Years ago I took a business trip to the welcoming city of St. Louis, Missouri. I lived in Los Angeles at the time, and was visiting St. Louis in November. Emphasis on the brrrrrrr. One morning, as I shivered my way into the office, I asked one of the local women how she tolerated the cold weather. “Oh this is nothing!” she said. “It gets so cold in the middle of winter, I can hardly go out of my house!!” Yikes. I tried to sympathize. “Well”, I said, “at least you have the summertime to look forward to”. “Oh no,” she cried. “Summertime is terrible! Hot and humid, and bugs, too.” Hmmm. With all due respect to St. Louis, is it any wonder it took me 25 years to return?

I’m happy to say, the long-delayed return trip was well worth the effort. The place was hopping with activity. And the weather was delightful — not too hot, not too cold, and very few bugs in sight. We had our choice of adventures on this early summer day: riding to the top of the iconic Gateway Arch, relaxing on a paddleboat cruise along the mighty Mississippi river, enjoying the outdoor Marine Corps concert, or watching the St. Louis Cardinals play. We chose to start with the paddleboat. Good choice, especially since it involved food. We were able to try a St. Louis staple — toasted ravioli. Breaded, deep-fried ravioli dipped in marinara sauce. This would’ve made my first St. Louis trip a whole lot more enjoyable.

Our steamer could not have been more perfect: The Tom Sawyer.

Even better than Disneyland, and a real river, too. All around us was evidence of just how real that river is. Days earlier, the river had breached its banks and flooded the area, rising 23 feet higher than normal. The water level was still quite high, but luckily, the Tom Sawyer was able to ply the waters. We also were lucky that there was a second embarkment ramp that wasn’t under water like this one:

The only problem with sight-seeing cruises is that they typically travel in a loop, so the second half of the journey you’re traveling past the same sights you saw earlier. This can generate boredom in the youngsters, who turn to sights close at hand

or pester their parents into taking 97 photos of them pretending to be a robot.

But the Tom Sawyer gave us some terrific vantage points from which to admire the Gateway Arch, including one odd perspective that made the Arch seem more like the Washington Monument.

Our next move would be to travel up the inside of the Arch to the very top. Unfortunately, several hundred other people had the same idea, so we spent 90 minutes or so waiting in a long line before we wedged ourselves into a tiny, space-aged elevator pod that whisked us to the top.

A visit to the top of the Arch can be a bit disconcerting, especially for those of us who aren’t engineers. I kept looking for the ropes and cables and flying buttresses that keep the thing from toppling over. Here’s another sign of our times — if you google “Gateway Arch”, you’ll find all kinds of interesting sites, including some discussions about the mathematical formulas used to build the Arch.

I couldn’t help but remember another tidbit from my first trip to St. Louis. One evening, my colleague Christine and I visited the Arch. As we stood peering out the tiny windows at the top, Christine remarked, “Wow, isn’t it amazing to think that only a thin sheet of metal separates us from the cold, hard ground several hundred feet below us?” Thanks, Christine, for that astute observation.

Apparently, my family made the same observation, because despite the lengthy wait to reach the top, once there, the other three could not wait to go back down to earth. They leapt out of the elevator and nearly jogged through the observation gallery, barely peering out the tiny windows, before reaching the other side and the “down” elevators. Wait a minute, I cried! I pulled them back to the observation gallery for a couple of photos and to make sure they appreciated the view. And the strength and quality of thin metal underneath our feet.

We could even watch the Cards game from on high, and admire a domed building that — shockingly — was not the Capitol (it was an old courthouse)!

Back on solid ground, we strolled past hundreds of people enjoying the visiting Marine Corps band. We bade farewell to the Arch and drove along interstates 64, 44, 435, 29, and 70 plus routes 5 and 54. We stopped in the town of Fulton, where we’d spend the night after first removing our makeup. What a thoughtful touch in the hotel room.

You probably wouldn’t associate Winston Churchill with Missouri, but in Fulton, Churchill gave what many consider the most important speech of his life. In 1946, the President of local Westminster College wrote to Churchill and invited him to speak at the College. A Westminster grad was an aide to President Truman at the time, and he managed to get the President to add a hand-written note to the invitation. Truman offered to introduce Churchill if he’d came to Truman’s home state. Churchill came to visit, and his speech at the College included his dire warning on the rise of the Soviet Union and the infamous “Iron Curtain”. The rest, as they say, is history.

Later, during the 1960s, the folks at Westminster College learned that bombed-out British churches were sitting in disrepair in England. They raised money and moved an entire church from London to Fulton –brick by brick. They re-built the church and added a museum as a memorial to Churchill’s visit.

What a remarkable man Churchill was — too bad he wasn’t American. Well, I guess that would’ve changed history just a bit. Anyway, he might not have been American, but I’m pretty sure he was referring to 50/50 tours when he said this:

Travel Tip! Do not be alarmed if your teenage boy suddenly becomes a ravenous carnivore in the mid-West. This is meat and potatoes country, after all. It’s probably quite normal for a kid to eat five hamburgers in one day. Gross, maybe, but probably normal.

40. Missouri
The Gateway Arch