DAY 3 – MONUMENTS, MIASMAS & AMENDS

We hadn't intended to spend any time in St. Louis, but a pause at the Gateway Arch on the occasion of our Western Expansion seemed essential, so we braved the burnt meat pong of the Rome of the West.

A few metres north of the Ruth's Chris at the rear of the Hyatt Regency, just down from Carmine's Steakhouse the Arch was backlit by morning sun creating the effect of making its stainless steel skin appear almost translucent, and Adrian's infrared shots nebulized the light.

Would you buy a used ideal from this guy?

We had started the day on the other side of the Mississippi at the Troy Family Restaurant, where encouraged by the server's faux intimacy I asked what kind of fruit I might order with my ham and eggs and hash browns. She hesitated. "Applesauce," she guessed. The morning before I had opened what I thought was a packet of Smuckers™ Strawberry and paused at the site (sic) of something called apple butter. "Whaddidya win?" Adrian asked after a few frozen seconds. Apparently you can spread applesauce on biscuits too. Although then you miss the gravy: our server confided she'd drink gravy through a straw.

We set out for Kansas City after removing much of our outerwear in response to the meat-flavored St Louis heat. Twenty-five degrees at mid-morning. When we got out of the car a couple of hours later in the 18^th & Vine historic district we had to put it all back on. Eventually it got down to eleven celsius. Like San Francisco in August.

The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum shares space with the Jazz Museum and a gallery for changing exhibitions. There are two gift shops. I admired Geddy Lee's gift of witness: several hundred baseballs signed by Negro League players displayed in three big glass cases. 

A sociocultural timeline which paralleled the collection of photos, trophies, uniforms and clippings noted the contributions of Zora Neale Hurston & Hattie McDaniel, (Scarlet's mammy, Beulah on blackvoice radio;) Irish Garrity & Dan Dwyer, (well-known amateur umpires and Catholics from Wichita selected to 'get away from all possible favouritism, to umpire a 30's game between a Klan 9 and a local black baseball club;) Harry Truman, whose Executive Order ended segregation of the military in 1948; and a woman named Toni Brown who hit .267 for the Indianapolis Clowns in the 40's.

K

KC's historic district is not a happening place on a chilly April Thursday: Just two other guys in the Baseball Museum and woman sitting next to the bronze statue of Cool Papa Bell talking on her cell phone.

There's a nice big park just down the street and I suspect that when the weather improves the district hosts some reasonably warm happenings. There is a bar, a restaurant, a managed care office and a sad absence of funk. Two blocks in any direction looks like the boarded-up blocks of East Superior in Cleveland.

We are staying overnight in Lawrence, Kansas, a prosperous university (27k students) town populated largely, it seems, by white people. It is lovely across the street from our Hampton Inn; there are frisbee-golfers among the redbuds.