Friday night we took a tour of "downtown" Saint Charles, a shopping/historical district by the Missouri River. It's historical because it's the last civilized point Lewis and Clark left on their journey to find the west coast.
I've never thought of it as anything much but a place you can hear music at night and buy blue wooden geese during the day. However, over the last thirty years the wooden geese have flown to make room for more art galleries and now, evidently, a ghost tour.
The first stop on the tour was the Quilogy building. When I worked at Eliott, Quilogy (its real name) was the next stop for contractors leaving our company. I went there once for some day-long contractor thing and paid no attention to the building, except that it had steps leading up to the front door.
Now that I've taken the ghost tour I know that it was the International Order of Odd Fellows hall (the initials are carved in stone over the door). I also know that initiates to the Odd Fellows were confronted with skeletons in caskets. Newspaper articles state that when IOOF chapters disband they bury their skeletons in proper cemeteries. I want to know how to get the gig as an Odd Fellows skeleton. Hit me up, Odd Fellows.
Our guide also took us to the site of the oldest cemeteries, where they've built a reproduction of the oldest, tiniest church. It's off the main drag by about a block. It's lovely. I've never left Main Street when I've been down there, unless it's to visit the park. There were some skeleton references thrown in there too.
It was a wonderful history lesson, with a little rubbish about ghosts thrown in. I'm sure if we'd asked more about ghosts than history our guide would have spun it that way. At one point I asked about a rumor I'd heard about a skull being found in Sun Valley Lake, where we lived when we first came out here. He instantly said "Wrong lake," and filled us in about the murder and beheading at the lake a mile away from Sun Valley that happened the year we moved out there.
We had a nice crowd of about seven. It did start pouring rain toward the end, but Gary was a good sport about it, probably because he was wearing a hoodie. I had some difficulty seeing where I was because of the water in my eyes.
Of course, it made me winder what else is out there that I don't know of St. Louis history. There a Blues tour that's out there, and except for Frankie and Johnny and Scot Joplin's house I cant think of what else would be on that tour. Perhaps I'll find out some weekend.
Queen: This is a city with a deep history. I've only been there once,and that very briefly, but might be able to visit again.
Posted by: Hattie | May 05, 2016 at 11:28 PM
Hattie - everyone should come here!
Posted by: Thequeen | May 09, 2016 at 09:42 PM