When I was seven, I spent the summer in St. Louis Missouri. "...Don't tell me the lights are shinng any place but there...." I fell in love. For me, there was no place like it. Every other city had to measure up to St. Louis for years to come. Well that was before I met a river rat. But I'm getting ahead of my story.  
     I always had an affinity for the big city; the noise, the lights, the hustle and bustle, and St. Louis filled the bill. It seemed like there was always a fire. The sirens were aways sounding. Mother could tell the difference between the police, the fire truck and the ambulance. They all sounded the same to me. Riding the street car was a big deal in my seven year old life. I can still see the Muehlebach Beer sign with running lights.  It seemed like nobody slept but us. There were people everywhere both day and night. I loved it.
     Mother knew a lady name Miss Lillian who was a friend of the family. She was also connected with the family in some way when mother was a little girl and they visited St. Louis. Miss Lillian had a rooming house and that is where we lived the months we were there. 
     Mother's Uncle Arthur was in the hospital suffering from throat cancer. We, my brother and I, couldn't go in the hospital because we weren't old enough. We had to be twelve years old. Every day when Mother went to the hospital to visit him, Crecelius and I played in the park across the street. Sometimes we spent hours in the park unsupervised. That could not happen today. We were not afraid and neither was Mother. Nobody bothered us or paid us any attention. When Uncle Arthur finally died, we had his funeral in a chapel. He was Catholic. That was the second funeral I remember attending.
     While in St. Louis, Sunday evenings, we went to Grand Central Station to enjoy the fountain. The picture in my mind is not at all like the real thing. In my mind, the fountain was very close to the station and was shaded or inclosed under a canapy. That is not the case at all. The area round the fountain is open and not shaded at all.
     We went down to the river to watch the boats and ships coming and going.While we were there, the Mississippi River flooded in some places. At seven, almost eight, I wondered if I was going to be caught in the flood.      From the street to the edge of the River, was laid with bricks. They slanted up hill which seemed to be tall as a building. I tried to meaure the distance to determined how long it would take and how far the water had to rise before it reached Market Street which was at the top of the bricks and get to me. On the radio, they talked about sandbags and using them to contain the water. I had never heard of sandbags and wondered how they would stop the water. The newscasters talked about the river being out of its banks. Even though I didn't know what they looked like, when we went to the river, I looked for the sandbags to make sure they were doing their job, and that the river was still in its banks so I would be fine.
     That summer, I was also in an earthquake that originated somewhere in Georgia. We had been to Grand Central Station to look at the fountain. By the time we caught the streetcar and made it home it was well after 10:00 p m. The quake was loud, like thunder or a freight train and the light fixture in the hallway of the rooming house where we lived danced like dancing Dan. The news talked about cracks in the street and windows falling on people.That was the most frightening time I had ever experienced. Everybody ran outside. When the ground stopped moving, we all went back inside and gathered around the radio. I don't remember anybody getting seriously injured. My mother had a way of re-assuring me that I was safe and I believed her.
     Another thing that was different was people always had to wrap the garbage in newspaper and put it up high so the rats couldn't get it. Nobody put garbage outside until they heard the trucks coming because the rats and the cats fought over the garbage. The rats were as big as the cat. They were the biggest rats I had ever seen. You could see them swimming in the river looking like beavers.The rat traps I was used to seeing were useless. I would imagine the rat carrying the rat trap around with it.
     One night I went into the hallway where the icebox was to get a drink of water. Brave me, who wasn't afraid of anything, was going to refill the bottle from the kitchen. I wasn't tall enough to reach the light in the kitchen, so I would just use the light from the hall and go into the darker kitchen. As I approached the sink, I came face to face with a rat that seemed to me to be as big as a small dog. Miss Lillian, the owner of the rooming house, had put lye on newspaper at the rat hole, so that when the rats came in, they would get the lye on their feet, and when they licked them, it would kill them. Well, Mr. Rat was sitting in the middle of the floor licking his feet and looking at me. I stomped my foot and said "Get!" The rat looked at me as if to say "What do you think you're doing," and did not move. All of the critters I knew ran when you stomped your foot. Well, I was the critter that ran. I dropped that water bottle and flew. Mr. Rat just sat in the middle of the floor and kept licking his paws. 
      Another place I liked to go was to the open air market. There was stuff everywhere, and you could buy every thing.  The people were strange looking too. They didn't look like anybody I was used to seeing. The market was colorful. Now I know that the people I saw at the market were from other countries, and the they were selling products and produce from those countries. There were some who played music on instruments that I had never seen before. Of course, I had a million and one questions for my mother to answer. She always gave me an answer.
     When I got back home, I told everybody who would listen to me about my summer in St. Louis.