The team, posing by a statue of Ozzie Smith outside Busch Stadium.
I hesitated for quite a while before writing this travelogue. Really, it didn't seem as if there was much to write about. Most of our previous quiz bowl adventures were major trips, jaunts halfway across a continent with lots of sightseeing thrown in. This by comparison was not much more than a glorified weekend getaway. The 2003 national tournament was in St. Louis, by far the closest place it had ever been. We could easily drive there in one day, instead of needing to make a stop en route. There's also not a great deal of touristic interest in St. Louis, which in some ways was good, since that would mean the real point of the trip would be the competition.
The team we were taking to nationals this year was one of the best I have ever had. It's really not at all hard to qualify for nationals, and some years we've taken teams that honestly didn't deserve to be there. This year, though, we had a team that could be competitive against the best. It was probably the second-strongest I've ever had, after the group the very first group I took to nationals nearly a decade ago. To introduce them, I'll go through the biographies they wrote up to be read during breaks in the competition games:
Jeff Hellman, Senior
John Kohlhaas (pron. = KOLE-house), Junior (Captain)
Mike Blocker, Senior
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David Murphy, Senior
Steven Kellner, Senior (Alternate)
Matt Courtney, Sophomore (Alternate)
Coach: David Burrow Group qualified by winning the Little Dutch Invitational in Orange City, Iowa |
I'll try to avoid mentioning any specific kids by name elsewhere in this travelogue, but that was the group. In addition to being a very bright bunch of kids, this was also a fun group with which to travel. Unlike some years where I felt like little more than a chauffer, this year I felt they wanted me to be part of the group. Everything came together for a most enjoyable trip.
Last year we waited forever before everyone showed and we could leave for nationals. This year there were no delays at all. In fact, the person who was latest last year was waiting in the parking lot when I got out to school about 20 minutes before we were scheduled to leave. Everybody else showed up promptly, too, and we left right on schedule-a much better start than last year.
It was especially nice this year that with a smaller group and a shorter trip we could all go in just one school suburban. It was good to have everyone together-I think it made us more of a team-and it was nice not to have to worry about always having to keep up with another vehicle or pick a place to meet up.
A couple of the kids read or listened to music on headphones as we drove along, but most of them rapidly started dozing off. With everyone off in their own little world, it was an extremely silent trip. Fortunately I was wide awake myself, or I could have been lulled into unconsciousness too. Instead I just watched the countryside go by and pondered how much prettier everything was now that the crops were up-so much nicer than even a couple weeks ago.
There were several places we might have stopped for a morning break. Having recalled last year, when everyone seemed to constantly have to use the restroom, my original plan was to stop in Nashua, about an hour and a half from home. It seemed silly to wake people when most were asleep, though, so I drove on. I also bypassed possible stops in Waverly, Janesville, and Waterloo before coming to the no-mans land of I-380 (almost no businesses for 50 miles) that leads south to Cedar Rapids.
77 By the time we reached Cedar Rapids (31/2 hours from home) I had to stop, both to use the restroom and just to stretch. Most of the kids were still asleep, but they woke up without complaints as we exited onto Blairs Ferry Road. I pulled into a Quik Trip convenience store just off the interstate, where we had a nice little break. Here again things moved much more efficiently than last year. Even though there was just one restroom in the place, the whole group managed to do their business and pick up whatever snacks they wanted in not much more than ten minutes.
Quik Trip had a display of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and almost all the kids went wild over them. Had I known that was what they wanted for snacks, I'd have gone a block further west, where the actual Krispy Kreme shop is located. (They wouldhave had a larger restroom, too.) Then they could have had hot, fresh doughnuts, instead of those that had been waiting around in the display case. They seemed to go for the cold ones, though; we must have downed a couple dozen among the group.
We drove south through C.R. and on to Coralville, where we picked up Interstate 80. I think I-80 east of Iowa City is one of the prettiest interstates anywhere. Those who think Iowa is nothing but flat farmland should make that drive through the forested hills by West Branch and Durant. We took the 280 beltway around the Quad Cities and before long crossed the Mississippi on that lovely gold bridge I remember them erecting when I was a child.
Just inside Illinois we saw the first of many construction zones. Every time there's construction on the interstate, Illinois begins the work zone with one of these two signs featuring a fluorescent green scrawl on a black background:
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Bobby and Abbi's parents must work literally everywhere-either that or there's lots and lots of kids named Bobby and Abbi who have parents working construction. This summer Illinois seems to be repairing virtually every interstate bridge in the state, and the kids got to laughing each time they saw yet another Bobby or Abbi sign. I don't think those signs actually slow anyone down. What does are the ones that say "CAMERA ENFORCED RADAR" or "MINIMUM FINE $250 - 578 TICKETS ISSUED TO DATE". The work zone signs in Illinois advise 45 mph "when workers present", and that's exactly what the locals drive when people are working. When they aren't, traffic flies by at 70 as if there weren't any barricades at the side.
We followed I-74 down to Galesburg, where we stopped for lunch. After driving down the strip by Carl Sandburg Mall, the kids decided on Fazoli's, the Italian fast food chain. For those who eat in, Fazoli's always offers complementary bread sticks with the meal. An employee makes the rounds of the dining room, offering those tasty garlic and Parmesan morsels that are probably about as nutritious as deep-fried butter sticks. At most Fazoli's I've been to that employee is either a high school kid or an old man like the ones who shove carts at you when you walk into Wal-Mart. Here the employee seemed to fit right into the atmosphere. She was an elderly lady in a head scarf who came across as a stereotype of an Italian grandmother. She had a thick Mediterranean accent, and while she never actually said it, I kept expecting to hear the words "eat, eat!" coming out of her mouth. She certainly saw to it that we did eat. Before we could finish one bread stick, she would plop another down in front of us-and there was no way she was taking "no, thank-you" for an answer.
Entertaining as she was, the woman definitely made it clear that this was a business. One of the students had ordered a dish that came with alfredo sauce. When the woman asked if there was anything she could get us, the kid asked if he could get some marinara to go with his dish. "Oh, of course," she bubbled, "anything you want." Then she abruptly added with an almost snotty tone, "forty-two cents." The bread sticks may be free, but apparently extra sauces come at a premium. She brought the sauce, and the student paid in exact change. Afterwards I joked that he should have been considerate and left the lady a 6¢ tip-the proper 15%.
We got back on I-74 and headed southeast to Peoria. We went around that city on the beltway and soon after exited onto Interstate 155, a highway to nowhere that basically exists so traffic from Peoria won't have to go out of its way to get down to Springfield. We dodged construction south to Lincoln and then headed southward on I-55 through Springfield and on to Litchfield.
We bought gas in Litchfield. One of the brands advertised at the exit was "Murphy USA", and since one of our students was named Murphy, that seemed an amusing choice. We drove and drove and drove, following a series of signs for "Murphy USA". After almost three miles, we came to a Wal-Mart store. It turned out that "Murphy" was the gas bar in front of Wal-Mart. It was jam-packed, and would obviously require quite a wait. Moreover, since one of our team members was a devoted K-Mart employee, he really didn't want us patronizing the enemy. (Never mind that gas is usually a loss-leader in places like that; we'd probably have ended up costing them money.) So we went all the way back to the exit and stopped at a Shell station. It was 2¢ more per gallon, but there was no wait and it wasn't Wal-Mart. Unfortunately when I put the school credit card in the pump, it said "SEE ATTENDANT". I remembered last year, when the school card had gotten maxed out from a damage deposit a hotel had placed on it during CYO baseball-which happened to be at the same time as our quiz bowl trip. I really didn't want to put all the gas from this trip on my credit card, but I sighed and figured I could if I had to. I asked the woman inside to re-set the pump. She did, and I filled the tank to the tune of nearly $50. Inside, I gave her the school credit card again, and it went through without incident. I guess they just had some problem with the card reader on the pump.
It was mid-afternoon when we reached greater St. Louis, still before rush hour, and we made it through the area swiftly. We followed I-55 past one string of suburbs, turned southward on I-255, and then followed I-64 back east past another string of suburbs. Traffic moved right along, even though all of these interstates were obviously designed for a time when this was a rural, rather than a suburban area. They're just four lanes, two in each direction, past major malls and office parks. I never did see them at rush hour, and I'm glad. Just about the worst congestion I've ever been in was on the Missouri side of St. Louis, and from the looks of things at rush hour the Illinois side wouldn't be much better.
St. Louis is one of the most spread-out suburban areas anywhere. The city itself is quite small-about 300,000 people-but over two million live in the surrounding sprawl. It's 60 miles from Wentzville in the west to Troy in the east, and things stretch out about the same north to south along the river. If ever there were a city that was dominated by its suburbs, it's St. Louis.
Our home for the next three days would be a pleasant motel on one of those endless strips, the Sleep Inn in O'Fallon, Illinois. The Choice Hotels guidebook cautions that this should not be confused with the Sleep Inn in O'Fallon, Missouri, a larger and nicer suburb about fifty miles west of here. Who O'Fallon may have been, I have no clue, but his name is everywhere around here. The kids obviously liked the motel a lot, which I was glad about. I had chosen it mostly because it was cheap (at least by city standards), but I figured that like all in its chain it would be new or nicely kept up. It was also nice to be in a suburban location, close to fast food and the like.
We took just a few minutes to settle in, and then it was time to go into the city proper. We spent almost fifteen minutes going about 31/2 miles along seedy old strips until we came to the Swansea park-and-ride for the Metrolink train system. I had purchased Metrolink day passes for the group on the internet before we left, so we just locked up the suburban and made our way to the platform. There was a sign at the entrance to the platform that implied that there could be service disruptions today, but an old man in a uniform assured us that a train would be coming. An announcement said there was a "bus bridge" operating between the Memorial Hospital and Belleville stations (which was where Swansea was located), but the man told us we should ignore that; a train would be here shortly.
No train came, nor did any bus. We waited ... and waited ... and waited. Several people came onto the platform and then left again, and pretty much everyone seemed confused. Eventually two well-dressed men who said they worked for Metrolink drove up in a car and an SUV and offered to shuttle people to a station where they could catch their train. I told the man I'd be happy to drive myself, but I had no clue where the next station was. He agreed to lead me, so the kids piled into the suburban and we set off on a series of residential two-lane streets that seemed to go nowhere. Eventually we made it to state highway 161, and shortly after that to the Memorial Hospital station. I had no clue how we gotten there, and I couldn't have traced my way back for anything. At least we were there, though.
It turned out that earlier this week some extremely sever storms had hit southwest Illinois. Lightning had knocked out a transformer near Swansea, and flooding had washed out a section of track by Belleville. Metrolink's damages were actually small compared to much of the area. Hundreds of thousands of homes had lost power, and several thousand were still blacked out two days later.
Trains were running at Memorial Hospital station, and before long we boarded one and headed westward toward St. Louis. Metrolink in St. Louis (not to be confused with the Los Angeles commuter system of the same name) is one of the newest urban train systems in America. The Missouri part of the line is a little over a decade old, and the Illinois portion opened after the millennium. Everything still looks new, and the kids remarked at how smooth the trip was. The Illinois stretch of the line is exactly what modern-day urban transit should be. The stations are far apart (basically one per suburb), so the train can run full speed and doesn't have to stop constantly. Trains run as frequently as a city subway, though-every 10 minutes or so all day long. All the stations have large park-and-ride lots, and local buses connect them with points throughout the 'burbs.
The stations are much closer on the Missouri side. In the city, even though it only has one line, Metrolink does a remarkably good job of getting people where they want to go. It serves downtown, all the various sports complexes in a sports-crazy town, the city's major museums and tourist attractions, numerous industrial areas, three major universities, two casinos, and the airport. They're building a second line to the southwest Missouri suburbs, and several other routes for future expansion are in the planning stages.
Metrolink is by far the most successful of the transit systems that opened in the Clinton era. It has consistently surpassed ridership estimates and seems to do a remarkably good job of actually getting people out of their cars. An added bonus is that the stations have become the focus for redevelopment as both inner city and old suburban areas look to re-invent themselves.
Much of the train ride through Illinois really looks quite rural. While suburbs line the highways all along here, much of the train route is through cornfields and forest. That semi-rural area ends abruptly, though, at Jackie Joyner-Kersee station. "JJK", as the drivers call it, marks the east end of East St. Louis and the start of dense urban development. The station was named after a recreation center that looks remarkably like Algona's YMCA. Presumably it was donated by the athlete whose name it bears, who presumably was originally from East St. Louis. I suppose it must be possible to get to the JJK Center by car, but virtually everyone who uses it seems to come by train.
In the not too distant past East St. Louis was the poorest city in America. I remember back in the Reagan era seeing shows like 60 Minutes with documentaries on the pathetic lives of its residents, and I've also seen the place on Cops and similar "reality" shows. I gather "ESL" (as local signs invariably call it) was never exactly a nice city, but it went steadily downhill through most of the second half of the 20th Century. Everyone who could afford to leave moved on to places like O'Fallon and Swansea, leaving a population of unemployed and often virtually unemployable people barely getting by on public assistance. The old smokestack factories where generations of European immigrants used to work closed down (often leaving toxic waste dumps on their grounds), and block after block of empty rowhouses were left to decay into shells. The TV shots from here were similar to those we used to see of the South Bronx.
Twenty years later, it's still not like anyone's going to confuse East St. Louis with Chicago's North Shore. Pretty much no one who wasn't born there would choose to live in East St. Louis. That said, the place was certainly nothing like its old TV image. Much of ESL looks like what you see along the green line on Chicago's South Side-that is, it's basically empty lots. It's weird to see one or two units of what used to be a string of row houses along a street, but that's what you see-everything else has been torn down. As in Chicago, they've found that by tearing down vacant buildings, they cut down substantially on crime. The empty buildings don't become crack houses or places of prostitution, and with all the open area there are a lot fewer places for the bad guys to hide when they are running from the police. I'd imagine the space, even if it's far from nicely landscaped, makes things more pleasant for the folks that remain in the neighborhood, too.
There's a lot of brand new housing in East St. Louis, too. I'm sure it's essentially public housing (much of it bears signs for "Illinois First", the massive public works project former Governor Ryan pushed through) though they're probably trying to get a mix of income levels. Like the new development in Chicago, everything is low-rise. There are modern rowhouses and duplexes and even a few detached houses.
What you don't see in ESL is much in the way of business. There are a few neighborhood liquor stores and check cashing services, but I don't think I saw a supermarket or even a convenience store anywhere-let alone anywhere to buy dry goods. I think I saw one fast food place (a Church's fired chicken stand), and nothing in the way of "real" restaurants. In Chicago you see Jewell and Walgreens and McDonalds in even the worst neighborhoods, and you're never far from K-Mart or 7-11. I would think those same businesses could make a go of it here, but they don't. I saw lots of people lugging groceries on the train, presumably from somewhere in the suburbs.
The biggest business by far in East St. Louis is the Casino Queen, which apparently tops the arch as the St. Louis area's biggest tourist attraction. The concept of gambling on a riverboat that doesn't actually ever leave the dock seems a bit bizarre to me, but then gambling has never been one of my vices. I'd bet most of the people who go there (and the parking lot can accommodate thousands-not to mention those who come by train) never bother looking at the water anyway.
... Not that the Mississippi is exactly beautiful at St. Louis. There are places where the Father of Waters is breathtaking. There are few places I find more lovely than Effigy Mounds, just east of Decorah, and the whole stretch from Dubuque up to the Twin Cities is really nice. There are places in the South where, if not gorgeous, the river is at least stately and grand. At St. Louis, though, it's brown and industrial. It's the sort of thing that makes you want to drink bottled water as you ponder the fact that the wastewater from a dozen states flows through it. (Of course the municipal water systems on both sides of the river produce perfectly pure tap water-which is precisely what most bottled water is anyway.) There's a little bit of parkland on the Missouri side of the river, but the Illinois side is basically one big industrial port. The bridges are ugly and decrepit (the one Metrolink runs over was apparently declared unsafe for cars), and about the only thing of scenic interest is the arch.
We didn't have to look at the river too long, though. Shortly after crossing it, Metrolink plunges into the subway beneath downtown St. Louis. We went two more stops and got off at 8th and Pine, in the closest thing to a "financial district" the city has.
Frankly downtown St. Louis isn't much. Des Moines has a significantly more substantial downtown area than does St. Louis. I mentioned before that this is an incredibly suburban metro area; the city proper really just gets lost in the whole mess. Nothing has been torn down in St. Louis, but there's a lot of downtown that's boarded up and even more parking ramps than I could see any place having a need for. There are some offices and banks in downtown St. Louis, but it's certainly not a place anyone would go shopping. There is still one downtown department store (Famous-Barr, which was founded locally but is now owned by Macy's). There store would certainly never rival Marshall Field's, though, and there's nothing other than them to bring anyone downtown. Perhaps weirdest of all is the lack of selection in food. There were a few trendy bistros and coffee bars trying to gentrify the place, but there were almost no mass-market restaurants. I never did see a burger stand or a taco place or a doughnut shop, and the closest thing to a "family" restaurant we saw was TGI Friday's. That seemed a bit surprising, since downtown St. Louis gets more than its share of tourists. Lots of people go to the arch, and there are also three major sports venues flanking the area. You'd think someone would have the entrepreneurial spirit to milk money out of the visitors-but no.
Something that was hard to miss, both on Metrolink and walking around downtown, is that St. Louis has a very different ethnic mix than most other cities. Basically this city is black and white-period. The further away from the inner city you get, the whiter the neighborhoods get, though there are at least some blacks and some whites pretty much everywhere. I'd say the Illinois side of greater St. Louis is about 50/50 black and white (almost totally black in ESL and maybe 2/3--1/3 white/black elsewhere), the city proper is overwhelmingly black, and the Missouri suburbs are almost entirely white. What doesn't enter into that mix anywhere are Asians and Hispanics. The only Asian people I saw were a handful of women working in Chinese restaurants, and I honestly don't think I ever saw a single Hispanic person. Having just come from Los Angeles and having made countless trips to Chicago, that was downright weird. I didn't necessarily expect the ethnic blend of L.A., but then again I can't go shopping in Mason City without running into Hispanic people.
We walked about six blocks to the other end of downtown. The most interesting feature we passed was a truly hideous fountain featuring a badly proportioned nude man at its center. The water in the fountain was dyed red--or perhaps it was just untreated water from the polluted river. In any event, it was ugly.
Our destination was the Drury Plaza Hotel, one of several downtown hotels run by the Drury chain, which is headquartered in St. Louis. Drury mostly operates rather generic midrange suburban motels, but in their hometown they've chosen to buy up old luxury hotels and try to re-fit them for a more midrange market. This year's national quiz bowl tournament was being held in two ballrooms at the Drury Plaza. The sponsors had booked a decent room rate ($80 per room per night, plus $15 each day for parking, plus 14% tax), but it was well above what we could get out in the suburbs. I also kind of liked not having the kids together with everyone else at the tournament; it gave them fewer opportunities to get in trouble. What's more, while the Drury Plaza's lobby had lots of pretensions, my bet is its rooms were not a whole lot nicer than those at the Sleep Inn-and they may well have been older and dingier. The kids said that they really preferred staying out in the suburbs-and I don't think they were humoring me when they said it. From a kid's point of view there would be absolutely nothing to do after dark in downtown St. Louis, and the elegant hotel is really geared more to middle aged men than to teenaged boys.
Today we just stopped for a few minutes at the hotel. We had to officially check in and get our registration materials. The kids were impressed that the man who ran the tournament knew my name, as did the woman who was passing out materials. My bet is that there were just few enough schools that hadn't yet checked in that they lucked out. This was our sixth trip to nationals, though, and over the years a few problems have popped up that caused me to visit with both the bigwig and his assistant. Perhaps they are good with names and really did remember me.
We walked from the hotel past Busch Stadium and on to the Metrolink station of that name. It's probably about equidistant from the hotel to both 8th and Pine and Busch Stadium stations. The kids liked the walk past Busch much better, though. Being the small-town boys they are, they really aren't used to "colorful" street life. St. Louis is frankly dull compared to most cities, but I'd suppose almost any street life can be intimidating to those who aren't used to dealing with it. The area by the stadium is barren and I'd bet quite a bit more crime-prone than the more populated streets further north. The kids found it more comfortable, though, so that's what we took the rest of the trip.
We basically went into the city just to check in at the tournament, and then we turned around and went back to O'Fallon. As we waited for a train we heard over and over again: "Attention passengers. Due to technical difficulties Metrolink will be running a bus bridge between the Memorial Hospital and the Belleville stations. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused." A rather unapologetic black woman made the announcement. What made them especially odd was that it wasn't just the same announcement repeated over and over again. The words were the same, but the inflection and the background noise was different each time. I kept imagining some poor woman sitting at a microphone saying the same thing over and over again.
The driver on the train also kept announcing the bus bridge. She said "Belleville" so it sounded more like "BALL-ul", but the point got across. The ride was uneventful, and before long we were back at Memorial Hospital.
I went well out of my way getting back to the motel. There was no way I was going to re-trace the route I'd followed getting to Memorial Hospital, though; I couldn't remember it if I tried. I headed northwestward on route 161, paralleling the Metrolink tracks. At the Fairview Heights station I turned east onto St. Clair Avenue, the strip that eventually lead to the Sleep Inn. It took about fifteen minutes to get from Fairview Heights to O'Fallon (maybe 5 or 6 miles), but eventually we made it.
There was one more item on the agenda today. After I made up a list of possible activities in St. Louis, one of the students had noticed that among them was the opera. While I honestly expected that to be the last choice of most of the kids, he genuinely wanted to go. I agreed to accompany him there (the other kids entertained themselves this evening by swimming in the motel pool and playing board games) and had bought two tickets for Tosca ahead of time.
Unfortunately the problems with the train had all but guaranteed we would be late. Showtime was 8pm. It was now 7:30, and the theatre was clear over in the Missouri suburbs. I was tired, too, and I almost suggested we just forfeit the tickets. They cost $35 each, though, which was an awful lot of money to just write off. So, late or not, we headed off.
First, though, we stopped for dinner. No one in the group had eaten since Fazoli's at noon. The rest of the group was sending out for pizza, but the two of us who were headed to the opera were also famished. We stopped at a Hardees just over the interstate from the motel. They've apparently changed their menu at Hardees, and I can't say I care much for the change. I always used to order ham and cheese sandwiches at Hardees. Now, though, there was nothing but hamburgers on the menu-and at that, you couldn't just get a normal hamburger. Aside from little miniature burgers, the smallest item on their menu was a one-third pound "thickburger", and the choices got bigger from there. If I wanted that much beef, I certainly wouldn't go to a fast food place to get it.
... Not that his was exactly a fast food place. Since we were already late, I suppose it didn't really matter, but it seemed to take forever for them to cook our food. I suppose those thick burgers just don't cook that fast-yet another reason not to have them. The food wasn't really that bad, but it was both slow and more than I wanted.
Traffic was light at night, but it still took forever to get across greater St. Louis. It amazes me that a place so large should have so many four-lane (as opposed to six- or eight-lane) highways. In some cases three different highways run together, but there are still no extra lanes.
Probably the most interesting thing we passed on the way to the opera was Larry Flint's Hustler Club, which is just north of the interstate at the exit that leads to the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Center. The place, which I assume was either a strip club or an erotic theater, was lit up in pink and purple neon. Part of the neon flashed the outline of a woman's breasts. Even New Orleans was not so overtly tacky about things.
Three interstates and at least two U.S. highways all join together in a maze of spaghetti that probably destroyed what was once downtown East St. Louis. Metrolink runs beneath all of this, but tonight we were right on top, hundreds of feet above the wasteland below. They run four continuous lanes onto the Mississippi River bridge, but those lanes are not beside each other. Instead it looks like there are right and left exits, plus two center lanes, when in fact everything ends up on the bridge at the other end of the spaghetti.
Across the bridge they built the split of those three freeways on just about as little land as possible. Fortunately we (I-64) were going straight ahead. I-70 and I-55 split off in ghastly 20 mph exits that lead straight into 70 mph traffic. I-64 runs on a viaduct above a railroad right-of-way (part of which is used by Metrolink) through most of St. Louis. It, too, was built on almost no land (the exact opposite of the ESL interchange). In fact, in a couple of places the eastbound lanes run on top of the westbound lanes, rather than beside them.
I-64 through St. Louis (locals call it by its former name "U.S. 40") has to be just about the first freeway ever built. I'm sure it was built to be picturesque. Today it's just maddening curves with exits about every 500 feet (counting up to "F" in the same mile at one point). It was very busy even at night. Unfortunately, since the whole thing is a viaduct and most of it doesn't really have a real shoulder to begin with, there's really not much they can do to modernize the mess.
Not helping at all was the fact that it was now pouring rain. It's interesting that in the North even a thunderstorm basically seems to "rain", while in the south a shower can truly "pour". There was no thunder or lightning to this storm, but St. Louis proved it was a southern city; it was pouring so hard I could barely see, even with the wipers on their fastest speed.
We drove clear through the city. I exited at Big Bend Boulevard, and followed that west for what seemed like forever through quaint old suburbs with two-lane "downtown" streets. This is the area they're expanding Metrolink to, and-believe me-they definitely need something to relieve congestion. Finally we came to Bompart Street and Webster University, home of the St. Louis Opera Theatre.
I'd gotten directions to the opera's parking area on the internet. What their website didn't say was that parking cost $6 and that it was insufficient for the crowd in attendance. I circled the full lot and ended up parking in the lot of a Lutheran church across the street. The lot was clearly marked as private property, and many of the spaces were specifically numbered. I chose to park in one that said "church visitors" and figured it was unlikely they'd be towing a suburban. Other opera patrons had obviously also parked in the illegal lot; indeed a well-dressed couple who was also tardy was getting out of their car at the same time we did. I crossed my fingers that we'd be okay and we made our way to the theatre.
We were certainly not the only latecomers at the opera. We presented our tickets, and the usher handed us programs. She told us, though, that we'd have to wait until intermission to be seated--a sensible rule, and one they should enforce in California. She showed us to a waiting area where we could watch the opera on closed circuit TV along with about two dozen other tardy souls. The TV was a good idea, though really it didn't work very well. Theatrical lighting cast made the whole screen look blue, with the characters moving around as eerie white shadows, almost as if it were a moving X-ray. The sound got mushed in transmission, making it impossible to distinguish any individual words. Mostly I filled the time until intermission reading the program.
That program made it clear that opera is geared toward a slightly higher income level than mine. I recently heard a bit on Paul Harvey that noted the St. Louis Opera Theatre was one of the few profitable opera companies in the country. They certainly ought to be. In addition to pricey tickets ($35 was the second-lowest price), they have a variety of levels of individual and corporate sponsorship. Just getting your name listed in the program costs a minimum of $1,000, and the levels go up and up and up. "Gold" is $25,000, and there are at least two levels above that. I suppose for a major company (Anheuser-Busch or Ralston-Purina) $100,000 is small change, but they had three or four individual sponsors at the top level too.
The program spelled out specific rules of etiquette for the opera. Some, such as entering and leaving only at intermission were obvious. We were also directed to refrain from talking and to stifle any coughs during the performance. A bit more unusual was the directive to refrain from eating cellophane-wrapped candies or mints during the performance. I can understand that the noise of unwrapping candy would be distracting, but I kept imagining who would eat during a theatrical performance. At most, I would think someone might get out a tic-tac to silence that forbidden cough. What anyone would be doing carrying around cellophane-wrapped candy to begin with, I have no clue. I also found out that both smoking and chewing tobacco were inappropriate during the performance; I almost exclaimed "duh" while reading. What's sad is that almost certainly some rude person actually did chew and spit during a performance at some point, or it never would have occurred to anyone to put that in there.
We entered at intermission (the first of two intermissions, actually) and saw a very simple, modern theatre. There's probably seating for about 1,000 in what comes across as a very intimate space. It could be on any college campus anywhere and certainly didn't come across as an "opera house". The stage is very flexible. All the main floor seating is moveable (like the UNI theatre), so they can do just about whatever they want with the space. We sat on a side balcony, looking out at the thrust stage from stage left. A series of catwalks was above us, and during intermission people scurried along them making changes in the lighting.
We got a good view of the crowd at intermission. The place was probably two-thirds full, with mostly the poorer seats available. There were far more women than men, and it tended toward an older group. While there were a handful of black women in furs, well over 90% of the audience was white. The men in attendance were dressed well, but hardly to the nines. Open dress shirts were typical; suits were not. I wore a tie with a dress shirt and was toward the top end of the men. The women, on the other hand, definitely dressed for the opera. Indeed, you'd think many of them had dressed for the Academy Awards. The low end of the women were in skirted business suits, and floor length silk was not uncommon. Ostentatious jewelry was everywhere; I'm sure many of the ladies were sporting ensembles worth many thousands of dollars. All the fashions were extremely conservative--no plunging necklines or high slit skirts. Most of them really seemed more appropriate for a winter wedding (from a guest who wanted to show up the bride) than an evening out in summer. I certainly see nothing wrong with dressing up, but some of these ladies really over-did it.
The set was lovely. Everything was centered on a gorgeous floor in a mosaic design that resembled marble and hardwood. The floor was that of the apartment of a wealthy gentleman who is one of the main characters in the opera. Upstage they had an enormous bed and downstage a table and desk alluded to other parts of the apartment. Brass chandeliers and candelabra with what I'd bet were gas lights filled all the empty corners of the set. The costuming was also gorgeous, with fine velvets and lace accented by gold accessories. The effect was quite elegant and really lovely.
I wish I could compliment the opera itself as much as the production values. I'm sure it was well-sung, but I'm just not an opera person. Much of it I simply couldn't understand. I remember all the "old fogies" commenting on how they could never understand the words in rock music when I was growing up. Well, Tosca was sung in English, but most of the time it might just as well have been in Italian--or Chinese or Sanskrit or Eskimo. Everyone on stage sang well, but they were mush-mouthed and full of vibrato, which made most of the meaning of what they were singing get lost along the way. The music itself was good, but honestly I'd have enjoyed it more if it were a symphony. Then I'd have concentrated on the music, rather than trying to make sense of the words. Perhaps if they'd had a full libretto it would have been nicer.
When I could catch the words, they either didn't fit well with the music, didn't make a lot of sense, or used remarkably modern and casual language that didn't go with the era in which the play was set. It was like taking a stately old hymn and re-translating it to something like "Hey, God--what's up, dude" (something hymnal editors seem to love these days--though they'd almost certainly not use the masculine "dude" to refer to the Deity in the new translation). The point is, those words I could understand almost got in the way. Tosca was written in Italian in the late 1800s. There were countless excellent British and American poets in that era, and I couldn't help but think that any of them surely could have done it more justice in English than whoever wrote this nonsense.
In Act 3 of Tosca, pretty much everyone dies. Perhaps I've been spoiled by the Broadway touring companies with all their mega-effects, but the assorted deaths in Tosca were downright hokey. The main character supposedly commits suicide by jumping off a roof. In fact the actress hurled herself downward all of about two feet downward from one level to another. I didn't expect her to actually die, but a simple freeze would have been more effective than her silly "jump". Another character is shot to death, and he expired with all the melodrama of a bad western movie.
All through the opera, they had the hands of the conductor projected in black and white on two TV screens toward the rear of the theatre. After pondering a bit, the reason was obvious. The conductor was facing the orchestra in a pit below the stage. In that location the actors on stage really couldn't see him at all. By projecting his hands (which is really all that matters with a conductor), they could be sure to be in sync with the music.
It was interesting that a number of opera-goers were at least as uninitiated as me. Those etiquette rules in the program specifically caution that the only time applause is appropriate is at the end of an act, not merely after each number. That's apparently a big difference between the opera and those Broadway musicals that are essentially operas with modern music. Toward the middle of the second act there was a climax that featured the lead character belting out an emotional song. When she finished several people started applauding, and one man just a few rows behind us exploded with bravos (or whatever the appropriate plural of that word may be). Later on several people applauded one of the deaths as movie-goers might applaud when the bad guy kicks the bucket in a melodrama. It was here that I could tell that the image of the conductor's hands was live, rather than recorded. Both in person and on TV he appropriately paused for the unsanctioned applause and then continued directing again.
I really can't end my opera story with any "fat lady" jokes. The soprano lead in an overwhelmingly masculine show was slightly overweight, but not at all unattractive. What's more, since her character committed suicide, it wasn't over when she finished singing. Indeed, this show ended not with a fat lady, but with a rather gaunt-looking young man.
The single worst part of the whole opera was the curtain call. It was endless. Except for a chorus that never did come out for acknowledgement, the cast was really quite small (six or seven people). Nonetheless, it took a full five minutes to get them all out on stage. Each actor in turn bowed and threw kisses to one side of the theatre, then the other, then to center--waiting until the applause started dying down in one section before turning to the next. After all the actors had been acknowledged, the tuxedo-clad conductor rose from the pit on a little elevator and took his turn at milking the audience. The men in the cast presented flowers to the female lead, and then the whole group did their three-way bow. In fact they did the three-way bow twice before it finally occurred to them that the applause was dying rather than building to screams for more. They finally threw one big group kiss to the ceiling and exited. By this time almost everyone near any aisle had made a dash for their car. I, unfortunately, was sandwiched in the middle of a row next to a lady who seemed to feel any opera deserved a standing ovation (most of the audience didn't stand at any point during the curtain call), so I was trapped until she decided it was time to go.
It bothered me a bit that except for the conductor, who seemed like a pompous old cuss if ever there was one, the orchestra never got acknowledged at all. It's traditional in musical theatre to end the curtain call by having the cast gesture toward the pit to acknowledge that without the accompaniment the show would be nothing. The same statement could be made at the opera, but no one ever remotely acknowledged the fact that there was a really quite wonderful orchestra playing in the background. Nor did they acknowledge the chorus (listed as "nuns and soldiers" in the program), much of whose music I liked quite a bit better than the solos.
It was interesting to see the opera, but I certainly won't be hurrying back. It probably was good that we were here tonight, though, rather than tomorrow. At least Tosca is a well-known show by a famous composer. Tomorrow they would have the North American premiere of an opera called Flight. Written in Britain in 1998, the opera centers around people who are stranded in an airport when storms ground all flights. That doesn't sound like an especially interesting premise for a play, let alone an opera.
The suburban was still in the Lutherans' visitor parking, and there was no ticket on the windshield. My bet is that even if it was illegal to park there, no cop in his right mind would want to leave his nice warm car to go out in the pouring rain and write that ticket. We re-traced our steps back and got back to O'Fallon right around midnight. One of the rooms of kids was already asleep; I woke them up checking on them. The other was watching a movie on cable TV, and it was very clear that if anything untoward had happened while I was away, they had carefully concealed all evidence. (With the group I had this year, I really had no worries at all--but one does always wonder.) We made arrangements for when we would leave tomorrow, and then I headed back to my room to go to bed.
The background music on this page is "Greased Lightning" from the musical Grease.