Meet me in St. Louis

(Just make sure that you get good directions!)

Day 54

          “T-Minus 16 seconds, and we have a slight hold.”

          “Roger Mission Control”

          “Countdown continued…..”

          “……. T-minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, Ignition sequence, 3, 2, 1,….

          “We have liftoff! Aurora 7 and Scott Carpenter are on their way!”

          It was 6:45 AM on May 24, 1962, in St. Louis, and little Donny Hall was feverishly scanning his large map of the world that was spread out in front of the television in the living room. He was plotting the position of  the spacecraft as it was reported over the various tracking stations around the world.

          He worked on this like it was his job.

          It was a three-orbit flight and both he and Scott were only about an orbit and a half into the flight, which meant that he would need to stop what he was doing before the end of the flight in order to get to school on time.

          “Donny! I told you five minutes ago to get to school!”

          “Ok Mom, I’m leaving!”

          Rolling up his map, gathering his school stuff, Donny left the house and quickly made his way up the street on his way to 2^nd Grade at St. Bartholomew School several blocks away.

          He never made it to school that day.

          In his haste to make up the time used to plot Scott Carpenter’s progress over the earth, he defied one of the basic rules of walking to school.

          He walked out to cross the street from between two parked cars.

          Both he and the driver of the car that hit him could not have seen it coming.

          Donny is OK all these years later.

          I know this because I am typing this story out and I feel fine, thank you  😊

          Here is why I am reliving this scenario to you.

          It is May 24, 2022, exactly 60 years to the day after the ‘incident’ and where do I find myself?

          In St. Louis.

          I have never been here since that time.

          In all of our travels, where our plans changed so many times for assorted reasons, how and why do I find myself back here on the exact day, T-Plus sixty years later?

          I don’t know either! I just thought it was quite serendipitous and I needed to relate this story to you!

          We were in St. Louis to visit the Gateway Arch National Park.

          We almost gave up on this venture before we got there because someone must have decided that since you can see the Arch from most places and roads in the area, that no signage whatsoever was needed to guide out-of-towners to it.

          I take that back.

          There was one sign on the highway placed immediately at the exit needed to get there. Not a half-mile before, or even a  quarter mile before.

          Exactly at the exit with its arrow pointing to the right …..

                    Arch —–>

          And once you exit, there are zero signs to direct you after that. We ended up crossing the Mississippi River into Illinois and having to do a U-turn and retrace our steps.

          St. Louis gets an F-minus for not even one big brown National Park sign with any amount of information on it!

          After the Direction Debacle was ended, we found ourselves in a beautifully manicured Park set alongside the Mississippi River with the Gateway Arch prominently displayed in the middle.

We did not avail ourselves of the trip to the top as the wait was just a little too long. So, we went through the accompanying Museum which displays the history of our County’s Westward Expansion (which is the theme of the entire Park) with just enough detail for a history buff, but not so much that would have someone else’s eyes glaze over. We toured the Museum as we waited for the film about how the Arch was designed and built, to start.

          The film was fascinating as you may imagine. The engineering alone is worth the story, never mind the story of the crew of guys that actually built this 630’ marvel. OSHA was formed in 1971, and the Arch was constructed between 1962 and 1965, so you know what that means!

          No Safety Harnesses!

          It was projected that, with this amount of new processes being implemented here (so no previous experience level was available to lean on) that there would be upwards of thirteen major injuries during the construction phase of the project.

          They were wrong!

          There was ZERO incidents during this time period!

          I could go into all of the details of the build, but I am positive that your eyes would glaze over so I will leave you with these suggestions:

          Go to St. Louis.

          Go see the Arch.

          Look at Google Maps for an exact address of a nearby business or location and use that to guide you to the Park, as Gateway Arch National Park will not work!

          Have fun! It was well worth our initial aggravation!