It was 12:34 p.m. when the plane touched down on Friday, October 1, 1993 at St. Louis Lambert International Airport. Gary Jackson knew the time because he looked at his wristwatch when it happened. He eased back in his seat as the plane’s brakes slowed it down allowing it to exit the runway and angle to the left toward the gates of TWA. He was returning to his birthplace to attend the Hazelwood High School class of 1973 twenty-year reunion. He shook his head in disbelief. Where does the time go? The plane halted and the cabin lights went on as the rumbling of people readying themselves to exit ended the silence. He remained seated in his station by a window as others rose from their seats to open overhead baggage doors. He waited as the line of people thinned out until he stood, ducked his head to enter the aisle and follow the others out of the plane. He continued to walk up, what he had always called the “gangplank”, and entered the mainstream corridors of the airport. He passed a group of people huddling at the gate stand discussing seat arrangements with a TWA attendant located there for that purpose. He turned to his right and joined the crowd of humanity walking toward the baggage claim area. His mind drifted to high school and he began to compare himself then to now. He had grown another inch to five foot, nine inches tall, but added another twenty-five pounds. His hair remained collar length but from black to salt and pepper, many thanks to his parents or that’s who he blames for it anyway. He chuckled to himself as he reached Baggage Claim 1 and looked for a nearby seat. He knew he would be waiting for a few minutes and he wasn’t in any hurry. He saw one at the end of row of three black cushioned chairs anchored together making them immobile. The seats were across from where luggage appeared from somewhere below to tumble out on a moving conveyor belt that brought suitcases to their owners. He sat down, leaned back, and waited.
He envisioned in his mind what the upcoming weekend might be like for himself. He, reluctantly, agreed to stay with his mother in her home which also happened to be the house where he spent his high school, and, as it turned out, his college years. He just couldn’t say no to his Mom. He was going to rent a car though so he wouldn’t have to use her vehicle. The reunion itself was to be at the Stouffer’s Riverfront Inn in downtown St. Louis and the revolving restaurant on its top floor. Hazelwood High School, now known as Hazelwood Central High School, was to be open to them to walk through Saturday morning. He decided to do that and possibly watch the afternoon’s football game, too.
A siren wailed and a yellow light began to spiral over the luggage turnstile interrupted his planning thoughts. He turned his attention toward it and watched as the baggage began to slowly rise from the depths below and push up through an opening at the top of it. He watched suitcases began to topple out of it to land on the conveyor belt that wrapped and moved around the structure in an elongated oval. As the various shapes and sizes of suitcases and other items of luggage traveled on this conveyor belt, people began to jockey for position to pull their particulars items from it. He spies his suitcase as it appears from the opening and falls onto the belt and is whisked away from him. He rises from his seat and approaches the structure to wait for his black suitcase to complete its orbit . He takes a step to the edge and bends to snatch his item from the conveyor belt. He sets it on the floor and checks the tags to confirm that the bag was his, pulls the handle from the upper end of it, and exits the baggage claim area.
He instinctively turns left to walk the open corridor to the closest exit to the rental car shuttle bus pick-up location. He barely pauses when he arrives there as the Avis Car Rental bus slows to a stop next to him. He boards it, telling the driver that he needs to go to the reception desk to pick up his rental car. He hoisted his suitcase onto the rack just inside the bus for the purpose of holding luggage while being transported to the rental car hub. He sat in a seat next to the rack. His hand checked the chest pocket of his shirt to feel for the two dollars he had placed there to be used to tip the driver. He closed his eyes and kept his body loose as the bus jostled and jumbled its way toward the rental car lot. Gary only opened his eyes when the bus halts and the driver calls out “Main Building.” He stands and waits for the driver to grab his suitcase to walk it out of the vehicle. He steps down and reached inside his pocket to recover the money. He hands it to the man and thanks him. He takes the risen handle of his bag and walks inside the building.
In front of him, a long desk is spread before him. Four representatives stand on the other side, spaced uniformly from each other. He weaves his way through a structured maze of a line imposed on customers to provide a sense of order as they are forced to wait for one of the attendants to become available to assist them.
“Can I help you?” the farthest representative called out.
Gary walks forward pulling his luggage toward the young lady. As he stopped in front of her, he reached into his back pocket and removed his wallet.
“My name is Gary Jackson and I have a reservation,” he informs her. She begins to type information into the terminal and looks at the monitor in front of her before she responds.
“I have a Pontiac Grand Am reserved for you. Is that okay?”
Gary turned right on to Woodson Road from the Avis Rental Center in the bright red 1993 Grand Am that was assigned to him. He turned left at the next intersection when the traffic light told him to do so and continued to the entrance ramp to I-70 east bound. He remembered to get up to speed and cross two lanes to his left to get to the entrance ramp to northbound I-170, known locally as the Innerbelt. He followed that highway until the decision to go east or west on I-270. He chose the eastbound lane and knew he was truly on his way home to Spanish Lake, Missouri.
Spanish Lake was named for the Spanish troops who stayed there while building a fortified post in 1768. It was a farm community until the 1960s when tract housing was built within it. It was in one of these houses Gary was raised. His family moved from there to a larger, two story home just up the road. That house was originally built in the 1930s. It was in this house his parents remained living in even after all of their children, Gary, Chris, Katelyn, and Mark, left.
Gary’s father, Ronald, was a quiet man. He didn’t speak much but when he did it was harsh and quick. At least, that was the way Gary remembered him. Harsh was a nice way of saying he was critical. Very critical, Also, his expectations of Gary, in particular, was extremely high. He expected his oldest child to be perfect. Just like his own perception of himself. His father thought himself as perfect, and his children had to be perfect, too. He died in 1985 on Gary’s 30th birthday. Gary’s thought on him remain silent.
His mother, Julie, was totally the opposite from his father. She is bubbly and personable. She talked to everyone, friends and strangers alike. She was a stay at home mom until Gary was a senior in high school when she became a secretary for the St. Louis recruiting office of Central Methodist College. Julie was insistent that the family went to church together, to the grocery story together, and, well, everywhere together. She was kind and a good listener but for the longest time she didn’t defend them from Ronald and his stern demeanor toward his children.
Gary decided to exit I-270 at Bellefontaine Road and was stopped by the traffic light at the intersection of the exit and the street itself. When the light changed to green, he turned left onto Bellefontaine Road and was stopped again by a traffic light beneath the overpass at Dunn Rd. As he waited, he looked left to see the Shell gas station at the corner and then to his right to the Mobil gas station at that corner. Just on the other side of the Mobil was a Denny’s restaurant that he frequented as he grew up. When he was allowed by the traffic light to proceed, he passed the Mobil station, ignoring the McDonald’s on the left, and he turned right on to Larimore Road. He continued to follow that road, past an entrance to Denny’s, past the small shopping strip on his right that held Saullo’s Pizza Parlor and Spanish Lake Liquor Store. On his left, he passed the Kentucky Fried Chicken that sits in the middle of a triangle of land that divides Larimore into one-way streets. As he passes the restaurant, the road merges from its division into a two-lane road. He passed the entrance to the private pool called Larimore Swim Club. His family never became members but many of his friend’s families did so he was a frequent guest to the pool.
He continued on Larimore Road over the train tracks and passes Mollerus’ Farm on the left. There, a vegetable stand is on the street and they sell fresh produce, tomatoes, corn and whatever is grown there for whatever season is happens to be. As he passed the house on the farm, Gary spied in the far corner of the farm plots, orange orbs, pumpkins, stretched out in a few rows. Coal Bank Road came up on his right with the same old gas station on the corner and the Thrift Grocery Shop behind it. A small hardware store is next to the Thrift Store. Just past the gas station is a small concrete building that houses a small Beauty salon. He had never been inside, but he remembered that his Mom visited it once or twice. The neighborhood he grew up in began on the left. The streets were connected to Larimore Road but really were a series of U-shaped streets connected together. The first streets were Senate Drive and Rhea Avenue then Baron Avenue and Congress Avenue then Scott Avenue and Prigge Avenue and finally June Avenue and Walker Avenue. There were more streets that went beyond Walker that end at Trampe Avenue where Larimore elementary School was located but these were the streets of his childhood neighborhood. He decided to drive by the house where he grew up in on Congress Avenue.
When the street sign appeared, he pulled the turn signal to indicate his intention to turn left onto it. He entered the street between two, two story houses that seemed to serve as sentinels into the inner realm of the neighborhood but once he passed them, every house looked the same. They were rectangular structures with a one lane driveway on the side of the house of what was called the living room. The inside of each home would be identical, you would walk into a living room and once you went through it, you were into a kitchen. A hallway would stretch from the living room/kitchen connecting to three bedrooms and the bathroom. The landing to the stairway to the basement and the doorway that led out to the backyard was at the far end of the kitchen. One of the bedrooms was the master and it was usually the one just past the bathroom with the other two smaller bedrooms across the hall from it behind the wall against the living room.
Gary paused at the yield sign on the corner of Bowers Avenue which was a street that started at Senate Drive and ended at Walker Avenue that divided the streets in half. He continued forward, passing a few more houses until he began to slow down when he came to his house that was positioned on a portion of the street that started to U back toward the left. He stopped in front of the gray shingled home of his childhood. The silver leaf maple tree his father planted still stood in the front yard, much larger than what he remembered. As you face the house and the three steps to the entrance of the house, the driveway was on the left. He could see the chain link gate at the back of it that marked the entrance to the backyard. The gate was as wide as the width of the single car driveway. The closure of the gate created a small patio where his parents had placed one of those three-foot swimming pools in the summer. He remembered the backyard sloped toward for the house behind them and the swing set was placed in the corner of the lot. His room that he shared with his brother Chris was at the end of the house and his sister, Katelyn, was in the bedroom that faced the front of the house next to the living room. His brother, Mark, was born after they moved to the house where his mother still lived in now. When he thought about that, he restarted and followed the street to the left and when he passed two more houses, the street sign noted the name change from Congress to Baron. He passed houses where friends once lived, yielded at Bowers again and headed toward Larimore Road. He turned left to continue toward Trampe Avenue and his second childhood home.
When Gary passed Walker Avenue, he goes by another set of streets that, in appearance, looked like another neighborhood but in reality, the streets simply lost the U-shape structure of the portion where he grew up and began a series of tree-lined, checker board streets. It was the older part of the neighborhood and the houses were more uniquely structured, not the uniform structure of his childhood memories. These were some ranch style houses with garages, and two-story houses with carports. The trees in the yards were more mature and taller than the ones on Congress.
Up ahead, Larimore Road began to divide with the right lane heading toward more farms toward Columbia Bottoms Road and the Mississippi River The left lane is lined by another three store front, the one at the end being the old Northdale Market and noticed it was now is called Spanish Lake Market. A stop sign stood there marking the intersection of Larimore and Trampe. Gary continued to the stop sign. Across the street on his left is Larimore Elementary School and, on his right, is Lawnmower Service, a building that was used to be a Gas Station where his Dad worked part-time. A street called Madrid separated the school from the lawnmower shop and it was down this road he drove. Burgos Avenue was the street his family moved to when he entered the seventh grade as his youngest brother was growing inside his mother. It was the second street on the right opposite one of the three baseball fields on the school property.
When they first moved to the two story four-bedroom house, the street was gravel and white dust would be jettisoned into the air when a car drove on it. Eventually, the county took over the maintenance of the road and the gravel was replaced with asphalt. There are only four houses on Burgos and the Jackson’s lived in the second house on the left. The property was offered for sale as two lots, but his father sold half of one of them to their forever neighbors, the Black’s. They shared the cost of installing a chain link fence to mark the division of the yard. Wilbur Black put in a huge garden in his portion and the Jackson’s received vegetables from the garden’s bounty. On the Jackson’s lot, when Mark was a senior in high school, his parents had a two-car garage built there. At the same time, they also added an additional room to the back of the house including a deck. Gary and his siblings used to tease them for building that room after they had moved out to make their own lives because they could have used the room.
Their house sat on a little hill with a steppingstone path that went up three steps that was lined with a short hedge. The walkway continued to the two-step porch that went the length of the front of the house. Lawn chairs were placed on it and it was here they sometimes spent wasting away summer evenings chatting with the family and neighborhood friends. The house was built in 1930s and it was quite irregular as it was one of those houses built by the original owner. It originally had creosote shingles that they had to occasionally paint with creosote oil to retain protection and color. The oil would burn on contact and even the sun’s reflection off of the shingles would cause a sunburn. When they did paint it, they would start early in the morning to avoid the heat. His parents eventually replaced the brown shingles with white stucco siding.
Once inside the house, one walked into a great room with a fireplace immediately on the right. The cat, Hazel, a black and gold calico, would lay on the mantle and swat at people when them came into the house. The dining room could be seen from the doorway giving the allusion of even a bigger room. The additional room was built on the other side of the dining room, giving the appearance of an even larger room because one could look from the front door into that new room. The dining room table was the centerpiece of family events.
The kitchen was to the right of the dining room and it was small, barely big enough to cook in. Across from the entrance into it, the sink was at the far corner of it along the outside wall of the house. A small counter with cabinets below it and above it, were at the sink’s left side. At the doorway, on the left, a drop-down table was hidden in the wall and folded out before a small window, in between the counter. It was opposite the stove on the right of the entrance. The table came down only for lunch because it just wasn’t big enough for all of them to sit at once. On the other side of the stove/oven combination appliance, a door leads to the basement steps down to a stoop where the refrigerator is positioned in the corner next to the side door. That door leads to the driveway that runs past it to the separate garage in the rear of the property. The catch is that a modern car could not get by the house to get to the garage. The stoop also was the entrance to go downstairs to the basement.
As one walks toward the dining room, a hallway entrance appears on the left. There is a telephone stand there on the right imbedded in the corner, a bedroom is on the left (his brother, Mark’s room), the bathroom is straight ahead, and the master bedroom is on the right. The bathroom was the only one in the house and it did not have a shower, just a bathtub and sink. Dad put a shower stall in the basement, and this is where they usually cleaned up. It was in the laundry room and it made it easy to get dressed there. Why? There were two long tables alongside the washer and dryer where the folded clean clothes were lined up and they were supposed to take their personal pile to their rooms to put them away. Well, they didn’t. Mom did not like that because the children just left the dirty clothes in piles on the floor. Once in the dining room a door appears on the right just before the kitchen and it leads to the two bedrooms upstairs where Gary and Chris still shared a room and their sister was in the other one.
Gary turned the rental car into the driveway next to the house and turned off the ignition. He sat a few minutes to look at the place he was raised. It was white now, with red trimmed windows. He looked at the upper window that was the one to his room and smiled. He looked to the front of the house and up to the small round window at the second level and remembered that was where his sister would have looked out onto the world. His attention was diverted to the front door as his Mom stepped out and waved at him. He waved back.
To be continued…
My First Stories 