The Polson siblings 鈥 Paige, Dorian and Nick 鈥 grew up in Phoenix. Paige attended the University of Arizona in Tucson. She shared a dormitory suite with Mary her freshman year. They became great friends. Mary later moved to Phoenix and rented an apartment next to mine.
Paige eventually moved to Miami. One day she was driving along and a young man driving next to her thought she was remarkably pretty. He followed her to wherever she was going and introduced himself. His name was Dennis Stone. He grew up in Pennsylvania, joined the Marines Corps after high school, did a tour in Vietnam and moved to Florida when he got out.
Dennis and Paige have been married about as long as Mary and I. Their two kids are about the same age as our kids. Their kids both live in Florida. We have visited Dennis and Paige a couple of times when we have been in Florida. They have never been here.
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Dorian and Nick both ended up in San Diego. They have adult kids, too, all of whom live in Southern California except for one who lives in Phoenix.
The three siblings and their kids 鈥 the cousins 鈥 are big on family. They try to get together regularly.
Miami or San Diego?
This year, they compromised. They came to St. Louis. They came for Labor Day weekend. There were 13 adults and two small children. They rented a large house in the Central West End one block south of Delmar Boulevard.
Paige and Dennis and their kids came in a couple of days early. We took them to the Hill for dinner. They had never heard of toasted ravioli. We got some as an appetizer. The next day we had lunch at O鈥機onnell鈥檚. We drove through Forest Park and stopped at the St. Louis Art Museum.
That set a nice tone for first-time visitors. Great food and culture. That鈥檚 St. Louis.
We visited Sunday evening to see what everybody else thought of St. Louis. Whose idea was this, anyway?
It was my idea, said one of the cousins. She said several ideas had been rejected, including a cruise and an all-inclusive resort in Mexico. She said she looked at a map to find some place between Florida and California and saw St. Louis. She had been here once on a Route 66 road trip from California to Chicago.
I got a lot of push-back when I suggested St. Louis, she said. I nodded knowingly and asked, Was it our crime problem?
Everybody looked puzzled. Nobody associated us with crime. They said it was more like, What would we do in St. Louis?
The young woman who suggested St. Louis did some research. She looked us up on TikTok. Here are some of the things she came up with: City Museum, Armory, Tower Grove Farmers Market, Soulard Market, Lone Elk Park, the Gateway Arch, Ballpark Village, Gooey Butter Cake, Ted Drewes, Missouri Baking Company.
I asked who had been here before. Dennis is a hunter and has driven through on his way to Colorado. One of the cousins used to live in Chicago and came here often for some kind of business with Washington University. And, of course, the cousin who passed through on the Route 66 trip.
For the most part, though, we were an abstract notion. It wasn鈥檛 as if anybody disliked us; they just hadn鈥檛 given us much thought.
I mentioned that the large house reminded me of the house in 鈥淢eet Me in St. Louis.鈥 Blank looks. These are smart, literate people, but Judy Garland and St. Louis? No connection. How odd that seemed. I cried the last time that played at the Muny.
Speaking of the Muny, the season was over. Otherwise, I鈥檇 have pushed hard for that. Next to Ted Drewes, it might be the ultimate St. Louis experience.
What did they like?
The City Museum was a big hit. Nobody had seen anything quite like it.
Like most St. Louisans, I have been there only a couple of times. It is too much for me. I didn鈥檛 like 鈥淓verything Everywhere All at Once,鈥 either.
The farmers market in Tower Grove was also a hit. There was music and dancing and just good vibes. This is a cool city.
The St. Louis Zoo was the big winner. When your zoo can impress people from San Diego, you know you鈥檝e got something. The hippo exhibit 鈥 one of my personal favorites 鈥 was cited. I didn鈥檛 know how big they were, somebody said.
Of course, they noted that our zoo is free.
鈥淲e were shocked,鈥 said one of the San Diego cousins.
The art museum is free, too. That had surprised Paige and Dennis.
What kind of people were we in 1971 when we voted 鈥 city and county 鈥 to establish the Zoo-Museum District and provide financial support for our then-struggling cultural institutions? I can鈥檛 imagine us doing that today. Especially tax money for an art museum. That would be unthinkable now.
But the people then had the foresight to do it, and now Forest Park is full of free attractions.
Another thing that people remarked upon was the quality and quantity of old homes 鈥 and the price of them. The house the family stayed in had eight bedrooms. The rooms had numbers on the doors, as if this had once been a boarding house. It was a magnificent place. Somebody looked it up on the internet and said it last sold for less than $700,000. A similar house down the street was for sale for $800,000.
I do not keep up on real estate, but I was surprised. Imagine how those prices seemed to people accustomed to real estate prices in San Diego or Miami.
A few of them went to the Arch, and liked it, but it was interesting to me that only a couple of people would want to do it.
I strongly advised everybody to go to Ted Drewes, but they did not get around to it. This was, after all, a family get-together. Lots of board games and chatting.
Still, civic boosters can feel good. The visitors were impressed with St. Louis. Mostly, anyway. I asked one of the cousins who had been to the Hill with us about toasted ravioli. 鈥淣ot bad,鈥 he said.