Another innovation in the new house involved the lights and light switches.  In the house on Argonne Drive, most lights were turned on by a pull chain hanging from a fixture in the middle of the room.  This made it almost inevitable that anyone walking out of a room (particularly a kid) would leave all the lights blazing.  In our new house, the light switches were located in modern style next to the doors of the rooms, and Dad conducted us from room to room demonstrating how easy it was to turn on the lights on entering, and, more important, he stressed, to turn them out when leaving.  Even today I find it almost impossible to leave a room with the lights still lit. 

Another important thing about the new house (at least to me) was its location. It was only three blocks from the John Pitman School where I was, by this time, in the fourth grade.  (Although I had entered the first grade at age seven, the school authorities has skipped me ahead a year, so that by fourth grade I was caught up to my age peers.)  I had always come home for lunch, even when we lived on Argonne Drive, but this made the walk home and back even easier, especially when it rained.

I vividly remember, however, one day: September 29, 1927.   (I recently looked up the date.)   It was raining steadily as I left the school grounds for lunch.  I reached home a little damp, but otherwise the walk was not memorable.  As I ate lunch, however, the sky grew steadily darker, and as I walked the three blocks back to school, the rain increased to a downpour.  By the time I reached the school grounds, a full blown thunderstorm was raging, worse than anything I could remember. Later that day, we learned that during a five minute period beginning at 1:00 PM, a tornado, accompanied by heavy rain ? "terrific" the Post Dispatch headline called it   It had plowed through downtown St. Louis.  Six square miles of buildings were in ruins.  Eighty six people were killed, including five students who were caught in the collapse of Central High School.  A list on the Web ranks the 1927 St. Louis tornado twenty fourth among the twenty-five most deadly tornadoes in U.S. history.  Interestingly, another tornado that struck St. Louis in 1896 is ranked third.

My parents and I drove through much of the disaster area. I had not been introduced to disaster by pictures of devastation, which unfortunately are now familiar in daily newspapers and nightly television news, so the damage was like nothing I had ever imagined. The sides of many businesses and residences were sheared off, leaving the contents exposed to the elements. Bricks, chunks of plaster, pieces of board, sections of furniture and other detritus cluttered the street.

The unprotected belongings of tornado victims provided a great opportunity to looters, and the entire 1,500 personnel of the St. Louis police department were called out..  In addition, the 138th infantry was mobilized from Jefferson Barracks, and the State Militia was summoned.  Orders were issued to shoot looters on sight.

Even this was not enough to protect the area twenty four hours a day, and many and many temporary officers were recruited.  My cousin, John Burnett, just discharged from the army after a tour of duty in the Philippines, was deputized. Since my parents had not seen him since his return ? and I had never met him ? Aunt Lucy Niemueller drove him to Kirkwood for a few hours visit.  Like all those on duty, he was forbidden to leave the city, even during his time off, but Aunt Lucy knew we wanted to see him.  She hoped, she said, that he wouldn’t get in trouble for disobeying regulations.  In the event, no trouble arose.

As I was writing this, I looked up the weather forecast for September 29, 1927 as it appeared in the September 28 edition of the St. Louis Post Dispatch.  It read, "Mostly cloudy tonight and tomorrow with showers tonight.  Warmer tomorrow." Our modern weather service with better understanding of weather systems, radar and other modern technology and with broadcast tornado "watches" and "alerts" is certainly an improvement over the old days.)

With a nucleus of six boys, our house was a natural center for all the other kids in the neighborhood.  We played many games.  When Mommom was not farming it, the lot next door provided a baseball diamond in the summer and a football field in the fall..  (Special ground rules were established for the yellow rose bush in the center of the lot.)

We also played "cork ball," a game we learned by watching the firemen play it behind the firehouse. I think the game was peculiar to the St. Louis area.  At least, I've never come across anybody from anywhere else who has ever heard of it.  The game was played with a ball about  an inch and a half in diameter, made of cork.  The first balls were probably cork fishing floats, but the one we used had a white leather cover like a regular baseball.  The bat was originally a broom handle or some such, but we acquired a factory made bat of about that size.

Each team had at least a pitcher and a catcher.  If there were any other players they were scattered over the field at will. A pitcher's box and home plate were designated, but there were no bases.  Instead, the field was partitioned into zones ? say, between the plate and the pitcher's box, between the pitcher's box and the yellow rose bush, between the rose bush and the sidewalk, and beyond the sidewalk.

In the play of the game, the batter took his position next to home plate and tried to hit the ball thrown by the pitcher.  I don’t remember whether balls and strikes were called ? we had no umpire for the purpose ? but a foul ball was an automatic out.  A fair ball caught by a fielder was an out.  A fair ball not caught counted as a hit for the number of bases corresponding to the zone where the ball landed.  Between home plate and the pitcher was one base.  Between the pitcher and the rose bush was a double, and so on.  The idea was to advance imaginary runners around the bases to score runs.

For a time we had a team that played kids from a nearby neighborhood.  I caught.  Our pitcher was Francis Riley, who could take advantage of the light weight and rough exterior of the ball to throw a remarkable curve.  I have no recollection of who won these games, but I remember it was great fun.

One summer we set up a croquet set in the side yard.  Since the yard sloped noticeably from the house to the sidewalk, getting the ball through some of the wickets (especially the center wicket) took a great deal of skill and local knowledge.  Visitors didn’t stand a chance.  We particularly enjoyed team play, and relished the role of "rover" (a player who had gone through all the wickets, but had not touched the finishing post) as the name implies, such a player was privileged to roam all over the field, driving balls belonging to the opposing team to the far edges of the yard.  Even our father became involved, and one night when dark threatened to end an exciting game, he drove our car onto the lawn and positioned it so the headlights permitted play to continue.

During one summer, we played "capture the flag," a game we found in the boy scout manual.  Territories were assigned to each of two teams.  Washington avenue was usually the dividing line.  Each team set up a flag somewhere on its territory, and the object of the game was to capture the opponents flag while protecting your own.  Each player tied a handkerchief around his left arm through which a strip of cloth (his "scalp") was threaded.  When somebody snatched your scalp away, you were "dead" and put out of action. These games could go on for days, and I don’t believe any ever ended in victory for either side.

We also played several versions of "hide and seek."  One popular version was "tap on the icebox."  In this game, the person who is "It" leans against a tree and hides his eyes.  Somebody behind him, tracing a circle with his finger on It's back, intones, "Draw a magic circle and dot it with a dot."  Whereupon somebody behind taps a "dot" in the imaginary circle.  If It can guess who made the dot, the two change places and the game begins again.  When It fails to guess correctly, he then hides his eyes and counts while the others hide.  From there on it's a regular game of hide and seek.

Another version was "kick the tin can."  Here, a circle is drawn on the ground and a tin can placed in the center.   Somebody kicks the can and It must retrieve it, bring it back to the circle and count with closed eyes while the others scatter and hide.  When It discovers somebody’s hiding place, he calls his name and the two race for the can.  If It gets there first, the person is caught, and remains near the circle as a prisoner.  But if the hider can kick the can before It gets there, not only is he entitled to hide again, but his action frees any prisoners who have already been caught.  Indeed, even if you hadn't been discovered, you could free the prisoners by running out of your hiding place and kicking the can.  Of course, whenever the can was kicked, It had to retrieve it, and the game started again.

Another game was "Annie over," played with a tennis ball and the garage.  Two teams assemble, one on each side of the garage.  One team shouts "Annie over," and somebody throws the ball over the roof of the garage.  When somebody on the receiving team catches the ball, he runs around the garage and throws the ball at one of his opponents.  If the opponent is hit, he has to change sides.  (At least, I think that was the way we played the game.)

Many of our games involved equipment that we made ourselves. "Tip cat" requires a bat, a thin piece of board about two inches wide and two feet long with a hand-hold whittled at one end, and  a "cat," fashioned from a block of wood about half an inch square and three inches long, sharpened at each end so it looks something like a large pencil stub with two points.

To play the game players lay their "cats" on the ground at the starting line. Each in turn uses his bat to strike sharply down on his cat near one of the points.  When properly administered, this blow causes the "cat" to leap into the air, whereupon the player tries to hit it with his bat to send it as far a possible toward the other end of the yard.  The action is repeated with the "cat" in its new location, and continued until it is finally driven across the finish line.  The object is to cross the course in the fewest strokes.

Some games we adapted to fit our available space and resources.  At one point, we set up a golf course in the yard.  Instead of holes, we circled the house with a number of dirt filled coffee cans, each equipped with a numbered rag tacked to a short pole stuck in the dirt.  Clubs were fashioned of a short blocks of wood nailed to wooden handles.  The balls were wood, about golf ball size, doubtless recycled from some long forgotten commercial game. A player holed out by driving his ball against the coffee can.

Besides games, we devised a variety of pastimes.  A reed like weed, four or five feet tall, with a rather heavy tap root grew in the lot behind our garage.  We discovered that when we carefully pulled up the plant, stripped off the leaves, and cleaned the tap root by rubbing it in the low crotch of a nearby elm tree, the long bare stem became a spear that could be thrown javelin style a considerable distance. 

We would stand with our backs to the side of the garage and hurl the spears.  A good spear, well thrown, would carry clear across the street, a distance of, perhaps, two hundred feet.  I have no idea what kind of plant that was.  I'm sure I would recognize it if I ever came across it again, but I have never encountered it anywhere else.

We spent most of one summer running a railroad.  The train consisted of a locomotive tricycle pulling two wagons.  The tongue of the first wagon was tied to the back of the tricycle.  The rear passenger in the front wagon sat backwards and held the tongue of the second wagon.  The train ran on the sidewalk three quarters of the way around our block.  The trip started at the corner of Adams and Harrison and ran down hill on Harrison past our house. At the Washington corner the train turned left and ran down hill along Washington to Van Buren.  It turned left and continued on the level along Van Buren to Adams.

Except for the level stretch along Van Buren, the entire trip had been down hill, and none of us was strong enough to haul the loaded train up hill to the start.  So everybody had to get off at the end of the line, and the passengers trudged back up the route pulling the wagons. Because there was no sidewalk along Adams, we had return to the start the way we had come.

As time went by, we added a mail car to our railroad.  In those days, when all mail traveled by rail, express trains carried a mail car in which postal workers rode, picking up, sorting, and dropping off mail as the train went along.  Since express trains stopped at only a few designated large cities, the postal workers had to collect mail on the fly from little towns along the route.  To do this, the opening in the middle of the car was spanned by a heavy metal bar from which hung a steel piece shaped like a large elbow.  A sack containing the mail to be picked up was suspended between two wooden arms that projected toward the track at a height that matched the opening in the mail car.  As the train approached the wooden arms, a postal worker would swing up the steel elbow which passed between the wooden arms and snagged the waiting mail bag.  At the same time, a sack containing mail destined for the town was kicked out the door onto the station platform.

We nailed wooden arms onto the Osage Orange tree that stood next to the sidewalk on Washington Avenue, and suspended an old towel between them as a mail bag.  Our father, as always interested in our projects, asked the maintenance man at the laundry to bend an elbow out of a section of steel rod. We originally wanted to hinge this elbow to the side of one of the wagons as on a real mail car,  but  the side of the wagon proved too low to catch the hanging towel. The best we could do was to designate one of the passengers as postal worker to reach out with the tool in his hand and snag the "mail bag" as our train roared past. 

Our driveway, which crossed the sidewalk halfway down the hill from the Adams corner, was converted into a railroad siding.  To construct the "switch." we cut four holes in a coffee can, covered them with red and green tissue paper, and mounted the whole on a stake driven into the lawn where the driveway met the sidewalk.  Light was provided by a lit candle inside the can.  When the light showed red to the approaching train, the engineer steered onto the driveway siding.  When the light showed green, of course, the train continued straight.

A short cement walk, which extended to the driveway from the back door of our house,  required a crossing gate to keep pedestrians from straying into the path of the oncoming train.  This was formed from a narrow board, long enough to extend across the little walk, attached by a single spike to a stake driven in the lawn. 

The crossing gate was raised and lowered by a piece of cotton cloths line that extended from a screw eye in the center of the gate arm to the switch tower in the crotch of a large maple tree about twenty feet from the walk.  We had nailed pieces of wood to the tree to form a ladder, and a crossing guard was stationed there to activate the gate as necessary.

We were fascinated by airplanes and flying.  Even before we moved to Kirkwood, I would run to the street to get an unencumbered look at an airplane in the sky.  All the ones I saw (indeed, almost all the planes in existence at that time) were open cockpit  biplanes.  From my vantage on the ground, it looked to me that the wings were placed one behind the other like the wings of a dragonfly.  In those days, an empty meadow in Forest Park served as a landing field, and one day I saw them there close up.  I was astonished by the arrangement of their wings, but even more by their size.  They looked so small in the sky!

Our father shared this enthusiasm for flying and ultimately took lessons and flew.  During World War II, he was a member of the Civil Air Patrol, flying along the course of pipelines and such, watching for sabotage, but the best we could do was to construct models. 

When we were very young, our "model" planes consisted of nothing more than a narrow piece of board with slats (preferably sections of old shingle) nailed across to form the wings of a biplane.  A couple of nails driven under the lower wing constituted the landing gear, and the propeller was a little block of wood, carved so it would rotate in the wind when we ran with the plane  In our hands, these planes flew missions, and engaged in aerial combat to the accompaniment of noisy motors ("brrrrrrrrrr") and machine gun fire ("a-a-a-a-a"). 

When we grew older, our interest turned to the construction of models that actually flew.  For our first venture in this direction, Kingsley, Gwynn and I pooled our funds and sent away to New York for a kit from which we could assemble three models: a Curtis biplane, a Lockheed Sirius, and a pontoon plane.  When, after what seemed to us endless days of waiting (I suppose it might have been two weeks) it finally arrived, the kit was nothing like present day "easy to assemble" kits in which everything, if not stamped out ready to be put together is at least printed on sheets to be cut out.  Rather, our kit contained nothing but a set of plans for the three planes, and raw material in the form of rice paper, balsa wood in thin sheets and in blocks, straight lengths of piano wire to make hooks, propeller shafts and other items as needed, pieces of bamboo from which to form curved wing tips and tail pieces, glue, a small bottle of "dope" to fasten the paper to the completed skeleton of the plane, and a long length of rubber band for power.   (Model aircraft powered by a gasoline engine were unheard of.) 

To put the model together, we had to trace from the plans onto balsa sheets, and cut out with a razor blade, bulkheads to maintain the shape of the body of the plane and rib sections for the wings.  To form the rest of the plane, we glued these to narrow stringers, razor cut from the same thin sheets with the aid of a metal straight-edge.  To make the curved parts, we sliced off narrow strips of bamboo and bent them over a hot electric iron.  The propeller was carved out of one of the balsa blocks. When we had finished and assembled the wood skeleton of the plane, we covered the whole thing with rice paper, put the completed model in the bathtub and sprayed it with water from an old insect spray gun.  The drying mist shrank the paper to a tight skin over fuselage and wings. 

The process of construction was slowed by the occasional appearance of a real airplane flying overhead.  This was a sufficiently rare occurrence that, when we heard an aircraft motor, we would stop all work and dash outside to see what kind of plane it was and where it was going.  It was especially exciting if it flew low. 

On one great occasion we rushed outside to find a plane flying lower than any we had seen before.  To add to our excitement, the plane flew straight down Washington Avenue, getting lower and lower.  We followed as fast as we could run but arrived after it had landed in a pasture a quarter of a mile down the street. To us, this was a fantastic and wonderful event, but the kids who lived nearby loftily assured us that they knew all along the plane was going to land. It proved to be a brand new Barling pusher, open cockpit monoplane that had just been purchased by the owner of the pasture.  Light, low powered, with a landing speed of, perhaps, 35 miles per hour, it was ideally suited for use in a small pasture.

On another occasion, we rushed outside to discover a flow flying blimp, the pilot and sole passenger waving to people on the ground as he flew by.  The blimp had come from the Naval Lighter-than-Air Base across the river from St. Louis.

When finally completed to our satisfaction, the rubber band  motor was installed inside the plane, and we took it out in the yard.  Before we could attempt powered flight, however, we had to adjust the elevators in the tail so the plane, when given a gentle shove by hand, would glide gracefully to a landing.  A satisfactory glide being attained, we twisted the propeller to wind the rubber motor tight, and launched the model into its maiden flight.

Since these were models of actual aircraft, the rubber band motor delivered too little power for real flight. The best we could accomplish was a kind of power glide. When the motor was wound as tight as possible and the plane was launched down the slope of our lawn, the flight would cover a distance of thirty or forty feet.  We quickly learned that the real enjoyment of the models was in their construction, and after a few trials in the yard, we hung the planes by thread from the ceiling of our bedroom.

One of the big department stores in St. Louis had a section devoted to model airplane supplies, and we quickly discovered that, rather than purchase a kit, we could buy a set of plans and assemble the raw materials ourselves.  The result was a ceiling dangerously cluttered with planes, including a red Fokker D-7 triplane a model of the one Von Richthoven, the German Red Baron, flew in World War I.

The son of the proprietor of a dry goods store in town made lead soldiers, which he molded, painted, and put on display for sale in his parents’ dry goods shop.  I admired these, and when I found the molds advertised in one of our boy's magazines, I ordered one by mail. 

Since this was long before the day of credit cards, I sent the remittance in the form of a postal mail order, purchased at the Post Office for the proper amount.  I can see now that it would have been easier to get a check from one of our parents, but this didn’t occur to me.  We never involved our parents in our monetary affairs. 

We were not given an "allowance."  Instead, each of us received a quarter every Friday as a "week's pay" in exchange for proper performance of such assigned household chores as setting and clearing the table or doing the dishes. (Cutting the grass was extra.  I earned a whole dollar each time I mowed the lawn, spending most of a Saturday pushing a reel mower.)  What we did with our own money was our affair, but we never asked our parents for more.

The mold consisted to two halves, metal pieces of cast aluminum alloy, which fitted together to form a hollow in the shape of the soldier. A wooden handle was attached to each half so we could manipulate the mold while it was hot. In use, we had to set the mold on a pad of folded newspaper because the bottom of the base of the soldier was open so air could escape as metal was poured into the funnel shaped opening at the top.  Air also escaped through tiny vents tunneled from the extremities of the figure. 

To mold the soldiers, we melted lead in a ladle set over a gas burner on the kitchen stove.  The first material we used was an old pewter bowl that we got from somewhere.  When the bowl was gone, we used old battery lead bought from one of the garages in town.   Our greatest source of material, however, was a thirty pound lump of lead that we found by the roadside while we were out on a Sunday afternoon family drive.  It covered the bottom of a large iron kettle which had apparently been abandoned or forgotten by a crew repairing the phone line.  We dragged it out of the weeds, but it was too heavy for us to lift, and Dad had to heft it into the trunk of the car. 

The lump of lead retained the shape of the kettle in which it had been melted.  It was about a foot in diameter and three inches thick at the center, and it was some time before we could reduce it to pieces that would fit into our ladle.   We tried melting it by setting the kettle on a fire in the yard, but the fire wasn’t hot enough.  Then we enlisted the help of Bob Smith, a kid from down the block whose father had a blow torch.  Bob brought the torch, already lit and hissing, but it was the kind of blow torch used for heating soldering irons and such, and it wasn’t hot enough even to melt the edges of the lump, let alone cut it apart.  The final solution was to hack the lump into ladle size pieces with a cold chisel and a heavy hammer. 

My mold would produce two soldiers: a Civil war Union soldier about two inches tall, charging with fixed bayonet, and a World War I infantryman, firing prone, about an inch and a half in length including his rifle.  To use the mold we first warmed each of the two halves and coated the interior with a light layer of soot, by holding the pieces over a smoking candle.  When the warm pieces were fitted firmly together and held firmly by a wire clip, we carefully poured the molten lead into the funnel like opening at the top. 

Giving the molded shape time to cool enough to remove, a matter of less than a minute, we first turned it over to take a look at the bottom.  If the bottom of the base was imperfect, we knew that the figure would immediately go back into the ladle.  In any case, we would turn the mold upright, take off the clip and pull on the handles to separate the halves.  The lead figure would remain in one of the halves and was extracted by pulling at the base with a pair of pliers.  The lead that had run into the little air vents clung in tiny drops to the tip of the rifle and to various places on the soldier's body, but  was easily twisted off by hand.  The lead that had remained in the funnel at the top of the mold formed a heavy lump on the figure that we had to be remove with tin snips. Little drops and lump were, of course, returned to the ladle.

I don’t think we ever painted these particular lead soldiers, but later I acquired a mold of a mounted hussar, complete with fancy helmet and cockade, which I did paint.  The horses were black or white, the riders had coats of Chinese red, gray trousers, black boots, and a splash of gold on the cockade to set off the whole.

We used the molds to produce large armies of soldiers, which we divided into opposing forces arrayed across a battlefield in the lot next door, complete with trenches and wooden fortifications.  The rules of warfare required that each live general stand behind his troops and, in turn, hurl missiles at the enemy. 

 There must have been rules for the troops to advance, but I don’t recall what they were.  I do remember that each army had an anthem to be sung during the advance.  Mine was taken from a movie version of Rudolf Friml's Vagabond King, in which Francois Villon, an out-law poet, was portrayed as leading the city's rabble to defend Paris against the invading Duke of Burgundy.  Of course, it was not Villon, an outlaw and a great French lyric poet of the 15th century, but Friml, or maybe Friml’s lyricist, who was responsible for the stirring song my troops sang: "Sons of toil and danger/ will you serve a stranger/ and bow down to Burgundy? ..."

Although on occasion, Mommom took a room or an apartment for herself, most of the time she lived with us.  I don’t know exactly how she acquired the family name "Mommom," but Monnie always called her "Momma," and "Mommom" was probably my early effort to it.  In any case, "Mommom" she became ever after for everybody in the family.

Mommom was a woman of exceptional initiative and energy.  Nothing could stand in her way when she had made up her mind to do something.  When my Grandfather died, she looked for work to support herself, taught herself to type, lied about her age (she was actually a year or two shy of fifty) and got a position as secretary of all work in the office of Paul Brown and Company, a St. Louise brokerage firm. 

In 1927 at the age of sixty three, she was laid up by a blood clot in her leg.  (We later discovered that this clot was associated with thrombophilia, an inherited family disease, the opposite, so to speak, of hemophilia.  My mother was never affected by it, but three of us six brothers have been afflicted.)   In any case, her doctor sadly indicated that she would probably never walk again.  But Mommom, indomitable, got out of bed, wrapped her legs with Ace bandages, and went back to work, commuting daily into St. Louis on the street car. 

But even while she was working, Mommom energetically pursued an assortment of hobbies.  For a time, she made braided rugs.  She would take old white rags, and color them with natural dyes from plants that she gathered herself.  Sumac was the source of one of the colors, a rich brown as I recall.  The dyed rags were cut into strips, sewn together in lengths and braided into long braids, which she coiled and sewed into the finished rug. 

When we moved to the house on Harrison Avenue, she took advantage of our large back yard and of the vacant lot on the south side of the house to cultivate an extensive vegetable garden that supplied us with fresh vegetables all summer long.  I particularly remember her corn.  By planting "Country Gentleman," a large eared, fine grained white corn, in alternate rows with "Golden Bantam," a small, yellow, large grain, very sweet variety, she produced her own hybrid, a large yellow very sweet ear. 

I was reluctantly drafted to help her from time to time.  The most unpleasant chore was to distribute fertilizer to the growing plants.  As you might gather from her use of natural dyes for her braided rugs, Mommom was a born organic gardener.  It would never have occurred to her to put artificial chemicals on anything we were going to eat.  Instead, her fertilizer of choice was a tub of very mature "tea" concocted from sheep manure and water.  When, after a couple of weeks of aging, it reached the desired odor and consistency, I had to dip it with an old tin can and carefully pour administer it to the the plants to be nourished. 

Perhaps her most ambitious project was quilting.  In our attic, she arranged a square quilting frame of wood slats held together at the corners by C-clamps and supported by wooden horses.  For stuffing, she used raw cotton, sent to her by her sister Minnie from her cotton plantation in Louisiana.  She removed the seeds and carded the cotton by hand with the aid of a pair of heavy wire brushes.

She sewed the patchwork by hand into patterns, some of which were traditional, and some of her own devising.  When Adelaide and I were married, she made two quilts as presents for the bride.  One was a traditional "wedding ring" design, the other one of her own patterns. 

Because of the "age" at which she had been hired, Mommom was seventy five when she finally retired from Paul Brown and Company.  And with retirement she took up the cultivation of iris.  She entered into this new hobby with the same energy and enthusiasm she had brought to bear on the others.  Our yard was soon dotted with iris beds growing plants of all colors.  She became an active member of the St. Louis chapter of the American Iris Society, and began to experiment with hybridization.  When the national Society held its annual meeting in St. Louis, Mommom’s garden was one of the sites on the tour of growers.