Summer Vacation: St. Louis Daytrip, pt. 1

Since I grew up 90 minutes from St. Louis, it was the city we went to when we needed to go to the city. If you grew up in a city you may have no idea what I'm talking about, but if you grew up in small town America you know exactly what I mean. Anyway, my Dad organized a day trip for us to go to St. Louis with his/our cousins. Ray, Ben, and Robert are Dad's first cousins, which makes them my second cousins. Dave is Ray's son, which, I suppose makes him Dad's second cousin, and therefore, my third cousin. Our trip was built around a two-fold agenda: (1) find the old homes where they used to live in back in the 40s and (2) go see the Cardinals in the new Busch Stadium. So, this past Tuesday, all six of us loaded up in the van and headed to the city.

REMINISCING
On the drive to St. Louis we pulled together the facts of our family heritage. My Great-Grandfather, Cesare, came over from Northern Italy with his German wife around 1902, coming through Ellis Island like so many other Americans in that time. After a few years mining in Colorado, he relocated his family to Southern Illinois, another productive coal mining area. He died soonafter of pneumonia at age 33. His young bride, Martha, was left to raise and support six kids: Mary, Victor, Dolly, Pete, Silvio and Ceasar. The six cousins in the van this past Tuesday were from Pete and Ceasar.

During the Depression, coal mining was on hard times, so the young families of Dolly, Pete, and Ceasar all moved to the city for better job opportunities. They lived in St. Louis near each other over much of the 30s and 40s. Our goal on this trip was to seek out the homes where they had lived during this time. The older cousins, Ray and Ben, especially remembered life in St. Louis.


After a good lunch at Chevy's in Fairview Heights, we sought out our first destination: Aunt Dolly's house. Aunt Dolly was my Grandpa's sister. She was married at 12 years old and as one of the older kids, also had Martha living with her. Her home was the popular hangout for all the cousins (pictured below).



To say that the neighborhood has changed is a massive understatement. We are talking about a ghetto. What you don't see in the picture below is all the neighbors sitting on the front porch in the middle of the day, drinking and staring at us white folk like we are Elvis sighting. Just three minutes after we parked the van in front of this house, an older Cadillac with heavily tinted windows pulled right up behind my van and just sat there idling, the hard to see guy inside just staring at us. It was kind of scary to say the least.

Next we looked up the place where Dad's three first cousins lived, which was just a few blocks away. It is no longer habitable as you can tell from the picture below.



I assume that when there is graffiti that says, "No Loitering, Drinking, or Drugs," that there is quite of bit of loitering, drinking, or drugs going on in this building where my cousins used to live 60 years ago.

Below is one of the places my Dad lived (upstairs, right side), which is less than fifty yards from the house above.



Streetcars were still heavily in use back then and all four boys who spent these early years in the city made the short trip to the old Sportsman's Park, where the Cardinals and Browns (now Baltimore Orioles) called home for decades. We drove over to the old site on Grand Ave. which is now home the Boys and Girls Club. 10 World Series' were played at this site. Babe Ruth hit a few dingers on this parcel of land.