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January 22:  St. Louis, MO
Columbus Blue Jackets vs St. Louis Blues
Scottrade Center

We're in the first of two cities on the tour that I've not visited.  (All of the cities from here on out are new to the younger J-Boy.)  This city has a lot of history, especially American music history, and we have limited time to explore it.

But first, a pilgrimage.  "Here comes the King, here comes the big number one!"  I'll bet you don't have a username and password on budweiser.com.  I do.

In 1860 German born soap manufacturer Eberhard Anheuser bought a small brewery here in St. Louis.  Talk about the American Dream!  On July 13th 2008 my beloved Anheuser-Busch was acquired by Belgian brewery InBev.  All good things come to an end.

Here's an important American composer that you've never heard of:  Scott Joplin, the King of Ragtime.  One of his earliest compositions, "Maple Leaf Rag" (1899), is probably the most famous piece of ragtime music.

For me his most enduring piece is "The Entertainer", the most memorable thing about "The Sting" when I saw it as a kid.  Years later I watched it again and the poker game became one of my favorite movie scenes of all time.  (RIP Paul Newman.)

Scott wrote most of his famous pieces in St. Louis.  Standing outside his house here I can hear my brother Pete playing "The Entertainer" on our family piano when we were boys.  Thanks Scott.  I'll hoist a Budweiser to you.

Here we go Blues!  We're in town to see my adopted team and your humble blogger is excited.  My favorite team was named after one of the first blues numbers to succeed as a pop song, William Handy's "St. Louis Blues".  A team with a musical note as their logo?  What's not to love about that?

They're also not very good.

The puck hit the ice and 10 seconds later so did two pair of gloves.  There were three 1st period fights in this game.  The Blues went up 2-0 in the first period and then gave up five unanswered goals after that. 

Ben and I have been talking about trying to see a Stanley Cup game this year.  It's safe to say it won't be here in St. Louis.

St. Louis has a Walk of Fame on old Delmar Blvd and you should see the names under the snow here.  As we shiver and uncover each Ben grins and whispers "Only the J-Boys would do this...."

You have been impacted by people on this street.  T.S. Eliot, William Burroughs, Ulysses S. Grant, Tennessee Williams, Maya Angelou, Chuck Berry, Stan Musial, Vincent Price, Ike & Tina Turner, Charles Guggenheim, Yogi Berra, Charles Lindbergh, and Jimmy Conners to name a few.

But I was looking for one star in particular, another local who changed music.  Along the way I found an old friend.

The Gateway Arch is way cooler than you think it will be.  Iconic like our Space Needle but it actually has symbolic meaning.  From the top we both got our first look (ever) at the Mississippi River.  Even on a gray winter day, with ice floating in it, you can feel the history here. 

Equally cool is the look back to the west.  There are three important buildings in this picture.  The obvious is Busch Stadium.  In the lower left is the Old Cathedral.  On the right is the Old Courthouse.

The Basilica of St. Louis, King of France ("The Old Cathedral") was the first cathedral west of the Mississippi.  Consecrated in 1770, it is still a parish church today.

The Old Courthouse was a combination federal and state courhouse built in 1828.  Today it is a really interesting museum covering the whole of the history of St. Louis, and on a quiet snowy Sunday Ben and I had it all to ourselves.

Something that is really hard to comprehend happened here.  Dred Scott (and Harriet, and their daughters) sued for their freedom from slavery in 1846.  First granted freedom by a jury, the decision was later overturned by the Missouri Supreme Court (also here).  It happened in the room we stood in.  The case eventually went to the U.S. Supreme Court where the Scotts......lost!  The Civil War started shortly thereafter.

I was both proud and embarrassed that Ben knew a lot more about this going in than I did.  It's cold enough here for an afternoon outdoor skate before we head home.  Our next trip will be much colder.