What Was I Thinking? by Ellen Gragg

Author:Ellen Gragg [Gragg, Ellen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Secret Cravings Publishing
Published: 2014-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Meet Me in St. Louis

The Olympics were wonderful. The fair was wonderful. It was all like a dream. I wore the green and white shirtwaist again, and my feet got very tired in my boots, but I fit right in, and when we rode the Skinker Trolley to the start of the marathon, I expected Judy Garland to get on next to us and start singing “Clang, Clang, Clang Went the Trolley.”

Bert was excited, too. He had left while the big events had been just in the planning stages and then had spent three years studying them as history. That the biggest world’s fair in history took place in the same year and city as the third modern Olympiad was amazing even to hear about. Now he met them in the present and in reality.

And so did I. I hadn’t lived through the anticipation and the planning, but I heard all about them when I moved to St. Louis for college. The Wash U administration building had been built for the fair, its original gym and natatorium had been built for the Olympics, and beautiful Forest Park had been the site of the fair itself. The memory of that amazing year was always in the air, even in my time.

Augusta had given us stockholder’s coupon tickets to get in. She had bought several sets, to be sure of admission for any guests she might have. There had been predictions that the fair would be fully sold out, and she had no intention of risking that. I think the coupons thrilled Bert as much as anything else. He had seen them, yellowed and frayed, in museum displays and now he held new ones in his hand.

We did everything, and we saw everything, and we had treats at the fair, including hamburgers for lunch and an argument over whether they were invented during this fair. We didn’t stand out, because there were arguments all around about whether hamburgers, ice cream cones, and various other things had been invented here or at earlier fairs.

We got Cokes, too, and really enjoyed them. Diet soda hadn’t been invented of course, and wouldn’t be for well over fifty years, and Dr. Pepper was the most common soda there, but Bert bought drinks from a vendor selling Coca Cola clandestinely. Thanks to Bert’s recent profession as a historian of this fair, he was able to explain to me that Coke’s application to participate had been turned down because it was a patent medicine, with cocaine in the formulation.

“I thought that was a false rumor,” I said mildly, not really caring. “Doesn’t the company insist that they never used cocaine?”

“I think so. I don’t know the truth of it myself, but the rumor was sufficient to ban the product from official participation in the fair.”

“And you bought some from a pusher just for me. What a good boyfriend you are,” I said playfully, taking his hand.

He jumped slightly at my touch, but smiled down at me and didn’t pull away.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.