Hoosiers and Scrubby Dutch: St. Louis's South Side

by Jim Merkel

Overview

In the South Side, there lived a tactless TV guy who had a way of getting tossed out of everything on camera, from the old VP Fair to Bill Clinton's 1996 local re-election victory party. On the South Side, there dwelt a collector of ancient vacuum cleaners, none of which worked when he demonstrated them before millions of guffawing viewers watching on national television. And on the South Side, a beer baron tried to fight off Prohibition with a high-class, three-sided beer hall. It's all in the second edition of Hoosiers and Scrubby Dutch: St. Louis's South Side. The first edition captured the essence of the South St. Louis, with its tales of women scrubbing steps ever Saturday, the yummy brain sandwich, and a nationally known gospel performer who ran a furniture store in the Cherokee neighborhood. These stories, along with the new ones that fill the second edition, convey what gives a truly unique place its rough but charming personality. The result—Holy Hoosiers!—is an edition that's even better than the first!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781935806844
Publisher:	Reedy Press, LLC
Publication date:	10/01/2014
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	430,501
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Jim Merkel reported for covered the South Side Journal from 2001 to 2009 before writing Hoosiers and Scrubby Dutch: St. Louis's South Side. Since then, he's written Beer, Brats, and Baseball: St. Louis Germans and The Making of an Icon: The Dreamers, the Schemers, and the Hard Hats Who Built the Gateway Arch. A true-blue South Side hoosier, he's lived for twenty-two years with his wife, Lorraine, in the South Side's Bevo Mill neighborhood

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Introduction ix

People 1

Hoosiers 2

Scrubby Dutch 4

No Stranger to the South Side 6

The South Side's Provocateur 9

He Wasn't Crazy 12

A South Sider to the End 15

TV for the Rejects 17

Stan Kann the Vacuum Man 19

They'll Never Forget St. John's 21

The Horse Thieves of Carondelet 24

A Failed Vision 25

Secret Weapons in Carondelet 26

A Confederate Attack or a Flight of Fancy 30

A Lawsuit for Henry Shaw 32

The Light Side of Schools 34

The Man Behind St. Louis Hills 36

When Dagwood Went to McKinley 38

Betty Grable, South Side Gal 41

Joe and Yogi 42

The South Side's Foot-Stompin', Holy Ghost Singin', Gospel Playin' Duo 45

Everybody Knew Mickey McTague 48

Making It Right on South Kingshighway 51

Don't Be Confused 54

The Nightmares Linger 56

Bucket Joe: Happily Off the Street 58

Holding Court at a Bar 61

A Hard Lesson in Politics 63

The Murder at Slay's Restaurant 66

A Decade of Fear 68

The Murdering Dentist 70

A Heritage Remembered 72

Places 77

Donut Kings 78

The Stork Still Flies 82

A Royale Bar on the Highway of Kings 85

You Want Stuff? Globe Drugs's Got Stuff Like You Wouldn't Believe 88

Harry Brinkop Guesses Right 91

A Home Place for Chicken 94

The South Side's Last Mound 96

How Caves Made Beer King 98

The Scenic River des Peres 100

To Market, To Market 102

The Chatillon-DeMenil Mansion 104

The Power of Politics 106

The Asylum on Arsenal Street 109

The Golden Days of Cherokee Street 112

State Streets and Indian Streets 114

All in a Name 116

The Broken Road 117

The South Side Rolling Stop 118

The Street That Ends with a Stairway 120

The South Side's Hidden Railroad 122

South Side National Bank 124

Holding True in Tower Grove 126

A Dome Saved a Garden 129

Naked Truth 131

The Frog of Chippewa Street 134

More Than Good, an Institution 136

Saving the Feasting Fox 138

The Bevo Mill 140

The Casa Loma 142

The Pelican's Sad End 145

From the Brink 148

The Wayward Steeple 151

Sports on a Sunday Morning 154

The American Dream 156

Raise a Glass 159

Events 163

When the Great Flood Almost Became the Great Fire 164

The Grand Viaduct 166

A Wound Long to Heal 168

When Beer Flowed Again 170

The Choicest Product Goes Bust 172

The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery 175

When the South Side Got Famous 178

A Monster Strikes 181

The Intruding Interstates 184

The End of Childhood Memories 187

The Irish Go to the Dogs 190

An Exorcism 192

Unusual, Unique, or Just Plan Odd 197

A Brainy Place to Eat 198

A Blessed Mistake 200

The South Side Shotgun 202

Pretzel Men 204

Corkball 206

Gum Balls on the Sidewalk 209

Acknowledgments 213

Bibliography 215