The Spirit of St. Louis

Have you heard the story of Pearl Curran? The 20^th-century housewife who channeled a 17^th-century spirit? She was of, and is, St. Louis. She lived in the early 1900s, when the gateway to the West was a growing, bustling metropolis. But she had a tie to America’s uncertain past. The spirit she channeled went by the name of Patience Worth, a supposed spinster from the late 1600s. Through Curran’s Ouija board, Worth would convey instances of her dangerous, abrupt life and dictate stories she never got to humanly compose. The women were bound and tied by societal constraints in two different ages of opportunity. Worth’s America was still in its defining infancy. Curran’s was in the infancy of what in the coming decades would come to be known as the “American Century”. Their singular story was one of a soaring success tied to the past but with no place to go but down.

In a way, St. Louis has never been able to exorcise itself from the story of Curran and Worth. It is a city whose past and present coexist in its precarious current reality. It has a glorious literary history that has been visited by the specter of one of America’s great living writers. It is a region obsessed with America’s pastime even while that pastime falls further and further behind America’s sporting passion. It is home to the great American beer, which is now owned by a foreign corporation. The city gave rise to various pioneers of American music and is now bustling with the music of the streets, chronicling the deadly decent prosperity has taken. Its famous arch is a portal to the past, present and future, a portal to opportunity and decay; it is a portal to America.

St. Louis was once the fourth largest city in the country but has now slipped to the 52^nd largest city, although the sprawling metropolitan area is much larger. Literature has helped define the area’s rise and descent. Adding to the supernatural literary echo has included Mark Twain, who grew up in the region as Samuel Clemons. He has almost singularly ensured this area will always have a major role in the telling of the American story. Other major contributors have included T.S. Eliot, Tennessee Williams, and Maya Angelou. And about halfway down that decent from four to 52, another son of the Midwest, novelist Jonathan Franzen, set his debut novel, “The 27^th City” in St. Louis and observed, “for too long, our officers have accepted the idea that their mission is merely to ensure that St. Louis deteriorates in the most orderly way possible”.

That deterioration has been constant since the height of St. Louis’ ascent and has been echoed all across the country. Infrastructure the country over has been failing and is in desperate need of reinvention. Even in the best of times, poverty has been rampant. Today, St. Louis has a violent reputation nationally. Its arts reflect desperate lives in the shadow of progress. Hip Hop has a strong foothold here, famously producing the rapper Nelly. At other times it has spit out deities such as the Rock and Roll pioneer Chuck Berry and the jazz luminary Miles Davis. In the face of blight, St. Louis has consistently helped redefine itself, its culture, and consistently redefined what it means to be American.

We are now at the dawn of a new age of reinvention, perhaps best illustrated by what has happened to the great American beer, Budweiser. In 2008, Anheuser Busch was purchased by the Belgian company Inbev, bringing globalization fully to doorstep of St. Louis. It is a move mirrored the country and world over. It is causing the confrontation of what it means to have local pride when a foreign company is a major employer of St. Louis workers. Is Budweiser still the great American lager? What constitutes American made anymore? Is it better to eschew the macro-brews that have long been dominant in the name of micro-brews like the Square One, Shlafly and O’Fallon Breweries that now populate the area? What does that mean for the American worker?

Through all of these reinventions that have been documented in St. Louis, the one constant has seemingly been the St. Louis Cardinals. Even in an era when football dominates the nation’s sports scene, baseball holds an enduring spot in the hearts of this region. Some of the greatest players in baseball have called this area home. The Cardinals have been had their history illuminated by the Gashouse Gang; they have seen the Man and the Machine and have visited the Wizard of Oz. It is a love affair that has spanned the written word, been served a tall cold one, and has danced “The Duck Walk” to ragtime jazz. It has endured.

This is the St. Louis to be explored over the coming months. There is a “Spirit of St. Louis” that is felt today because it is being channeled from a magnificent past. The “Gateway to the West” once opened to a land of uncertainty just as this city serves as a gateway to an uncertain future. Through its deterioration this city has always endured as a beacon of light. It is still a magnificent city; it is still filled with problems. A reinvention is at hand, for it and the country. What we all become is a matter for the Ouija board that is St. Louis.