Fulbright riffs, 1991 — day 44, Friday July 12th

Woke up around 9 and tuned into KDHX, the local non-commercial station, which is playing folk music from Eastern Europe. The presenter is Harriett Shanis and she invites listeners to phone in, which I do, complementing her world music selection and offering to send her copies of my Sidetrax shows for Jazz FM.

I check out of the hotel around 10.30 leaving my luggage behind to collect later. First on today’s schedule of visits, Annette Bridges at the Scott Joplin House in Delmar Boulevard.

The Joplin historic site is under re-development and Annette tells me about the city’s plans for a new complex. Strong-willed and energetic, I hope she will succeed. The heyday of ragtime music feels very remote, and although the house that was Joplin’s home from 1903–5 was built in the mid-1880s, which means it is no older than most British urban dwellings currently undergoing renovation, it looks appropriately historic.

Annette shows me around with justified pride and even though it’s still a project in the making, the room where Joplin composed some of his most famous rags, such as The Entertainer, has a strong, authentic resonance. She offers me coffee in her office and mentions some recordings (of hers?) that have been pirated by Johnny Parth in Vienna [on the Document label perhaps?]. We exchange jokes: she tells me one about Dan Quayle, Vice-President under George Bush. [Quayle was noted for stating the obvious, usually in a half-baked manner, such as: “This election is about who’s going to be the next President of the United States!”] Annette’s joke: During 
a state visit to England, Margaret Thatcher, with other Cabinet colleagues present, advises Bush, who is accompanied by Quayle, that in order to select a Vice President he should set a riddle, like “He’s your father’s son, but he’s not your brother”. John Major gets it right immediately — “It’s me”. Bush then asks Quayle the same riddle. Quayle is not sure and calls Henry Kissinger for advice. Kissinger also confirms, “It’s me”. So Dan gives the answer to Bush, “It’s Kissinger”. “No; wrong”, says Bush, “It’s John Major!”.

My bus stop for the return visit to UMSL is not far down the street. The storm has done nothing to abate the heat and what little shade there is at the bus stop diminishes further during the 45-minute wait. A bus approaches at speed. The route number and destination are shown on a rolling screen that goes intermittently blank. As the bus draws closer, the screen is blank so I have no idea if it’s the right bus. I stand to put my hand out just in case, but it accelerates past and just as it does so, the screen shows my number and destination. It will be another hour before the next bus arrives. I walk around looking for shade but this part of St Louis is semi-derelict, with lots of open spaces. From where I am slowly roasting in the midday sun, I watch a black man shuffle slowly and aimlessly around his car with a broom, but at least he’s in the shade.

I reach UMSL around 2, which gives me less than three hours to do research before they close again.

The librarians are again helpful and I look through micro-filmed scrapbooks of St Louis musicians from the late 1920s and 1930s, including Eddie Johnson’s Crackerjacks. [Later, on my return to IJS, I could listen to The duck’s yas yas yas and hear Harold Baker’s excellent lead on Good old bosom bread.]. I find billings for jazz battles and piano contests. I talk to the staff about Gaslight Square, the famous entertainment district in the 1950s and 1960s. They tell me it folded amid rising crime figures, drugs, and, probably, the influence of the Mob.

Back on the bus to the hotel for iced tea and sickly lemon-mousse tart before an early evening trip out to Vintage Vinyl on Delmar Boulevard. I purchase some LPs for The British Library — a Gaslight Square compilation, some early Oliver Lake and Don Shirley — and one for me, a KANU (Kansas Public Radio) compilation including Charles Ives singing They are there and an early Miles Davis recording.

I wander around the University Loop area, taking photos before catching a bus back to the hotel. On the bus a rather dopey male passenger is taunted mercilessly by some of the female passengers, clearly a local no-good.

Tonight I’ll be sleeping on a train to New Orleans and to make up for today’s meagre mouthfuls, I head for the best restaurant in the mall: salad, 12 oz. strip steak and half a bottle of Napa Valley red. The dinner is excellent and at $47 my most expensive binge of the trip so far. Service is helpful but over-attentive, especially being shown what the various sizes of steaks (and potatoes) look like before you order them: a waiter darts around the floor continuously with a large platter bearing slabs ranging from 8 oz to 3 pounds (“for those with especially large appetites tonight”).

I get to the Amshack in plenty of time but there will be no trains tonight as the day’s heat has caused the track to buckle between here and Kansas City. There are about thirty or forty of us waiting and we’re all ushered into cabs to be driven out to Centralia to pick up our diverted train.

In my cab there are four of us plus the driver and I am wedged into a corner of the rear seat. A weird guy with a cleft palate is wedged in the other and between the two of us a young lady from Jackson, who takes up far more space than might be expected. The drive to Centralia is just over an hour, the conversation sporadic and un-engaging, mostly observations of lightning flashes by Mr Cleft Palate — “ooh — ligh’ning”. The best is from the driver: “Hear that sound, that sound like popcorn? Well, it ain’t popcorn: it’s burgz, on the wind-shield. Burgz. I’m tellin’ ya, we get a lot of bugs out here”. The lightning flashes reveal an endless agricultural landscape on both sides of the road and the insect population is frantically colliding with the infrequent passing traffic.

The taxis head back empty to St Louis and we all wait around on a corner of Main Street near Centralia station for another ninety minutes. Mr Cleft Palate tells me where various members of his family live, including Hawaii, which sounds nice. He asks me about the earthquakes and tidal waves we get in England.

The platform at Centralia is short and the train is long. We shamble onto the front car of the train in the early hours and, of course, my reserved roomette is located at the rear. The conductor is very helpful, clearing a route for me over sleeping bags and slumped, snoring bodies in the corridors until we end up at a cosy little cupboard that the conductor unlocks for me. Inside is a courtesy bottle of Riesling and a snack in a Belgian chocolate box. Goodnight, and so long, Mid-West.