TIME: 12:50 PM
PLACE: Busch Stadium
SUBJECT: Field
The company I work for sponsored the promotional give-a-away at the Cardinal – Pirates game today.
They also gave my department some tickets to the All-Star Suite as well.
Free food and beer?
Yes please.
Winning the game with Kolton Wong’s walk off home run at the top of the 9th was a bonus.
“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”
George Bernard Shaw (Irish literary Critic, Playwright and Essayist. 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature, 1856-1950)
TIME: 1:24 PM
PLACE: Market St. and Tucker, St. Louis
SUBJECT: Looking east down Market
Last week I discovered that my paternal grandfather had been involved in an automobile accident with a buggy and was arrested back in 1922. I had sent a letter to the St. Louis Police Dept. to see if I could find out any more information and they called me yesterday stating that they had located a 1-page report on the incident. I went to the Police Station in downtown St. Louis to pick it up after work. There wasn’t much in the report that wasn’t already in the newspaper, EXCEPT that it named the owner of the car my grandfather was driving. The owner’s name was Vito Geonollo aka Vito Giannola - a leader of “The Sicilian Green Ones” gang in St. Louis during Prohibition. Hmmmm, was Grandpa a gang member? Maybe this could be the reason there was tension between him and the rest of his family. Back in the late 1980’s, I was visiting with him on a Sunday afternoon; he was in a talkative mood and casually mentioned that once he had some “trouble with guns” and had to “hide away for a few days”. He wouldn’t elaborate anymore than that. Grandpa passed away in 1989 while I was a senior at college. I wish I could have spoken with him more – I have a feeling that he led a very interesting life as a young man.
“The purpose of architecture is to shelter and enhance man's life on earth and to fulfill his belief in the nobility of his existence"
Eero Saarinen (Finnish-American Architect and product designer, 1910-1961)
TIME: 12:50 PM
PLACE: Riverfront - St. Louis
SUBJECT: Looking up the North Leg of the Gateway Arch
Today was the school parade and picnic for our school district. I really don't like going to the picnic, ride tickets were $1.75 each and I didn't feel like spending $35 on tickets to be divided among the three kids. So I made a proposal to them, they could be excused from the parade and not go to the picnic, but instead, I would take them over to St. Louis and we'd do something there. They were agreeable to this. Our first stop was the Anheuser-Busch complex. My kids love "How It's Made" so we decided that the complimentary tour of the brewery would be a neat thing to do. On the tour, we saw some of the Clydesdale horses, their stable, the beechwood aging cellars that each hold 3,600 barrels of beer, the brew house and finally, the bottling and packaging facility. After the tour was over, we each got a bag of pretzels and I was able to sample a complimentary adult beverage (score!), while the kids received soda and water. Alas, I was not carded. Darn.
Then we headed to the riverfront and the Gateway Arch. I haven't been up in the Arch since December 1990 when Iben Browning predicted a 50% chance of an earthquake along the New Madrid fault. HandsomeHusband and I had gone up the Arch, the Sunday before it was suppose to happen. We wanted to be in the group that was at the top of the Arch if it did occur. It didn't. (We did have an earthquake occur in our area last year around this time!) DramaQueen and MonkeyBoy had been up in the Arch before with HH, but this was StellaDella's first time. She loved it. "I can't believe I was in the tippy top of the Arch Mom!" I just wish it there was more wind. I love feeling it sway when you are at the top.
Finally, we went to my hairdressers where everyone received a haircut, myself included! A long, but fun day.
