(2) St. Louis, Missouri
(2) March 30 — April 5, 2009
In 1833 Wied wrote that St. Louis was an important city with a population of about 7,000. It was strategically located on the Mississippi River, at the Missouri River and near the Ohio. It was the gateway to the west. Along the town’s main street there were many fine shops. Steamboats arrived and departed every day. The city was booming with business. Most of the dock workers and all of the servants were black slaves. He himself saw how hard they had to work and how terribly they were treated, often beaten.
The Arch
Monday, March 20, 2009: As already mentioned in the first report, the Gateway Arch was erected in the old St. Louis port area. Between 1963 and 1965 the wrecking ball was put to extensive use in order to construct the arch and its museum. But not only that. The whole area was designed in triangular form on which a parkland was created. Not the worst solution! It’s a great place to take a pleasant stroll.
We bought a ticket for the trip to the top — to the top of the Arch. We entered a cabin and then in small jerks we were transported the 192 meters to the top. This ride is nothing for people who suffer from claustrophobia — like me! But the trip to the top lasted only one minute, so it wasn’t so bad. The view from up there was truly impressive, but I felt quite queasy the whole time because at the top the arch is five meters wide at the most and the whole time you have the feeling there is nothing below you. And so we were relieved when the cabin brought us back to the bottom and we had solid ground under our feet again. As we were already in the neighborhood, we went over to the Museum of Westward Expansion, where we saw a chronological table that made reference to Wied’s travel.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009: William F. Florch (see entry form March 26th) told us to go to the University Library to get more information about Wied’s meeting with Clark and the Sack and Fox Indians. He wrote the address on the back of his business card. As fate would have it, we didn’t look carefully enough at the address, so instead of going to the University of Missouri we ended up at the University of St. Louis. We didn’t find what we were looking for there, but on Euclid Avenue we did discover a cozy little university neighborhood. At the Jefferson Library at the University of Missouri, we could not find what we were searching for, but the friendly archivist suggested that we try the St. Louis Public Library, where there was microfilm available.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009: Downtown, 1301 Olive Street: St. Louis Public Library. Our contact person was Tom Ernest Winkelmann whose ancestors came from Oldenburg. Tom did his very best to help us but it was exactly the year in which we were interested (1833) that he couldn’t find. Our bad luck!
Library
The Old Courthouse
We were downtown and so we decided to go to the Old Courthouse Museum across from the Gateway Arch. But before that we went to a Hooters Restaurant. (Give the link a click!) I was especially interested in the many different TV screens, one of which showed the game between Wales and Germany, transmitted by a Mexican station, so I could watch this boring match live and in color. By the way, Germany won 2-0! I think that I was the only guest in the restaurant that had any interest in soccer. Afterward, in the Old Courthouse Museum we saw quite a good photo exhibit, but the rest didn’t interest us. We suddenly came to the realization that we had had our fill of museums!
Thursday, April 2, 2009: Today our program was Turtle Park and the Zoo. We wanted to see which animals roamed free in North America at Wied’s time but which are now captive in a zoo. Turtle Park turned out to be a bad joke — only plastic turtles, and badly made to boot.
Admission to the zoo was free, which made us immediately suspicious. The beautiful building probably goes back to 1904, when the zoo was established, and seem not to fulfill current requirements for keeping animals — but in the same breath I must say that I’m against zoos and so I’m surely not very objective in this regard. The American eagle was captive in a cage of perhaps 5×5 meters, the American bears seemed totally out of place in their enclosure and the prairie dogs didn’t have enough room for their diggings. In the Herpetarium there were some North American lizards, turtles and snakes.
Zoo St. Louis
We didn’t like what we saw in the zoo, so we decided to cut short our visit and head for the shopping mall 17 km away where we could have a look at camping equipment and accessories. When we finally left the mall it was almost 8.00 o’clock and pitch-black. We had forgotten that the headlights on our VW van is not especially good, to put it mildly. The lighting in the dashboard doesn’t work at all, and so our return trip turned out to be a real adventure. We limped along side roads, and at times we had no idea where we were. If there were no street lights or if other cars didn’t light the pavement, we drove more or less blind, which didn’t lead to a pleasant mood in the car. But then, suddenly, a gift from heaven — we found a street that we recognized, and everything was all right again.
Friday, April 3, 2009: First of all, for $26 (for 100 minutes) we bought a SIM card for Elke’s cell phone, so that we had a telephone number in the USA. We had sent an e-mail to Trent Sindelar of the St. Louis Public Library, telling him about our bad luck with the libraries. In reply he gave us a tip to try the Missouri History Museum Library & Research Center for our researches. We went there, the employees were not so friendly, but we found an article in the newspaper, Missouri Republican, about the Jefferson Barracks, General Atkinson and Black Hawk. We found the article we were searching for. Back in those days the newspaper, the Missouri Republican, was published only every two weeks. Our article was in the edition of April 11, 1833 — with news about what had happened on March 26th.
Back to present day reality. On TV there was extensive coverage of the G20 Summit in London. Of course, there were a lot of reports about the political aspects of these meetings, but it seemed that just as much was reported about First Lady Michelle Obama — which dress she had worn what she had said, why she had put her arm around the Queen and whether that had been a great faux pas. The American comedians had a field day with all of this. I especially like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert
Only on FOX, a conservative Republican TV station, are there any reports critical of Obama. CNN reporters, by contrast, are positive in their assessment of Barak and Michelle Obama. The TV viewer has the impression that the Americans are happy now to have a president that is so popular everywhere. Check out this link: Obama’s travels in Europe
Saturday, April 4, 2009: Yesterday we tried to find one of the well-known American bookshops, Barnes & Noble, on Ladue Road, but had no success. This angered us to no end. We gave up and drove to a car accessory shop to buy a few things, for example, an antenna for our VW camper (the old one was broken). As it was Saturday, there were so many cars on the road and so many people in the shop that we were really happy to get back to our “clubhouse”. After Elke had somehow or other attached the antenna, with fragments of tape and material from the old antenna, and after we had let off some frustration steam, we drove to Creve Coeur Park where we took a long pleasant walk to bring our day to a pleasant conclusion.
Sunday, April 5, 2009: After two Skype calls, first with Julia and Florian, then with Gerda and Willi, we drove back to Creve Coeur Park and walked around the lake. Along the way we saw some soccer being played on one field, and not far away on another field football. Interesting to consider that both of these sports originated from rugby football in England in the 19th century.
refereree