The Saint Louisans Read Free Page A

“I’m gonna punch his lights out someday.” Aunt Mary looked back at me and rested her chin on the front seat. “Don’t mind us, kiddo; you’re hearing the sounds of a happy couple.”
    â€œYeah,” gruffed Spud, “tra-la-la.”
    I left the Dwarfs, rescued by Tracy and Hepburn.
    There was light chitchat as we headed south on Highway 67, passing its bevy of roadside stops and motels. I stared out the window, hugging Raggedy Ann while Mary leaned over and studied me with lively, thoughtful eyes.
    â€œKiddo,” she said, “I know you’re scared. A little hinky about all this aren’t you?”
    I nodded. “I miss Daddy.”
    â€œSure,” her voice lowered. “I miss him, too. He was my brother, and pulled my pigtails more than once. We all miss him. Did he ever talk to you about Lindbergh?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYes.” I shifted. “Daddy called him ‘Lucky Lindy.’”
    â€œThat’s why Ike became a pilot. We grew up loving Lucky Lindy.”
    Spud rounded a curve. “Also Ike joined up to get the hell out of Dubourg. Figured the Air Force was the ticket to punch.”
    â€œOkay.” Aunt Mary shrugged. “That, too. But, Cindy Lee, know you’vegot a home now. With us. Dubourg needs an Air Force kid. Badly. Show these bumpkins what the world’s like.” She touched my shoulder. “You up to it?”
    I nodded and tried to be brave. Like Daddy.
    Aunt Mary taught at Dubourg High School. She was an English teacher (always said with a capital E). She had miscarried six years earlier and couldn’t have children, but there was never a hint of gloom in their house.
    I liked to read, was precocious, and Aunt Mary became a willing mentor. I lived in the world of books. I imitated her. My conversation, with its intonations, purging of dialect, and direct manner is pure Aunt Mary.
    Spud was the type of man who smiled at meat loaf and winced at broccoli. He was dull but dear, working as an engineer for the mining company. He always called his job ‘the salt mines’ and occasionally returned in working clothes and miner’s helmet when underground inspections were held. At times, he was so cantankerous about “kids these days,” that I thought he must’ve been the man who taught W.C. Fields about kids, but I was exempt from his criticisms.
    Dubourg was safe, quiet, and all-American. We went on family vacations, visiting Civil War battlefields, scenic fishing rivers, quaint college towns, and places with pillars. I don’t know what it was with pillars, but Aunt Mary was always snapping photos of them in their Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian glory.
    In those last blinks of the fifties and early sixties, there were also trips to St. Louis when the city was ‘first in shoes, booze, and the American league.’ We made it a point to go to St. Louis twice a year.
    First was Christmas. We’d drive up in Spud’s big Chrysler—he was a Chrysler man, which he and Aunt Mary saw as Motown’s equivalent of Presbyterianism—and he’d park it carefully before we boarded one of the cavernous city buses that hissed and sighed at every stop. The streets smelled of gasoline, coal, and a whiff of the malodorous hops from the Anheuser-Busch brewery. Our major target was Famous-Barr department store at Seventh and Olive, and I was always fascinated by storefront windows filled with Christmas scenes replete with robotic figures of elves at work, moving left-right-left in their toy shop; Christmas carolers in Dickensian costume, heads swaying to and fro as they sang; a family at their Christmas tree, picking up gifts and pointing, picking up gifts and pointing.
    The storefront machinery was countered by a forest of humanity rushing past me in their coats and hats doing the Christmas bebop. Policemen at the corner pipped their whistles to herd crowds across the