Posts Tagged ‘Edwin Clark’

Everywhere I go in this new old place, the ghosts of the past call out to me.  Nostalgia, as I’ve mentioned before, is the house disease in our town and it’s a tough habit to kick, even when new businesses rise all around to symbolize the futility and fatuity.  Every restored, renamed, repurposed landmark reminds me of its first name and earlier purpose.  I walked through the downtown shopping area, mentally ticking off the nostalgic sights. Designer pizza, New Age sushi, curry in a hurry, and korma buffet?  Give them credit (where tax) credit is due.  In the old days, one could dine at FE Sandwich Shop, Tutenberg’s, the Forum, Pope’s, Happy Hollow, the Orient, Washington Restaurant, Grecian Gardens, The Whip, The Rathskeller in the Lennox Hotel, the Mayfair Room and Cafe Rouge at the Statler Hotel.  High-tech bowling, slacker hookah, ubiquitous wi-fi, late-winter gelato, and wall-to-wall flat screens?  I recall naughty movies at the Garrick, the World and Towne theaters. There was strip tease at the Grand, where comic Billy “Zoot” Reid held forth and among the headliners: Tootsie Roll, Tinker Belle and Yummy Boobs. Famed stripper Gypsy Rose Lee was once engaged there for a “limited run.”  The columnist knew Gypsy, when she later went “straight” and anchored a t.v. talk show in San Francisco and still later, revealed she gave birth out of  wedlock to a son, whose dad was movie producer Otto Preminger.

Comes now restaurateur Jim Fiala, who offered this on KMOX Radio about his new venue,  “You won’t feel like you’re in St. Louis.”  Are we in Bonne Terre, Jimbo? But, the people who were complacent and said, “nothing ever changes in St. Louis,” are gone. They were the rich and powerful.  David Wohl, Jacob and John Lashly, Boardman Jones, David Calhoun, Lou Werner, Jim Hickok, Sidney Maestre, Gussie Busch, Sidney Shoenberg, Howard Baer, Joe Pulitzer, Jr., John Cella, William H. Danforth, C.C. Johnson Spink, Russell Dearmont, B.B. Culver, J. Arthur Baer, Buck Persons, Morton D. May, John Olin, J. Wesley McAfee, Ethan Shepley, John Wallace, Claude Bakewell, Ben Edwards, Frank Rand, Ben and Katch Wells, Edwin Clark and Edgar Queeny – to name a few. But, there remains an undertow of the old rich, who proclaim they only want a mention in the press at birth or upon death.

A new breed of rich comes to mind – one of whom is 80 year-old Morris Lefton.  Who’s he? Lefton and his wife Marlene enjoy a modest lifestyle, while his firm, the privately-held Metal Exchange, continues to gross in excess of $1 billion a-year. His affinity to aluminum has resulted in processing the metal for the nation of Dubai.  With tenacity and ambition, he built the powerhouse and remains proud to talk about his humble beginning here as a shoe salesman at $22.50 a week.

Money is tight these days, folks, but  some are still reaping it in.