Once Upon a Time in STL
We’ve been through some rough times in our fair city in recent years. I’ll throw COVID as a possibility for setting the tone for our state of affairs—even though I think how we arrived to where we are now started happening before COVID. There is chaos, unrest, anxiety, division, anger, despair, and disrespect. There seem to be no boundaries. Why?
I’m a neat freak. Probably best described as obsessive-compulsive about cleanliness and organization. I should clarify that I’m a selective neat freak. In my lavatory, I have all of my personal care products in matching bottles, even though I’m the only one who sees them. My spices are organized alphabetically. The clothes in my closets are hanging in color groups. Yes, all of the hangers match and they are facing the same direction. There is a home for every item in my home. I like themes, hooks, shelves, containers, and labels. The books on my bookshelves are arranged by the color scheme of the cover. That’s the graphic designer OCD in me. I remember by color. I like uncluttered surfaces. I also make lists and have organizational spreadsheets. I hope you get the picture and now you know me a little better.
There are some untidy areas of my home and life. I like to call them comfortable. For example, I need to paint the interior of my house, and I’ve started the project, but haven’t had the energy to finish it. Probably because I’m spending too much time and effort organizing. There is a rustic patina and I look at those untidy areas as history in the making; they are part of my character and eccentricity. All in all, though, I’m a strategist and a rule-follower. I like guidelines and parameters. I like rituals, schedules, and structures. Why?
The city of St. Louis is beautiful and it is rich in history. There are rolling hills and flowing waterways. In my city block, there are more than 12 varieties of trees in the tree lawns and yards. Remember when I mentioned uncluttered surfaces? The Zoysia lawns are green and thick…yes, there are some urban naturalists and weeds grow in their lawns and they are beautiful too. Regarding the rich history, I found this snippet on Wikipedia:
“The land that became St. Louis had been occupied by Native American cultures for thousands of years before European settlement. The city was founded on February 14, 1764, by French fur traders Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent, Pierre Laclède, and Auguste Chouteau.[13] They named it for king Louis IX of France, and it quickly became the regional center of the French Illinois Country. In 1804, the United States acquired St. Louis as part of the Louisiana Purchase. In the 19th century, St. Louis developed as a major port on the Mississippi River; from 1870 until the 1920 census, it was the fourth-largest city in the country. It separated from St. Louis County in 1877, becoming an independent city and limiting its political boundaries.”
Living here, it’s easy to understand why the Native American people wanted to make their homes in this beautiful land. There are still reminders of those cultures such as with Cahokia Mounds. My father was an arrowhead collector and we spent a lot of time as children searching for relics and treasures in excavated fields. Here’s a photo of one of my finds. One Easter Sunday, my dad and I had gone to a friend’s farm that had recently been sold and was going to be turned into a subdivision.
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