What We Saw When We Went Downtown

On a summer day in the mid-1950s, my little brother and I rode on a streetcar with our father to an area in downtown St. Louis we had never visited. There were unexpected experiences to be had in our big city, far from our suburban enclave.

As the open-windowed streetcar moved past factories, offices, stores, and apartments, we enjoyed watching the mix of shoppers and workers hurrying here and there. The bustle and clamor was different from the quiet, predictable suburb where we lived. And there were more surprises ahead.

We stepped off the streetcar at a main street with many interesting stores, but we weren’t there to shop. As we walked, my brother and I were startled (and spooked) when we encountered a limp, comatose man slumped against a wall of a big department store, while well-dressed, animated shoppers skirted carefully around him.

Near a movie house, we saw a little man sitting on a stool, with a box of bright yellow pencils in front of him, and next to the box was a metal cup with coins in it. My father gave each of us a dime, and we put our money into the cup, planning to leave with some new pencils, but our father led us a few steps away and whispered, “Do you really need more pencils?” We had lots of pencils at home, so we shook our heads and moved on without taking anything from the box. Our father was proud of us for leaving the pencils, but I wonder what we would have done if our father hadn’t been there.

Among the shoppers and other pedestrians, unfamiliar (to us) individuals were part of the street life. One man pushed a cart holding a huge bucket with drinks immersed in chipped ice. Our father bought orange sodas for us and a Pepsi for himself. A scarred fellow, with only one arm, was selling wind-up toys. Our father told us that he probably was a soldier whose arm was amputated because of wounds resulting from World War II. On the next block, we passed another disfigured man with only a cup but nothing to sell. My father gave us dimes for him, too.

We continued from the main shopping area onto other streets. Outside of a barber shop, men were playing cards. Young dudes strutted by with their sashaying girlfriends. A group was standing around a card table; they’d been lured into betting on a “shell game.” Our father cautioned us that some deceptive people make money only by tricking others; nevertheless, we were mesmerized by the trickster’s amazing manipulations.

A hunchbacked woman with a cane was being guided into a grocery store by a serious-looking boy about my brother’s age. Was this little boy solely responsible for her safety? Was she his grandmother? We saw a woman struggling to pull a wooden wagon that held big lumpy bags, and we wondered what mysterious possessions she was lugging. On the corner, an aproned man was selling fresh slices from an open watermelon to folks who ate them as they walked away. He cut free slices for a bunch of scruffy, begging kids. My brother and I felt sorry for those kids: we’d never had to beg for any kind of food, certainly not watermelon.

A woman, selling little paper bags of unshelled peanuts, called out to get our attention. We were tired and hungry, and our father bought three bags: one for each of us and one for our mother. We snacked all the way home. Our mother laughed when we gifted her with a bag of peanuts, and she wanted to hear everything about our afternoon. My brother worried about the man with one arm, whom our father called a “vet.” I described the young boy helping the hunched-over woman. My father praised our decision not to take the pencils. My mother remembered watching shell games back in her youth.

Of course, my brother and I have had many impactful experiences over the years since then, but that afternoon opened our eyes and made us appreciate the lives we enjoyed every day.