2014-07-20: Day 25 A Day Off the Bikes on Memory Lane
Post date: Jul 21, 2014 11:08:20 PM
After 6 days of good solid riding, we spent the day off the bikes in St Louis. I found 2 of the 3 homes that hold all my childhood memories. The earliest memories of my life are of the house on Treadway Lane where I lived from 1961 to 1965.
It was the first home that my parents rented after living in the trailer house. I remember the white husky dog in the backyard. I remember the cyclone fence around the backyard. I remember one Christmas Eve that I parents took us out for a walk. When we arrived back at home, Santa Claus was there in our front room down on his knee placing presents under our tree. Santa was very real at that moment and he was right there in our front room. He gave us a Ho, Ho, Ho and ran out the back door into the night. Later we learned that Santa that night was our neighbor who had a full Santa outfit for some Christmas event and my folks had setup the whole experience. I also remember nap time at Kratz Elementary school where I attended Kindergarten. I went by the school. Looks like it has been rebuilt. The house and indeed the entire neighborhood is being well kept and lawns mowed. The address of this house is 4406 Treadway Lane, St Louis, Mo. The bulk of my early childhood memories are of the home at 36 Greendale Dr where my family spent the years from 1965 to early 1968.
Greendale was a horse shoe shaped street of small brick homes that represented the American Dream back in the 1960(s). The open end of that horse shoe was capped by a golf course. The backyard was very deep. I remember my dad throwing a football while I ran deep pass routes in that yard. I remember playing wall ball on the wall and driveway to the left of the house. I remember catching fireflies in jars. I remember sleeping in the basement under a table on the nights when the tornado warnings were issued. I remember riding my bike on the hill in front of the house and I remember playing kickball with the other kids in the neighborhood. I lost balls in the open drains that ran from the street gutters into the sewers. I remember doing a volcano experiment on the porch in the back yard at the moment an earthquake hit St. Louis. I remember sledding on the hills at the golf course. All those memories are good ones. That house and again the entire Greendale loop still looks really good. I did not look like anything has changed. The sewer drains in the street gutters are still open and still eating children's balls. That means 50 years of balls in that sewer. Somewhere deep in the earth is a giant ball bath with gophers playing in it. Here's a pic looking down the street. The house has new windows and the backyard has been landscaped. I spoke to a neighbor for a bit. Apparently two homes are in foreclosure but she told me that Greendale has faired better than other streets in the area. The schools in the area are in trouble after losing their certification a couple of years ago. The city had to pay for the children to be bused to neighboring districts. This cost more than running a school district. So to solve that problem, the school opened a new district under a new name with the exact school district boundaries as before. The new name entitled them to operate under a temporary certification for 3 years. It is a crazy world out there when it comes to education funding. Bel-Nor School where I believe I attended 1 – 4 grades has been closed but the building still exists. That building looks pretty rough. I could not find the house on Conway Drive in Chesterfield. That 2 story wood frame house was huge and sat on several acres including some sheds and ponds. We rented that place for the 1 year (1969-1970) that was sandwiched between Memphis, TN and Tulsa, OK.
The rest of the day was spent at the Gateway Arch and then a St. Louis Cardinal’s game at the new Busch Stadium. Jon, Teresa and I attended the Cardinals vs. the Dodgers with 45, 221 other Cardinal fans. Very fun but the home fans left disappointed. Dodgers 4 Cardinals 3.
