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!"

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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