Wednesday, January 27, 2021

My Visit to the Saint Louis Arch

Our forced march precluded my scheduled posting of my story with Zela, but i do want to add an excerpt on our visit to the St. Louis Arch one fine morning.


We started this morning out of Lula Mae’s and headed to look at downtown St. Louis. In 1984, downtown St. Louis hovered somewhere between fading elegance and decaying blight. We parked and decided to visit the Gateway Arch. St. Louis is where my father was born to a newly married couple, so my grandmother has fond memories of that time, if not the city.

If you haven’t been in the Gateway Arch, yikes! It was built in 1967 and was state of the art then. By 1984, it was a bit rickety and ramshackle, hosting almost 4 million visitors a year since opening. We arrived at the tail end of the tourist season, so the Arch had seen a full season of visitors. That meant sea-sick adults, crying tots and too many burps and other gaseous discharges for the elevators to smell pleasant.

To get the top, one enters these bizarre pods of terror that are half elevator car and half airport trams. As they ascend the arch to the top, then have to readjust, but unlike a Ferris Wheel, where the cars swing with gravity these trams ratchet their way up, clicking like a roller coaster on the climb to the crest. And, every now and then, the car reorients itself a little. But it does this in jerks that are not regular (it is an arch, not a semicircle) and not uniform in how much the car drops back towards 90 degrees. With only one tiny window and room for 5 or 6 humans to be stuffed in it cheek to jowl, the ride creates both motion sickness and claustrophobia. 

While Zela and I were both startled by the pace and jerks, we were able to pretend to be okay with nervous laughter. Martha, on the other hand, did not enjoy it at all and wanted it to stop. Every time the car buckled to reorient itself, Martha would say, “Zela!” a little louder. This happens often and induced that hysterical laughter that often forces itself out despite your best attempts to keep it in.

You must experience it yourself if you haven’t. Once the shock of the jerks wears off, you try to anticipate when it might come again. But no. The changing length of the arc means the adjustments have some system, but not one you can figure out from the inside. Ad this is when the odor of the previous 10 million visitors hits you. Fear, sweat and hot dog juices are the predominate bouquets. Just when you think you can take no more (4 minutes for those counting) the doors open on the observation level.

Upon exiting the at the observation level, the first thing I observed was the height of the ceiling. I observed this by bumping my head. You exit to a small carpeted are with slits of windows with which to view the way west for the settlers and to the east the lands they come from. At St. Louis itself, both views are pretty much the same. But you don’t really notice because the grimy windows are covered in snot-nosed smears from children trying to see. And you must lean across the carpeted walls, where thousands, nay, millions have leaned before you. From the perspective of 2020, it is a Covid factory.

We exited the elevatror-tram, we looked, we oohed and aahed for 20 seconds and laughed when Martha loudly proclaimed. “Zela, let’s go!” and we pushed past others to head down ASAP. Then we headed south towards Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

The Interior here looks large, until you notice the people are school children, not adults!


1 comment:

  1. I can still hear Martha ! She definitely was one of a kind. Thanks for brightening my day ! We’re all in the same funk !!

    ReplyDelete

Sometimes I despair at age. But this gives me hope.

 I mean, I don't want a child, but I think she is older than Tony Randel. Unlike Tony, she pushed this out!