k l a t OF THE TOWNS by bill beggs jr.
u. city
south st. louis
You know, I seem to have noticed a lot fewer fireflies in our U. City neighborhood this summer than I remember chasing at dusk and capturing by the dozen as a kid in the 1960s. Hordes of bees used to flit from clover blossom to clover blossom in our suburban yards, too. But pesticides and mowing to keep up with the Joneses or whoever the neighbors are kills off most of that stuff, flora and fauna both. Isn’t it great to kick back with your brew of choice, be it Bud Light or Lipton, and admire a lush, green yard bereft of bugs and weeds? OK, well, you’ll notice that our photo features not
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JULY 28, 2021
kirkwood
You might think the National Museum of Transportation (TNMOT) is just home to greasy old trains and other obsolete ways to get around. Well, the big locomotives are kept pretty spic-and-span, thank you very much, as are Bobby Darin’s ‘dream car,’ streetcars not named ‘Desire,’ airplanes, and even a reassembled unit from the notorious Coral Courts, the metro’s legendary ‘motel no-tell’ from back in the day (now the site of a subdivision on Watson Road, east of where Crestwood Plaza used to be). Ahh, progress. Well, sort of. Getting back to the future, in just a few days you can see some of the hottest luxury sports cars in the known universe in the TNMOT upper lot, which is pretty darn close to the fine hamlet of Kirkwood at 2933 Barrett Station Road. You might want to tune up your jalopy for heading out there lickety-split, as the ND4SPD Exotic Car Club Show will vamoose quicker than you can say Viper, Ferrari, Porsche, McLaren and Lamborghini (plus, maybe even Bugatti?)—it’s this Saturday (July 31) from 10 a.m. to noon. Please obey the speed limit. You’re not Sammy Hagar, are you? You can drive even slower than 55, if you have to. Roads are kind of twisty and curvy out there.
a i v i r t T T ☛
only a pollen-dusted worker bee, but also the lowly dandelion, which we yank out or spray by the gazillions every spring. Then we spread grass seed and some sort of ‘turf builder,’ or the lawn guys at the apartment or condo complex take care of that, goodness gracious. But we need to worry more about bees, I posit, and not allergies from stings so much. (“What—me worry? The environment is all my great-grandkids’ problem, not mine. Right?”) Keen botanical minds figure the humble honeybee is responsible for annually pollinating untold billions of dollars’ worth of crops. Bees jonesing for nectar pollinate everything from noxious weeds like thistles to apple and peach trees. Without pollinators, plants continue to grow but cannot produce fruits and vegetables. Then, pesticides absorbed by plants, in turn, harm bees. These chemicals may remain in the food supply chain for years. Climate change can mess up crop planting schedules, which confuses pollinators. Insects have naturally keen instincts. We also screw those up by eliminating their habitat. We can’t all be rocket surgeons, but humans are supposed to be smart. We could cut back on pesticides and let dandelions flourish, even if that wouldn’t look as good.
My wife was born in St. Louis but graduated from high school in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Her younger brother was born in Fort Wayne and graduated from Notre Dame. So, they’re both capital ‘H’ Hoosiers, but neither could be considered a hoosier by any means. This usage baffled me when I moved here from Atlanta, where the insult was ‘redneck’ most of the time. Which brings us to the eyebrow-raising name of a sparkling new bar on Kingshighway in South City: The Golden Hoosier. With the classy neon signage in front, it’s obvious at first glance this is not a dive joint. It’s south of Uncle Bill’s Pancake House in the space once occupied by Southtown Pub, which served pretty good barbecue. Supposedly a hoosier is a lower-class person—that is, lower in the regional class hierarchy than you and most of your family, neighbors and friends. Hoosiers either live so far south they’re in the Memphis suburbs or across either river in St. Charles County or Illinois. They’re just NIMBY—Not in My Back Yard. So, back to The Golden Hoosier at 3707 S. Kingshighway Blvd. The owners had not returned a reporter’s phone call by press time, but according to the fellow who took the message, for the time being it’s an evening hangout with pub grub that opens at 4 p.m. So for a quick lunch, any hoosiers and wannabes will have to go back a few blocks north to the pancake house or a little farther to Courtesy Diner. I didn’t ask the Golden Hoosier dude what beers they have on tap, but from their website descriptions and photos, the bar is Art Deco. Is there Stag? I hear it’s a hoosier favorite. I drank my last beer in Illinois in March 1984, but it was an Old Style, which beer aficionados say is even worse. Anyhow, you might have to venture a stone’s throw from SLU and visit The Fountain on Locust for such vintage ambience.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS WAS THE DRAMATIST’S PEN NAME. WHAT WAS HIS NAME AT BIRTH? (Cheaters never really win, remember, so pretend it’s 1945 and Google is the stuff of science fiction.)
LAST ISSUE’S Q&A Where is the North American headquarters of AB InBev? In what year was the company’s great-great-great-(etc.) grandparent founded, and where is it based today? Here’s that big, fat softball we promised to toss you last time: The North American headquarters of AB InBev is right here in River City. Anheuser-Busch, after a fashion, moved to Belgium where Stella Artois and other beers have been brewed since 1366 in Leuven, where AB’s parent company is located.
