Hello blog village, on a Friday instead of a Thursday. We had a busy day of travel yesterday, and I knew I wouldn’t want to sequester myself in our hotel room once we got here, so I’m trying to dash off a quick one on Friday morning while Barbara is on a conference call. It’s 10:20 as I’m starting this and we have tickets for the 11:30 tram within the north leg of the Gateway Arch, to go to the top. So, time is of the essence!
It’s always great to be “home” again, and St. Louis will always be my true home, my roots, and my history. And I can say without reservation that everything we saw after arriving yesterday made it clear that St. Louis has never looked better. New construction everywhere, including here in downtown, new condos, new parks, and even the airport looked the best it has in decades. I’m proud of my hometown! There were times during high school and college where I really couldn’t say that honestly. Things were getting rundown, projects weren’t completed, beautiful theaters were shuttering, and the general feel of the whole metro area was a little depressed. That is not the case anymore.
Even the grounds of the Gateway Arch, which is now Gateway Arch National Park after being a National Monument since it was completed in 1965. I clearly remember the day they slid the final piece into place at the top, because the nuns at Mary Queen of Peace brought big black & white TVs into our classrooms so we could watch it happen.
Ever since that completion date, the grounds around the Arch always looked a little (a lot) incomplete. I-70 separated it from the rest of downtown, and despite the fact the busy roaring lanes of the highway were below grade, you still had to walk over busy and noisy overpasses just to get to the grass. Not anymore. They’ve just finished a massive job of building a grassy connector over the highway so the whole thing flows from downtown to the Arch itself, in one massive lawn. They also built new underground spaces, a new main entrance, and a lot of other projects. It finally looks the way I’m sure Eero Saarinen imagined it when he designed it in 1947, when he needed a LOT of vision to imagine it in an area that was nothing more than empty brick warehouses stretching to the banks of the Mississippi River. It’s an engineering marvel, and I never cease to be awed by it.
And that unique shape? Imagine holding a heavy chain with your arms outstretched, so that the chain made a graceful curve between your hands. That natural shape is a catenary curve. Turn it over, and make it out of 630 feet of steel, and you have the Arch. Technically, it’s an “inverted catenary curve” and it was a marvel to watch it go up from 1963 to 1965. They invented an awful lot of construction machines to make it happen, including some spectacular “creeper cranes” that would lift each new section into place, then put in new tracks above them, then creep up a little more to put the next piece in place.
And yes, once they got to a certain height where the legs were leaning in so much they were likely to fall, they inserted a huge brace across the gap to hold everything up. I watched all of this as a kid, and each time we’d go downtown or cross the river on a trip, we’d be excited to see how much higher it had gotten.
It can be a little intimidating to stand at its base, and a little vertigo-inducing, as well. It’s hard to stare straight up at it and not feel a little unsteady. But, once you get your Arch legs under you, it’s impossible to not be impressed by its design and its absolutely timeless beauty. It still looks like it’s from the future.
After walking all over downtown we headed west to the suburb of Rock Hill, which is documented multiple times in my book “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts” because: A) Schall School was in Rock Hill and that’s the place I caught my first fly ball. And: B) That’s where Farotto’s is located.
We’ve been eating Farotto’s pizza since I was old enough to chew. It’s the sort of place that is clearly passed on from generation to generation, and last night after we got there I said, “I bet I could walk around here and stop at every table to talk to the people, and in the end I’d have one degree of separation, or maybe zero degrees, with at least 25 percent of the people in here. We’d all know some Kirkwood, Rock Hill, of Webster Groves family names in common.”
It’s also a requirement that my niece Kimberly comes to Farotto’s as well, whether I’m here for the St. Louis NHRA race or just for a quick weekend, like this one. It’s always great to see her, and hear where all of her hectic business travel has taken here. She’s actually leaving today for a quick trip to Ireland, but that’s for fun. For work, it’s not uncommon for her to go all the way to China. I’m way too old for that.
When I was a kid and all the way up through the years I was in college, Farotto’s was basically a “carry out only” place. It was 90% kitchen, with just enough space for customers to walk through the door, pick up their pizza and toasted ravioli, and head back home. There were two (count ’em, two) tiny little tables with 1950s kitchen chairs, and that was it. I recall possibly eating our pizza at one of those table one time. Over the years, they’ve acquired the other businesses and buildings around them, added space in the back, and increased the seating capacity from possibly four all the way up over 200. It’s now a destination for dinner, with a lively bar, and a lot of longtime customers, just like me.
We had a rollicking time, we loved the food, and the wine wasn’t bad either. It’s always great to spend time with any of my nieces or nephews, and it’s always a wonderful evening when it’s spent with Kim, and some toasted ravioli, and a pizza.
After our excursion to the top of the Arch (now 45 minutes away) we’re going to ad lib the afternoon depending on the weather. If the chance of rain is a bit high, we might just tour around in the rental car and see historic stuff. And I mean historic in the typical sense (the 1904 Worlds Fair and 1904 Olympic sites are still things you can see in St. Louis) but also in the historic Wilber sense. So many memories, and they’re all so fresh.
Tonight, we see “The Wiz” at the St. Louis Muny Opera, in Forest Park. Can’t wait for Barbara to experience The Muny. It’s amazing.
Tomorrow, the St. Louis Zoo will most likely be our main goal. Photos will be taken of everything, and posted next week.
The Cardinals are out of town, which is both a good thing and a bad. If they were here, and especially if they were playing the Cubs like they were earlier this week, we couldn’t have gotten this room at the Hilton, but downtown would’ve been much livelier. Busch Stadium is right below us, and what we get to see are the tireless grounds crew workers continually working on the beautiful field. Their work never ends. It just gets a little more 9-to-5 when the team is on the road.
So that’s it for today and this week. Kind of a short one, but The Arch beckons!
As always, Rule No. 134 around here is this: If you just read this blog and you enjoyed it, please hit the “Like” button at the top. The more “likes” the merrier.
I’ll see you next week, with more tales from The Gateway City. Home.
Bob Wilber, at your service and ready to ride to the top.