The 21^st Century Magazine, at South Florida's www.miami-dade-online.com.

This particular group of happy time events all occurred prior to World War Two in Forest Park, a huge (to a boy's eyes) municipal park in St. Louis. There were picnic grounds, a zoo, an art museum, golf courses, baseball diamonds, softball diamonds, cricket fields, soccer fields, the Jewel Box flower gardens and the Municipal Opera (an outdoor theater built into a natural amphitheater). Plus acres and acres of beautiful fields and hills that hosted many species of small wild life and birds. I saw and enjoyed most of them. Many of the venues are still there.

PICNICS

All of the picnics I remember were with my immediate family and my uncles, aunts, and cousins. We went as a group, usually in two cars. My father did not have a car, my uncles did and they were kind enough to take us.

We had three favorite picnic sites. One was next to the cricket fields across from the Field House. It wasn't designated as a picnic area so there were no tables, but there was a lot of space, good grass and shade. Another was the picnic area behind a building called the Pavilion. The third was a quiet wooded area in the southwest corner of the park, which also had no tables. Each family brought food according to a plan worked out between my mother and my aunts. We ate and played ball at all of the sites. If we were near the cricket field, we watched the cricket match when there was one (understood none of it). The women gossiped, the men talked business and the Depression. All of my cousins were boys, I was the oldest. We ran, rough housed and teased each other.

Not too far away from the cricket field, was a small lagoon with a lot of lily pads, frogs and crawfish. Often, after we ate and were tired of running and playing, we would get some string, tie it to a small, left over piece of cold cut, go down to the lagoon and throw the meat under a rock or lily pad. We almost always caught a crawfish. Then came the fun. Who was going to be brave enough to handle that crawfish with its menacing claws, remove it from the bait and toss it back into the lagoon? Fortunately, many times the crawfish just let loose and skedaddled, tail first, back into the water with its claws waving. Other times, we passed the chore off to one of our fathers. When I got older, I could do it. A great achievement.

On one of the highest hills in the park was the Pavilion, a big open sided building built for the 1904 World's Fair. The picnic area at the Pavilion was entirely different from the one near the cricket field. There were many picnic tables both in the building and on the grounds behind it, therefore, there were a lot of people. Many ethnic and church groups held their picnics there. Usually there was a lot of activity which took away some of the family fun. But, I liked this area because they had a concession stand that sold my favorite soda. It was a carbonated chocolate milk drink, which tasted a lot like today's "Yoo-hoo".

Several times when we picnicked there, we stayed late into the evening. It was cooler on that hill in the park, than the apartments we all live in. There was good lighting and usually a nice evening breeze. Soon, someone would begin playing a guitar or violin. They played and sang folk melodies from the "old country". Some songs were happy and the inspired singing, hand clapping and dancing, which I enjoyed. But, there were sad songs too and many people, especially the older women, would cry. I was a little confused by all that.

The third area was bordered by some woods around the park's southern and western edges. As we went from the car through the trees to the open field where we picnicked, the city disappeared. In this grove like setting, the grass was tall, peacocks from the zoo were allowed to roam and forage, there were also many different wild birds, a lot of squirrels and maybe a fox. (I've tried to find this area, later in my life, but it has all been changed.) We did our ususal picnic things, playing ball, running, teasing and doing a little roughhousing until, one afternoon, one of the boys flushed a bevy of quail. They exploded right in his face. What excitement! We were all little city boys, we didn't know what was happening. My father knew and he helped us invent a game. We boys would all join hands and run shouting as loud as we could through the field until we flushed them out. Quail wait until you are right over them before they take flight. Which they do in a burst, all at once, straight up with a loud fluttering of wings. The ground erupts with birds, you think they are going to fly in your face. We would scream in delight each time we found and flushed them. We tried to see where they landed. Sometimes we needed guidance from our fathers. Then we took off in that direction running and shouting until we flushed them again. We did it over and over again until we were exhausted and fell to the ground. It was a great fun because each burst was a somewhat frightening surprise, and little boys love that.

THE ZOO

To a boy any zoo is a fantastic place. The St. Louis Zoo was one of the best in the states then and it still is. Admission was (and still is) free. During the summer there were outdoor animal shows. Each species had its own arean. The big cats (lions and tigers) in one, elephants in one, chimps in another. All shows were also free. The time of each show was posted and if you knew the grounds well and were willing to run, you could see them all in one day and still see the exhibits.

In those days, most of the animals were displayed indoors in cages or glass enclosures, but quite a few were kept outside. One of my favorite displays was the sea lion pool, particularly if we could be there at feeding time. About a half hour before the attendant was to arrive with his two buckets of fish, the seals would start barking, then each would go to its own particular spot on one of the large rocks that were around and on an island in the pool. One seal, however, would stay in the water swimming to and fro in an area close to where the attendant would soon stand with his fish buckets. When he came through the gate the barking reached a crescendo. He would toss a fish to each seal in turn, which they caught in their mouths. The one in the water always knew when it was its turn and its head would pop out of the water just in time to get its fish, which was already in the air. If any of the seals on the rocks missed or dropped their fish and it fell into the water, the swimmer always got there first. The whole event lasted about fifteen minutes and it never failed to delight young and old alike.

Close by the seal exhibit was a pond that was home to many types of water fowl, various ducks, geese and swans. The duck and goose population varied with the season, because many migrants stopped over for an easy meal or two. We were allowed to feed them and we gave them bread, crackers, and pop corn. We could not feed any other animals in the zoo.

Near the pond were more outdoor exhibits, the bear pits. I'll describe them and more of the Zoo in another story. The staged shows held in the outdoor arenas were also a lot of fun, but I've seen so many like them in my life that I have no specific memory.

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