52nd City

Appropos of Nothing: Some Catfish with your Coffee

First, a PSA: Brett Underwood reports that the Howe/Grubbs reading has been cancelled. Which bums me out very much. I'll have my ear to the ground; if I hear news of a possible re-schedule, you will hear about it here.

Now; I've been meaning to post on Ernest Kirschten's Catfish & Crystal for weeks. How many weeks? Lots. I got a used copy for Chistmas, as a white elephant. As one astute reviewer pointed out, this book (first published in '59) has some, ah, outdated and embarassing aspects to it (Much like another fascinating regional title, Vance Randolph's Ozark Magic and Folklore). But Kirschten, who wrote editorials for the Post back in the first half of the 20th century, has a charming way of describing St. Louis in its various incarnations, from Chouteau to the groundbreaking for the Arch. I don't know if it's a St. Louis transplant thing, but I have a yearning that borders on obsessive to learn everything I can about what happened here before I landed in '01. Whether I'm peering through the chain link fence at Taille de Noyer in NoCo, or breezing past the Carondolet Coke plant, I feel like I am woefully ignorant about St. Louis history. Which is why I have been tearing through this little book, slowed only as I wince through the stone-age, un-PC passages.

For anyone who craves vivid accounts of South City corner bars in the '50s, Sportsman's Park or Gaslight Square, it's here (Gaslight was coming into its own as Kirschten wrote, and so his descriptions have a quality of immediacy that you don't get in retrospective accounts). It's also fascinating how aware he was of St. Louis' urban hemmoraghing, and why it was occuring. It was the same old city vs. county debate - and Kirschten had some grumpy words for the ranch-house/bridge party set. He quotes Lewis Mumford, reminds us that no American city is Paris or London, but that our younger cities have the virtue of being able to change and adapt, if we will allow them to; and though we are eating Chicago's dust (then and now!) it's no reason to despair or do nothing:

"By putting on smoked glasses, Hollywood-style, or a pair of the rose-tinted kind which horse players wear, it is easy to see that St. Louis and its future are either as black as a flea in a tar-bucket or as bright as a snow-covered alp in the morning sun. Both pictures do more for the emotions that the more or less gray, more or less mixed-up things as they are. Yet why do so many St. Louisians prefer the darker view? Tinsel and brightwork may be gloomy, but why a cult of the gloomy?"

Why, indeed. After some ruminations on Patience Worth, he gives us some words to live by:

"Since then nobody in St. Louis has been much good with a Ouija board. When it comes to predicting the future, people do little better than the emininet Dr. George Gallup. Judging by the past, there is not much truth in talk about a city dying on the vine. Right now things look good. Anway, who wants to live in the future? A fine big catfish with beer--or sauerbrauten, if you prefer--only can be enjoyed in the present. Nor is the meal spoiled because an old crystal chandelier or two have not been removed for something more modern. Crystal's nice."

The encouraging thing about reading Catfish is that (at least it seems to me) the "black as a flea in a tar-bucket" mindset is quickly fading away. And voila: look at all the tinsel and brightwork that's manifested itself, not just downtown but all over the place. The big problem back then was that Gaslight was confined to a few blocks, but now that the same sort of energy is busting out all over town--if you were down on Cherokee on the first Saturday of this month, you know what I mean--and it will be harder to smother it with graft, go-go bars and greed. Mr. Kirschten, we won't call you up with the Ouija board like Patience Worth, but if we did, we'd be happy to report that things look pretty good even to those wearing smoked glasses, Hollywood-style.