410 Miles Down The River

It is 410 river miles down the Mississippi River from St. Louis to Memphis, but only 280 road miles.  Traveling by road instead of river, Memorial Day weekend of this year marked the first time I have ever been to Memphis, Tennessee.

This city was named after the city in Egypt, founded 5,000 years ago by the Pharoah Menes; maybe the Egyptian connection explains why I found Memphis to be surreal.

Friday night: walked from the hotel to a nice little bar serving food.  We were eating dinner listening to James Taylor --- until the bartender stopped the music, and shouted: “Zombies!!!”.  Four zombies walked into Bardog, sat down, and perused the menu.  The music was changed to Johnathan Coulton singing about wanting to eat your brains.

Saturday morning: walking the streets of downtown Memphis, I expected to see the typical petunias and marigolds in the municipal planters.  Instead, their street planters were sporting pineapples.

Over to Mud Island on a tram that did not run on top of tracks, it was suspended from the bottom of the tracks.  

Mud Island features a half-mile long in-ground sculpture representing the topography of the Mississippi River, complete with ox-bows.  We followed the river right to the point where it emptied into the “Gulf of Mexico”.  There we saw 10-foot tall swans bobbing in the water.

Saturday midday: walking around a deserted downtown, I wondered where all the people were.  A phone app told us there was a restaurant nearby --- just go down an alley.  The alley was empty, but we did find one door.  It was unlocked, we opened it and walked downstairs.  There we found at least 200 people eating barbeque underground.  No wonder the streets were deserted.

Saturday afternoon: Graceland, a small city devoted to selling you things related to Elvis Presley.  Elvis's house was not as large as I expected; it reminded me that there was a time when celebrities did not live in mega-mansions in celebrity colonies.  Elvis had three televisions in one room --- which put him on par with the President of the United States.

Saturday and Sunday: Beale Street proved interesting, featuring an ATM that appeared to dispense Jell-O shooters:

The company I work for owns a bank.  After returning to St. Louis from the surreal city of Memphis, I bumped into the president of our bank, and told him that I had a money-making idea for the bank.  He perked up and said: “Tell me about it.”  

I described the Memphis ATM that dispenses Jell-O shooters, and suggested that we install these at our bank.  He went along with my joke.  “Great idea, but how will I get the CEO to go for it?”

My answer: Just find out what the CEO’s favorite flavor is…

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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

Dentist By Day; Hit Man By Night

Once again I volunteered to be a docent on the Central West End mansion tour in St. Louis.

I arrived for my shift, and found myself stationed between the music room and the library in a huge house built in 1902.  I could have just stood there and told visitors: “This is the music room and over here is the library”, but I wanted something juicy to tell them.

The head docent showed me the secret passage: you pressed upon a section of wall paneling and it opened into a secret hallway.  But I knew I couldn’t tell visitors about the secret passage, because they will want to find the secret passage.  We couldn’t have visitors pressing wall panels all over the house…

Then the head docent lowered his voice to a whisper: “Glennon Engleman, the dentist, was a frequent visitor to this house; he was the brother of the owner’s wife.”

The head docent scurried away.  Why would a dentist be something juicy to talk about?  I took out my phone and googled.  Glennon Engleman’s name came up – on www.serialkillercalendar.com.  Definitely juicy. 

As people came through the music room, I mentioned that Glennon Engleman was a frequent visitor to the house.  The name rang a bell with one visitor: “My house is down the street from a couple that the dentist bludgeoned to death.”  A few minutes later, another visitor said: “My husband was the prosecuting attorney who put that dentist away.”

Then a couple came through the music room.  “We used to own this house, and one day we were standing in the front yard when a van pulled up.  It was the Discovery Channel, and they wanted to film our house for a series on mass murderers.  They brought along the FBI agent who had arrested Engleman in this very house.”

Glennon Engleman was a popular dentist because he was affordable.  However, he trained his female dental assistants in the art of wooing men --- men with big fat life insurance policies.  Once the dental assistant married the man with the  life insurance policy, the dentist offed the husband.

Besides bludgeoning, the dentist sometimes used a rifle, but he preferred dynamite because it left few clues behind.  Then the proceeds from the big fat life insurance policy were divvied up. 

Seven murders have been attributed to Engleman, who was arrested in 1980.  He was incarcerated in the Missouri State Penitentiary --- he actually served as the prison dentist before he died there in 1997.

This was a very juicy tidbit to tell people coming through on the mansion tour.  If the people had a kid, I would ask if their child scared easily.  If they answered no, I would tell the kids about the deadly dentist.

On hearing that a mass murderer used to visit the mansion, little girls would become all apprehensive, and ask me if the dentist was hanging around somewhere upstairs.  Little boys, however, would become all attentive, and ask me to show them the bloodstains…

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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

If It Takes A Bloodbath

“If it takes a bloodbath to silence the demonstrators, let’s get it over with.”  These were the words of the governor of California, Ronald Reagan, on April 7, 1970.

I was in New York City on May 4, 1970, when I heard that a bloodbath had taken place.  American soldiers had killed four American civilians on American soil --- not in California, but in Ohio. 

Exactly three months before Kent State, I was an American soldier.  At the time of the shootings, I was an American civilian.  The news chilled me.  People like me had just killed people like me. 

A demonstration was being arranged in the nation’s capital to protest the shootings; I resolved to go.

I needed to borrow my parents’ car.  I have no idea how I presented this request to them, but they agreed and let me drive their car to Washington DC.  I arranged to stay with a friend there, and headed south.

As I drove into Washington, I saw soldiers on rooftops looking down at my parents’ car.  My first thought: how nice that they are protecting me.  But then I realized that they weren’t protecting me; they were protecting the buildings from me.

The protest took place on a Saturday morning at the Lincoln Memorial.  It came off without a hitch; there was a feeling of great goodwill in the air.

That evening, my friend had to go to work and I was alone in his apartment, which was on a nice quiet tree-lined residential street.

Uh oh --- not so quiet.  I heard a sound I knew from being a soldier: bootsteps.  I looked out the window.  Troops were marching down the tree-lined street.

Then a smell hit me.  It was not tear gas; it was CS --- a crowd-control gas I knew from Basic Training.  I made sure the apartment window was shut tight, and stepped away from the window.

American troops had killed American civilians only a few days before; American troops were now marching down the street outside.

I sat there alone with the sound and the smell and the darkness --- I had never felt so alone in my life.

I waited until morning before going out to inspect my parents’ car.  The troops had been lobbing CS, and I was afraid that canisters had dented the car. 

There was no damage; I exhaled.  I headed north and returned my parents’ car. 

I did not tell my parents that the nation’s capital was an armed camp.  I did not tell them that I had been afraid.  I did not tell them how thin the membrane is between being a soldier and being a civilian, and if this had all happened when I was in uniform, I do not know what my role would have been.

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A 3-minute You Tube video "Ohio" by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnOoNM0U6oc

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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

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

The Lactose-Intolerant Bus

I have been leading walking tours of downtown St. Louis on Saturdays for a decade now.  After a few years of downtown tours, I decided to branch out and lead walking tours of various neighborhoods in St. Louis.

This year, I really branched out: I chose a neighborhood that was too big for walking.  I needed to rent a bus.

The neighborhood was the Near North Riverfront, the most isolated neighborhood in St. Louis.  Squeezed between Interstate-70 and the Mississippi River, it is five miles long and only a few blocks wide.  Very much a working neighborhood: 200 companies are situated in the Near North Riverfront, while there are only 550 residents.

With so few residents, nothing is open in the Near North Riverfront on a Saturday.  Therefore, I needed to rent a bus with a restroom.  I went to the bus company, decided on a 36-seat bus, and signed a contract.

Signing a contract opened the door to lots of things to worry about.

I maintain a list of email addresses of people who have been on my previous tours.  I sent out an announcement, and questions flooded into my mind.  What if nobody wants to come on my tour?  What if the bus wasn’t full and I had to subsidize the tour?  What if the bus was full and I had to turn people away?

I set myself up on PayPal so people could pay in advance.

 

Turns out some people hate PayPal.  They sent me checks.  Some people claimed PayPal hates them.  More checks.  Someone uses a computer in a public library and is nervous about PayPal.  One more check.  Some people dawdled about using PayPal.

The bus list finally filled up and people finally paid up.  Now I had a new set of worries.

What if the bus shows up late?  What if the restroom doesn’t work?  What if the air conditioning is faulty?  What if some of the attendees are late? 

My biggest worry: what if someone tries to bring dairy products on board?  I sent out an email to the attendees telling them that beer, wine, and soda were OK, but they could not bring dairy products.

I got an email back saying that I was treating people like grade school children.

So, I had to go into details.  The bus company forbids dairy products.   The reason: The bus sits in a big lot in the blazing sun, and if someone had spilled milk in the bus, the bus would start to stink.  I would be responsible for making the bus rentable again ($95 bucks an hour)...and the bus company had made it clear that they were keeping my credit card number on file just in case.

Came the day of the tour: The weather was good, the bus was on time, and all 36 attendees were on time.  We were ready to visit St. Louis’ most isolated neighborhood with not a single dairy product on board.

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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

She Would Rather Smoke Crack

When Gwyneth Paltrow announced that she would rather smoke crack than eat cheese in a can, I wondered why she thought cheese in a can was so horrid.

I like cheese in a can.  

In 1975 I lived in Sokoto, Nigeria, near the edge of the Sahara Desert.  There was only one kind of cheese produced in Sokoto: camel milk cheese.  There must be something special about camel milk because this cheese was very hard.  It had grooves in it and reminded me of white shingles that Americans use for siding their homes.

In a city where temperatures have been known to hit 117 degrees Fahrenheit, you need a cheese that is going to survive without refrigeration.  Camel milk cheese fit the bill, but it did not fit my idea of dairy sanitation.

If you stopped at a little neighborhood shop in Sokoto, you would find cigarettes, soft drinks, bread, laundry powder, and umbrellas.  You will also find Kraft cheese in a can --- a blue can from Australia.

I bought cans of Kraft cheese.  I made grilled cheese sandwiches.  I found that Kraft cheese pairs nicely with Nigerian beer.  I liked knowing that being geographically remote did not mean being cut off from cheese, even if it did come in a can.

Now I see that Kraft has started a campaign to import its blue cans of cheese into the United States.  The United States has plenty of cheese produced in nice sanitary conditions.  Who would buy these blue cans?

Survivalists.  

Kraft is marketing this “previously unavailable” cheese for disaster preparedness.  Any cheese that could survive sitting on a shelf in a neighborhood shop in Sokoto, Nigeria, can definitely claim to be survival cheese.

Cheese in a can made my life in Nigeria better.  Cheese in a can could save someone's life in post-Apocalyptic America.  So, why does Gwyneth despise it?

Oops, wrong cheese in a can.  

I think Gwyneth was talking about aerosol squirty cheese in cans, not my beloved blue cans of Kraft cheese.  OK…maybe crack is preferable to Easy Cheese squirted on a cracker.

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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

S.O.S. --- Save Our Saucer

It was the 1980s, and my niece got a gig inventorying buildings in Hartford, Connecticut.  These buildings were being nominated for the National Register of Historic Places.

I saw my niece after she finished the inventory, and I told her that I was pleased that she was helping save historic buildings.

She accepted my compliment, but went on to talk about one of her concerns.  Saving old buildings was a worthwhile effort, but she was worried about saving new buildings.  She was afraid that we would be losing some of the architectural masterpieces of the 1950s simply because they are not old.  People get enthusiastic about old buildings, but they tend to be blasé about new buildings.

My niece was the first person I ever heard express this idea.  I was amazed that she was expressing it in the 1980s when the 1950s were a recent memory.

My niece was a pioneer, and now she is no longer alone.  The number of people who appreciate mid-century modern architecture has swelled.

In St. Louis, the numbers have swelled because someone wanted to tear down our flying saucer.

It’s not a real flying saucer.  It was originally a gas station with a giant circular roof; then it became a fast food taco place with a giant circular roof.

When the fast food taco place closed, plans were announced to demolish the saucer for a strip mall.

People mobilized.  They mobilized on foot carrying signs: “This building is out of this world.”   They mobilized in wheelchairs:

The people were heard.  The loveable saucer will now be preserved, and will become the home of a Starbucks and a Chipotle Mexican Grill.

My niece, the pioneer, will be glad to know that the flying saucer retains its place among other St. Louis mid-century modern monuments, including the Gateway Arch and what has to be the nation’s largest Amoco sign.

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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