Day 1 – St Louis - October 5, 2018
We arrived in St. Louis about 4pm, perfect timing for dinner. We are staying in a hotel across from the St. Louis Arch and have chosen Carmine’s Steak House for dinner. We made reservations before we left home, because Carmine’s is family run and has been in continuous operation since 1934, a very popular St. Louis eatery. This is the only thing that has gone right today. Tomorrow we were supposed to board the paddle wheeler Queen of the Mississippi for an 8 day, upper Mississippi River fall foliage cruise ending in Minneapolis, Minnesota. On that cruise we would have visited the boyhood home of Mark Twain in Hannibal, where the characters of Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, and Becky Thatcher would come to life. We would have then explored the beautiful gardens and historic homes of La Crosse. Get close to nature in Red Wing and witnessed a variety of bald eagle nests. While we were in the airport in Atlanta we were called by American Cruise Lines and informed because of river levels we will be unable to cruise the Upper Mississippi and instead will be cruising from St Louis to Nashville. There goes the fall foliage cruise. I have no idea what we will be doing on this cruise but I know the food will be great. So while in the Atlanta Airport I was able to use my phone to get on the internet to book a flight from Nashville to Minneapolis on October 13, getting us into Minneapolis 9 hours later than originally planned. Just a minor glitch in the wonderful world of travel.. When you travel you have to be flexible. Hopefully the rest of our stay in Minneapolis will go as planned. It will be interesting how the other 148 people on the ship will take the change.
In Minneapolis Holly will be taking a 5 day journey down memory lane. She was born in Minneapolis and lived there until her father was recalled into the Air Force for the Korean War. After that she became a military brat traveling from Air Force Base to Air Force Base. Until she was 6 she lived in Minneapolis spending her summers at her grandmother’s resort on Cross Lake, which is about 150 miles North of Minneapolis. We will spend 2 days in Minneapolis St Paul exploring the criminal elements of the twin cities that existed in the early 1930s when her father lived there. He often vividly talked about the gangster activities going on around him as a teenager living in a foster home. His mother was close to the underworld and her boyfriend was gunned down at the Green Dragon Café by two hit men from Murder Inc., a professional hit organization often used by Al Capone. During this era Minneapolis/St Paul was a haven for gangsters who were protected by bribes to a corrupt St Paul Police Department. It was a safe haven for such infamous names as Babyface Nelson, Roger “the Terrible” Touhy, Machine Gun Kelly, Pretty Boy Floyd, Alvin “Creepy” Karpis, John Dillinger, Ma Barker, plus dozens of other bootleggers, kidnappers, murderers, and thieves.
We will also be having dinner with one of Holly’s first cousins that she has not seen in over 60 years. We will then drive up to Cross Lake for a day and try to find the cabins she lived in at her grandmother’s resort. Should be extremely interesting and bring back many memories. We then go back to Minneapolis and are planning on having lunch with distant cousin that she has never met but connected with through ancestry.com. We then have a very early morning flight on Oct 18th to return to Florida. As in the past pictures will be posted on www.Tomjed.com under menu item STL-MSP.
“It doesn’t matter what road you take, hill you climb, or path you’re on, you will always end up in the same place, learning.” - Ralph Stevenson
More to Follow
Tom and Holly