two dogs were no longer following me.

I turned around and saw them peering in somebody's living room window.  I hustled back to shoo them away from the window.  Too late --- the homeowner had opened his door and confronted them. "Who are you people?"

"We are on a brick tour."  "A brick tour!  Come on in!!"   The group shuffled into his living room and I saw what they had been peering at.  There, looming over his sofa, was a ten-foot tall griffin.

The owner of the house was a brick enthusiast.  He went to his desk and fished out a book about St. Louis bricks, printed by the University of Missouri…and gave me the book.  He told the group that the ten-foot tall griffin was purchased for some property he owns by the river, but it never got that far.

The group continued on my tour, walking on a path made of bricks from the Hydraulic Brick Company.  The path was a reminder of the days when brick-making thrived in St. Louis.   The Hydraulic Brick Company was owned by T. S. Eliot’s father, and produced 100,000,000 bricks per year.

People in St. Louis drive by and walk by brick buildings all the time. The goal of my tour was to get people to see bricks, to notice the great variety in surface and color and mortar and ornamentation.  To notice that two houses sitting side-by-side and built at the same time are never identical because the builder made sure the brickwork varied from house to house.

St. Louis is a brick city. 

I am pretty sure that the forty-three people enjoyed my brick tour.  The full comment on the St. Louis Internet message board said: "Bricks rock, and so does Doug!"

- . - .- . - . - . 

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