Those Weren't the Days

The XXX Olympiad has put me in the mood to read about the III Olympiad, among other things. I'm funny that way. But it's interesting to read about, mainly because the St. Louis Games had fiasco written all over them.

Back when Chicago made its futile pitch for the 2016 Games, I thought one claim the city had on the event was the fact that St. Louis had snatched the Games away from Chicago in 1904, to complement the Louisiana Purchase Exposition -- the Meet Me in St. Louis world's fair. Some sources say the fair organizers essentially bullied Baron de Coubertin by threatening to hold separate athletic events to overshadow the Olympics. In any case, the Games ended up being overshadowed by the fair anyway. Also, they were badly run; hardly international at all, since most of the best European athletes didn't want to come; and marred by various notorious incidents, both in the opinion of people at the time and more recently.

The story of the marathon that year is bizarre in the extreme, and well-told at Marathon & Beyond. This amusing podcast is about the runner who actually won the race, as opposed to the guy who cheated. Throw in a Cuban who stops to eat apples along the way, some Zulus recruited to the race at the last minute, and racers having to dodge auto-mobiles and horse-drawn vehicles on dusty, pre-modern roads, and you've got kinetic comedy. I'm surprised no movie along the lines of The Great Race or Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines was ever made from the story.

The disgraceful history at "Anthropology Days" at the Games is discussed by Slate in 2008 and the Daily Mail this year. Go to the IOC web site, and the incident is downplayed considerably in the short page about the 1904 Games. That is, not mentioned.

Item From the Past: St. Louis 1990

Twenty years ago, I broke my life in half; into before I moved to Japan and after I did so. In February 1990, I was still on the ragged edge of the break. February 2 was my last day at work in Chicago, and shortly afterward I headed for Dallas with a load of possessions, to store them at my brother and sister-in-law's house.

On the 13th, I headed back toward Chicago to pick up the rest of my possessions, making it as far as a cheap, independent motel in Rolla, Missouri. I must have paid no attention to TV weather forecasts that night, since the next day I didn't try to beat the winter storm that was headed for central Illinois.

Instead, I decided to spend a few hours in St. Louis. I'd never been to the Gateway Arch, so I wanted to do that. The view from the base of the thing, curving up as it does impossibly into the sky, struck me as more impressive than the view through small windows at the top, or at least it did on that gray winter day. But I was amused by oddity of the enclosed tram pods that take you upward inside the Arch and to the top. Mork came to Earth in a pod something like that.

Afterward I visited the Basilica of St. Louis, King of France (the Old Cathedral), which is practically underneath the Arch -- or rather, the Arch was built a stone's throw away from the church. It's a fine Greek Revival church building, dating from the 1830s, and well worth seeing inside and outside. As I was leaving, one of the staff (I think) said, "If you liked this, you should see the New Cathedral." New in that it had been completed in 1914. He gave me directions.

The New Cathedral is actually the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis (just the Cathedral of St. Louis in 1990). I didn't know anything about it, but I took the tip and I'm glad I did. It's one of the most astonishingly beautiful churches I've ever seen. I'm a sucker for mosaics.

A few years later I wrote a squib about the New Cathedral for a newsletter, which I'm quoting here in its entirety: "It isn't necessary to cross oceans to savor the majesty of large-scale mosaic art, vaultingly expressed in a cathedral. You only need to visit the Cathedral of Saint Louis, about 10 minutes west of that city's well-known Arch. Composed of millions of tesserae -- tiles of stone or glass -- the mosaics of the cathedral dome and walls offer visitors a pageantry of Christian saints, symbols and stories rendered in hundreds of subtle hues. The architecture is deeply reminiscent of the great Byzantine cathedrals of Italy and points East."

After seeing the New Cathedral, I drove northward toward to Chicago and hit an ice storm. But I'm not sorry I tarried in St. Louis that day.

Caves I've Known

In the summer of '72, my family went on a cave vacation. At least, that's how I remember it, because the goal was Carlsbad Caverns, but on the way there we stopped at the Caverns of Sonora in west Texas, and on the way back, Longhorn Cavern State Park in central Texas.

I was duly impressed by Carlsbad, such as by the fact that each tour visited only part of the developed trails, that plenty more undeveloped passages branched off, and that in fact not all the cave had been explored, and maybe never could be. The enormous vaulting ceilings are grand. The huge stalagmites, -tites and other formations are as well. And, being a kid, I was also impressed that there was a whole snack bar in one of the cave's larger rooms, and by the speed at which the elevators moved to take you to the surface.

We also waited one evening at dusk near the main entrance of the cave for the bats to come out -- there is, or was, seating available for that purpose. A park service employee was at hand to talk about bats, and I remember him mentioning in passing that it sure did snow a lot in New Mexico, and that bats rarely flew into anyone's hair, not to worry about that. The bats dribbled out at first, then became a torrent.

As memorable as Carlsbad was, the Caverns of Sonora made a bigger impression. Even at 11, I was struck by the intense beauty of the cave. Unlike Carlsbad, it didn't overwhelm with size. It's a modest cave in that way, but packed with formations, including amazing numbers of helictites, thin formations that seem to grow every which way, seemingly without regard to gravity. Of course I don't remember a lot of detail after 35 years (I haven't returned), but I do remember being blown away, and I don't think my age was the main factor.

Over the years since, I've visited a fair number of commercial caves, perhaps looking for the awe I felt at the Caverns of Sonora. It isn't quite a hobby, more of an active interest, and when the opportunity arises, I'll go, which has taken me as far as an interesting cave on the island of Shikoku, Japan -- which proved that you don't really have to understand the guide -- and a nice jewelbox of a cave in Western Australia. Closer to home, Mammoth Cave duly impressed as Carlsbad once did, and Wind Cave had its charms too. Mark Twain Cave, on the other hand, was part of the tourist snare -- "trap" is too strong -- that is Hannibal, Mo., and not that great as a cave.

Unfortunately, I never followed up on the single non-commercial caving experience I had, in July 1982, when two college friends and I spent most of a day inside the Earth at a cave some distance outside Nashville, equipped with hardhats topped by acetylene gas lamps, flashlights, candles and lunches that we packed in. It was muddy and exhausting and good fun, with plenty to see by that eerie acetylene glow, though not as picturesque as a commercial cave.

On August 4, we made it to Cave of the Mounds, near Blue Mound, Wisconsin, just in time for the last tour of the day. It's a fine cave, not lacking in worthy formations, and more interesting because the first half of the tour was done entirely by flashlight -- a special feature of the day's touring, since it was the anniversary of the day the cave had been discovered in 1939. I'm also happy to report that Ann walked all the way through without asking to be carried. This bodes well for future walks through caves, in search of one that will recall Sonora.

Previously Unpublished Item: St. Louis Eats

April 15, 2004

Had a pretty good time in St. Louis, this time around. I neglected to post much about my time in the city, since a lot of it was taken up with business – gets in the way of a good trip, it does – but I did have a few hours in the city by myself. One morning I got up early and wandered around downtown. Not a very lively place, even on a weekday morning. I had to remember that sparsely populated downtowns are in fact the norm in North America, with a place like Chicago or New York being the exception. Still, St. Louis has a stock of excellent older buildings, and a few of them are being converted into residences.

Didn’t wander over to the Arch this time. It’s a fine thing, but I didn’t need to see it again. One evening I went over to Laclede’s Landing, a small former river landing on the Mississippi, now a restaurant/entertainment district. I’d visited there briefly, one cold, miserable day, but wanted a second look in better weather. With its narrow brick streets, it reminds me, oddly, of the North End of Boston, without the numerous Italian restaurants and delis that make that place their home.

On a Thursday night, however, Laclede’s Landing wasn’t precisely hopping, though it didn’t seem as empty as downtown. I made my way to a microbrewery, the Morgan Street Brewery, for dinner. I spied buffalo meatloaf on the menu, and asked the waitress, “Is that really buffalo? American bison?” She said that it was, ranch-raised in Kansas I think, and moreover, it was one of the most popular items on the menu. That was enough for me. I had the buffalo meatloaf. Wow, it was good. Nice tender meat, evenly and subtly spiced.

Best meal of the trip, in fact, though in a district somewhat west of downtown, closer to the massive Fair Park and Washington University, I found a decent Indian restaurant. Ordered the lamb vindaloo hot, and they delivered. Good naan too, and a mango lasi. It must be hard to make a bad mango lasi, because I’ve never had one.

Item from the Past: St. Louis & Points in Between

December 2, 1999

Yuriko and Lilly were in Japan at the time I took this short trip to St. Louis and back.

I spent a pleasant Thanksgiving Day with Kevin’s family, which includes his parents and his older brother Tony. The next day I headed out for St. Louis. Aside from a few hours in the winter of 1990, just ahead of an ice storm that forced me to spend the night in Normal, Ill., I hadn’t spent any time here before.

On Saturday afternoon, after wandering through the art museum in Fair Park, I found myself on the riverfront, near the Arch. It’s an ugly riverfront, populated by riverboat casinos; a defunct riverboat restaurant (the Lt. Robert E. Lee, an ersatz steamboat dating from the ’60s — the 1960s, that is); “the world’s only floating McDonald’s”; and two cheesy tour boats, the Tom Sawyer and the Becky Thatcher.

That said, I like the Arch, and its museums underneath, but I’d been inside the Arch in 1990 and, especially considering the long lines, didn’t feel the need to go again. One of the tour boats was leaving in a few minutes, and I thought: Have I ever been on or in the Mississippi? Being beside it isn’t the same, nor crossing it by bridge, both of which I’d done a lot.

It would be silly, by my completely idiosyncratic way of thinking, to have been in or on a long list of bodies of water — Lake Baikal, the Indian Ocean, Hong Kong Harbor, just to name some of the more far away — and never the Mississippi. So I got on the Tom Sawyer.

It was one of the more drab tours I’ve ever been on. Some of the bridges weren’t bad, and a riverside 1910s-vintage power & light building had its Machine Age charms, but on the whole the Mississippi River near St. Louis is bleak this time of year, especially the Illinois side of the river. Even Hamburg Harbor and the Mouth of the Yangtze had more riverside sites.

On the drive down and on the way back, I also saw a few things. On the way south I stopped in Bloomington, Ill., I saw Justice David Davis’ (US Supreme Court, 1862-77) fine Victorian house. I had read that he organized delegates for Lincoln at the Wigwam in 1860, but not that he weighed 300 lbs. and then some. Most visibly, his size affected his choice of furniture, which tended to be sturdy.

I stopped in Lincoln, Ill., for lunch, and learned that the town was named for A. Lincoln several years before he became president — he did some legal work for the developers, it seems. En route out of town, I chanced by the Postville State House State Historic Site, a replica of the original courthouse for Logan County (Lincoln is the county seat). The actual 1830s courthouse was dismantled in the 1920s by Henry Ford and moved to his museum in Michigan.

The replica was good, however, and the volunteer tour guide, a woman of about 70, was really glad to see me, since I was the first visitor all day. She even showed me a cache of yellow documents hidden in one of the desks that she said the park administrators didn’t know about. (The ones I looked at seemed to be bills of sale from about 100 years ago). There were some even older documents on display, slipped into clear plastic protective covers so you could pick them up and read them. One I saw was an arrest warrant, dated 1847 if I remember correctly.

On the way back to the Chicago area, I stopped at the old capitol building of Illinois in Vandalia, from the 1830s. It was the original. After Vandalia lost out to Springfield as state capital, it was the county courthouse for the better part of a century. Not a bad little building. References to Lincoln were, of course, nearly as thick as in Springfield, but with some reason, since he was in the legislature that met in Vandalia, and in fact a voice for moving the capital.

Item from the Past: Thanksgiving 2001

This Thanksgiving was the first one with the whole immediate family together in many years — since sometime in the mid-70s, I think, when the family was considerably smaller. It took a long drive — a series of drives — to get there, but was worth it.

On the Saturday before Thanksgiving, we headed out and made it to Rolla, Mo., for the first evening. The next day we drove southward from Springfield, Mo., gateway to Branson. Had lunch in Branson, a Chinese buffet with quantity, not quality on its side, and then took a drive down the main road, the hillbilly equivalent of the Strip in Las Vegas.

From there, southward on Arkansas 7, a fine drive, that is until it gets dark. Eventually we made it to the obscure Mena, Ark., for the next overnight. The only thing memorable about driving on darkened rural roads in Arkansas are the eerie, luminous chicken farms near the road. Rectangular, windowless buildings glow pale amber, with the light that keeps the chickens up and laying eggs all night oozing through the thin walls.

Enjoyed our visit with Jay and Deb from Monday to the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Monday was Lilly's fourth birthday, so we had a cake and candles and some presents for her. Throughout the week, she took up a lot of her cousin Robert’s time, playing with him. He’s the closest in age to her, but not too close — he turns 13 soon.

My mother and Jim came up for Thanksgiving itself. Besides Thanksgiving dinner at Jay's at a long table, other events included outings to the Dallas Zoo, the Dallas Museum of Art (just Y and me), and downtown Dallas, sometimes riding DART, a fine new train system. We ate other meals together, fooled around with Jay’s computer (an iMac), watched some videos (Chicken Run and Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a fine Thanksgiving movie), and gabbed a lot about this and that.

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we headed home via Ardmore, Okla., spending some time with my aunt and uncle (Sue, my mother’s younger sister, and her husband Ken). It was nice to see them, but it did make for a longer drive that day, much of it into the evening. We made it back to Rolla in time to go to bed at the same motel we stayed at on the way to Dallas, Zeno’s, a non-chain brand if there ever was one.

The only bit of sightseeing we did in Rolla was at the University of Missouri at Rolla, not far off the Interstate. I had read about a half-scale replica of Stonehenge there, so we looked into that. I wasn’t expecting anything as grand as the actual Stonehenge, which I saw in 1983.

This replica was built by the engineering department at the school, and it had the look of engineers about it: concrete and asphalt. According to the signs attached to it, it is aligned with the sky in the same way as the original, correcting for the fact that Missouri is somewhat south of Wiltshire, England. Lilly enjoyed playing around the stones, but Yuriko was completely unimpressed. I wasn’t all together impressed myself. Carhenge, now that’s a replica I need to see.

Commencement Soap Bubbles

As I was wandering around campus trying to keep up with Ann last week, I realized that my nephew Sam’s graduation from Washington University was the first commencement ceremony I’d been to in a long time. For a while, I thought the last one I attended was my own from Vanderbilt—Friday the 13th of May, 1983—but later I remember attending my old friend Tom J’s graduation from UT Austin in May 1988.

The commencement speaker at the UT event was TV journalist Bill Moyers, who gave a good speech, though I can’t remember a particle of it. As for my own graduation, I don’t remember that there was a special commencement speaker, but there must have been. Which only confirms what anyone who sits through such a speech knows, that they have the longevity of soap bubbles.

Wash U invited Richard Gephardt, former Congressman and lead-balloon candidate for U.S. President, to be the ’05 speaker. I heard him as I might hear parts of a televised speech as I entered and left a room. Ann saw no reason to sit with the rest of us at the back of the quadrangle on one of the folding chairs provided by the university, so she set off to explore. I followed. She managed to find a set of exciting outdoor stairs—hard concrete, so I was sure some tumbling would come of it, but none did—long academic hallways (heavy doors, office-hour notices, bulletin boards, cartoons taped to the walls), an elevator usually reserved for the handicapped, sidewalks, grass, a group of commencement volunteers who cooed over her, and a basement with university workers in their cubicles, who were ignoring the thousands of people only a short distance away. In one hallway near a door leading to the quadrangle, paramedics were attending to a woman in a stretcher. She must have been about 60, a mother or grandmother or aunt or some other relation of somebody among the crowd, or all of those things to scattered members of the crowd. She was conscious and talking, so I expect she survived whatever it was that got her temporarily laid up.

As I said, I didn’t hear all of Gephardt. But as near as I can tell, his speech came down to, “time flies, things change.” Here’s something that won’t change: this man will never be President of the United States. Never mind his politics. He just doesn’t have a presidential name. It was the same thing that sidetracked the late Paul Tsongas in 1992 in favor of Bill Clinton.