I Think We Can All Get Along

I thought the Spirit of St. Louis was Budweiser so you can imagine my shock when some grade school kids told me that, “No ....”

I hope that same kind of instant fog-clearing realization hits me when I’ve spent some time in the arched city by the Big Muddy, because baby that’s gonna be by new home.

I am apprehensive about all this. St. Louis. I know it snows there. I know it can be so muggy that birds can’t fly. I know that when things get dull the locals go to the pharmacy and watch the white coats fill prescriptions, but there’s a better side, too.

Heroes of mine like literary giants like T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, and Williams S. Burroughs were born there. Sports heroes like boxers Archie Moore, “Sonny” Liston, Leon and Mike Spinks and Virgil Akins were either born and or raised there. Boxing, my favorite sport outside of drag racing, has a rich heritage in St. Louis, For example, the American Bare Knuckles Heavyweight championship was settled when Mike McCoole beat Bill Davis in September of 1866 in good ole St. Louie. Lots of culcha and history in this river city, but I’ve got an adjustment problem in the offing.

For the past 52 years from May of 1947 through what will be late January of 2000, I will have lived in California. Southern California. My mom was born in Beverly Hills; Dad came up in Hollywood. My dad worked at Warner Bros., and was an L.A. Confidential-type photog for the old tabloid, the L.A. Mirror News. Complicating matters, my mother wrote the L.A. Times “Movie Call Sheet” and was the paper’s Assistant Travel Editor. See what’s comin’ up? I’m screwed.

The locals will read me write down to the final semi-colon and period. I’m a dilettante, a potential snob of the first order, a person who expects room service weather, the beach, palm trees, acid casualties, freeway car chases, Sunset Boulevard watering holes, movie shoots in the neighborhood, the Crip/Blood rivalry, no pro sports, ethnic foods that range from Mexican cuisine to that of Arturus in the Pleiades.

My co-conspirators and sponsors in this reckless publication and move, Jeff Burk, wife Kay, daughter Casey, and Ralph their dog will say, “You’ll be fine, Chrissie.” Yes, the goddam dog; I’m from Southern California!!!! And to you I retort, “ARE YOU SURE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TALKIN’ ABOUT? I’M HANDICAPPED!!!

To me, St. Louis and its environs are the country’s midsection. This is the Marlboro logo come to life. An America of rodeos, steaks on the grill, beer in the ice chest, and a flat tough landscape to be conquered by rugged individualism.

California? California??? There’s a chance that the locals might get me wrong. Guys in leather chaps with no bottom. Trail mix. Bearded backpackers with metal framed luggage. O.J. Rock Hudson. Nature geeks who drink bottled water at bars. ... I’m dead.

Writing and covering the races will be no problem. I’ve been blessed. I can carry a full case load in the day and run like a wild goat at night. But, but, but ... it’ll be just my luck that I’ll be hunkered down in a tavern in O’Fallon (just outside of St. Louis and the headquarters for Drag Racing on Methaqualone) and I’ll be comparing the similarities of our personal Hells with a patron who is locally known as a bad drinker and a junkie for mass hysteria. Things will go swimmingly until I notice the bar help cowering near the rear door, blessing themselves, fully aware of the fact that my “The Queers - (a great punk bad), Next Stop Rehab” t-shirt is a match to a very short fuse.

And there is precedence for my paranoia in this regard. Jeff, “Bad Moon Rising” Funny Car crew chief Mickey Winters, and my noisy self went into a bar to watch the Evander Holyfield/Mike Tyson earbiter of a few years back. I’m a Tyson fan and was grimacing at the whole deal through the first two rounds. They had Holyfield and his bad, born-again self laying down that ole time religion and honestly winning the fight in those stanzas and this got my atheistic thermostat turned up a notch.

In the early part of the third round just before Tyson’s dinner, Mike started to bang Holyfield around and I, impetuously, rose to my feet, fist in the air, and said, “Let’s see your Bible squeeze you outa this jam, Reverend.” Burk and Winters gave me a look that said, “Stranger, I hope you can beat a full house,” (meaning the 50 or so hard-drinking Irish Catholics, not to mention themselves, who took umbrage with that remark.) Hey, that’s funny schtick in L.A. ... I said through cracked teeth.

So, it’s hardly surprising that my Queers T-shirt was placed on my head in a fashion similar to the way Yasser Arafat wears his hats at the bar earlier mentioned.

But seriously, I am moving to St. Louis, home of the first 4-second, eighth-mile Top Fuel run. (I THINK Jerry Caudle hit a 4.96 in the Roche-Mattison “Guzzler” at Kahoka, Mo. in the summer of 1963) and also the home of the greatest national event-winning streak, Don Garlits’ seven-straight AHRA Gateway Nationals titles.

Not only that, but unlike my old home, there is racing in and about this area and that primes my pump. In Southern California, you have drag racing tumbleweed L.A. County Raceway in the desert near Antelope Valley, Pomona (a couple of times a year), and of course the NASCAR facilities in Irwindale and Fontana. Then you retire to the library. St. Louis totally covers an anemic act like that.

So, what can I say?

I used to say after the paraphrased words in a David Lynch TV show called “On the Air,” that “I’ll live in St. Louis, the day they serve ice in the drinks of the cocktail lounges of Hell,” but necessity has forced a rethink.

I am a powerful influence on myself and I’ve decided to make the move. Chrissie’s going to change his attitude. I’m going to St. Louis wrapped in swirls of sugar-coated delight. I feel as comfortable as a fat man who’s just devoured a porterhouse.

Hey, a few football seasons ago, the St. Louisians allegedly sold the Brooklyn Bridge for candy wrappers, when they ransomed the city’s future for ex-Vegas showgirl Georgia Frontiere, her football floormats, the L.A. Rams, and “the town crier,” Dick Vermeil, but lo and behold, 13-3 and the NFC Championship. Well, I’ll be nice and maybe the city will do the same for me. Significant lifestyle transitions may not be out of the question. Dollar beer at O’Fallon’s Living Room Lounge? For a dollar, they let you look at the label in L.A. That economic shard plus the sprint cars, drag races, blues, jazz, and Broadway by the river, well hell, son, stop your sobbin’. And if hardcore bands like Chesterfield’s Drunks With Guns or Louie’s Impotent Sea Snakes are still performing, cut in front of the ticket line for me.

Damn, things are starting to look better already, y’all. Meet me in St. Looieee!

 

photo by Jeff Burk

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