Oh! Shenandoah, I love your daughter far across the wide Missouri. Folks this year it wasn’t Paris, but Missouri. We went to St. Louis, Branson, and Kansas City all in the great state of Missouri. I must tell you that the night before we left someone (not something) brought down TWA Flight 800! At the time my own son was flying to Los Angeles. Paris really might have been our second choice. I can’t begin to tell you how that explosion left me emotionally devastated. Why do I write these columns when such destruction can only cause misanthropy? In my first column I wrote that life is very tough proposition and that art is a compensation. Nothing can compensate for Flight 800. Because I have a new car I elected to drive, but had we elected to fly to St. Louis and rent a car, TWA would have been the airline! St. Louis is TWA’s hub. To Kvetch a little bit more, when we got there the stock market began crashing. CNN was reporting that an E.Coli epidemic was killing Japanese children and that the bug is resistant to antibiotics. And I’m supposed to be having a good time! Just as writing these columns is an affirmation of life, so you must pick yourself up and force yourself to have a good time – and I did.
I should also tell you that the trip exposed some of my strengths and weaknesses. The speed limit in Missouri is 70 miles per hour. It is no fun going 70 miles an hour when you are looking for an exit in St. Louis or Kansas City. It is no fun driving in a rain or thunderstorm when humongous trucks are spraying your car with foam. Nor is it fun to come down the Ozarks or the Alleghenys at 70 miles per hour. Hemingway said only the foolhardy feel no fear; the brave overcome it. Well, I’m brave because I’m scared of everything. Then of course, I did complete the trip – all 3,100 miles of it.
Now, that said, I must tell you that I hate it when people ask me why I’d want to go to St. Louis, Branson, or Kansas City. I mean you say Paris, they say WOW! You say St. Louis, they say “Why do you want to go there?” Do we have an inferiority complex about our own culture? I think not, but older cities of Europe, or Asia just seem more glamorous. Certainly, they have a longer history. Having said that let’s see what there is to see in Missouri:
St. Louis bills itself as the gateway to the west From any part of St. Louis on a clear day you can see the Gateway Arch. It was designed by Eero Saarinen and rises 630 feet above the site where Pierre de-Laclede built a house and trading post. Further down is Lacledes Landing where the original settlement of St. Louis was. It is now filled with shops and restaurants. The Arch is higher than the Washington Monument. Unfortunately, Saarinen never lived to see it completed. You can ride a tram up it for a view of the Mississippi. It is the mighty Mississippi and not the Missouri that runs by it. I’m sure you can see the Missouri which also borders St. Louis. I wouldn’t know because I didn’t go up it. I was scared, and I did not overcome this fear.
St. Louis is one of the rare cities in which the Missouri museum is probably better than the St. Louis Art Museum. Let me say that in the summer whether it be New York or Paris, culture usually winds down. Yet St. Louis supports a world class orchestra. The Powell Theatre where the orchestra plays seemed old and the neighborhood somewhat rundown yet calls on the radio for Annuities seem to be heeded. Washington, D.C. just “stole” Leonard Slatkin, but Hans Vonk is ready to carry on.
Let’s get back to that Missouri Museum. They had an exhibit on the Worlds Fair of 1904. None of Meet Me in St. Louis was shot in St. Louis, The trolley didn’t look like Judy Garland’s trolley. Her house would have been for richer St. Louisianans, but that film immortalized that fair. That fair attracted 20,000,000 people. Think no planes and still all those people. The fair, like it’s Hollywood counterpart, was made of plaster of Paris. All false facades. The museum made it clear that America in its manifest destiny actually exhibited “primitive” people there as exhibits like people in a cage. Blacks were treated very badly in St. Louis, but the poor of all races didn’t really do much better.
The art museum has a fine, though an unspectacular, collection. Forrest Park where the museum is located is beautiful and the statue of St. Louis overlooks a lake. The Missouri Museum is in that park as well.
We ate in Mother Campisis’s on the Hill. This is a district of Italian Restaurants. Downtown we ate in the Cafe de France. The Cafe de France was voted the best French restaurant in St. Louis for the past sixteen years. They have an $18.00 post theatre dinner that is a steal. We did manage to miss the Missouri botanical gardens. I was later told that’s a big mistake. Union Station has been converted from one of the largest passenger depots in the United States to an area of shops and restaurants.
We cruised the Mississippi on the “Becky Thatcher,” an old steamboat. We passed Hannibal Mo, home of Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain. Our captain said that in six months Samuel Clemens was involved in six accidents. More than one person suggested he try writing about the Mississippi rather than sailing it. Josephine Baker and Scott Joplin were from St. Louis. We visited his house. Try “Treemonisha” his opera which no one took serious because he was black.
Branson, Missouri is like Las Vegas without the gambling. We saw five shows in three days. In chronological order: 1. Tony Orlando; 2. Shoji Tubuchi; 3. Andy Williams; 4. Bobby Vinton; and 5. Charley Pride. They all sell schmaltz and nostalgia but they all do it well. Shoji Tubuchi is a phenomenon. He arrived in the United States with $500 and classical violin training. This man who plays an electric violin ranges from classical to country to Broadway to big band. He has made our culture his own. He is unique and you don’t go to Branson without seeing him. Andy Williams projected all the greats who appeared on his show who are now deceased on a big screen while he sang Kurt Weill’s “September Song”. I cried! Maybe Branson isn’t something I’ll do again, but I loved it.
Kansas City is big. It’s spread out so that the attractions are not one place. However, they have a “trolley”. You pay $4, and you can reboard three times. We managed to go to the Nelson Atkins Art Museum on Monday when it’s closed thus missing it. Their collection may top St. Louis, but I can’t tell you! We did go to the Hallmark Visitors Center. I guess greeting cards are another art form. Kansas City is Hallmark’s home.
There are two upscale shopping areas. Both served by the trolley. Westport for restaurants and young people. Westport was once a City even before Kansas City. Kansas City annexed it. The oldest building now a bar “Kelly’s” was owned by Daniel Boone’s grandson. The Santa Fe trail ran through there. It is hard to believe that trail ran through there because everything’s up to date in Kansas City. This is especially true of the Seville area which can only be compared to New York’s Fifth A venue and then only as it was when New York was a rich city.
The best thing in Kansas City isn’t in Kansas City. Don’t miss the Truman Library in Independence. I forgot how many things happened on Truman’s watch. Some good, some bad. Till the end of time they’ll debate “the Bomb”. Let’s just say no one can say Nagasaki was right even if you support Hiroshima. Regardless there is the recognitions of Israel; The Marshall plan; The Truman doctrine; desegregation of the Armed Forces; formation of the U.N.; and that victory over Dewey.
Then someone stole my cameras, with my films undeveloped. So the only pictures I’ll have of this trip are the word pictures, I’ve just created for you. That’s another reason I’m feeling misanthropic. I had Shoji Tubuchi, Andy Williams, Tony Orlando, Bobby Vinton, and Charley Pride, not to mention Harry Truman all on film. Had is the operative word. Up in smoke! Still I went across the wide Missouri and I’m not sorry.