Classmates.com

A voice from the past, way back in the 7th grade, located me through my sister on classmates.com. We haven't corresponded in what, 40 years? Something like that. He moved to LA the summer before 8th grade, and we never heard from him again. He attended our 15 year high school reunion, and I attended the 20th, so we missed each other then.

We were close friends back in those days, so it was nice to hear from him. He was very curious how people from California could wind up in St. Louis. Here's what I told him...

A little more of the back story…

We’ve lived in St. Louis a total of almost 20 years. We moved here in 86, moved back to California in 89, and then in early 93 we moved back here for good to raise our son in the Midwest. He’s fifteen now. We like it here a lot.

It’s a totally different culture than what we grew up with in Northern California. I like being in the middle of the country. There’s lots of cool places within a day’s drive or less. Memphis, Kansas City, Chicago, Nashville, New Orleans, Memphis, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and others. 2/3 of the US population lives within a day’s drive of St. Louis.

I like having four seasons and rain in the summer time. It’s very green here. Housing is affordable and the economy is fairly stable. Things are bad all over, but historically, St. Louis doesn’t have the major up and down swings like other places do. We’re more slow growth than boom bust.

We don’t have an ocean or big mountains, but we’re close enough to the gulf coast, east coast and Florida, that a lot of people take driving vacations to those places.

St. Louis is all built out of brick. The architecture is impressive. We have lots of neighborhoods dating to the mid-1800s. All this brick in old neighborhoods with big trees is pretty neat to be around.

Plus baseball. St. Louis is a great baseball town, and its fun being part of that.

Don’t get the impression that St. Louis doesn’t have its problems. It does. There was fifty years of white flight emptying out neighborhoods. There can be brutally hot humid days in summer and bitter cold days in winter. Freezing rain sucks, but dry snow is cool.

Holidays are a big deal. You wouldn’t believe the neighborhood decorations at Halloween and Christmas. We get hundreds of kids trick or treating on Halloween. And most of them tell a joke or do some skit to get the candy. It’s part of a tradition dating back decades.

Watch the Judy Garland movie, “Meet Me In St. Louis”. There’s a lot of that style of living even now in St. Louis. As in the film, things here flow very much with the change of the seasons.

The only reunion I attended was the 20 year – and that was over ten years ago!

Good luck on starting the new job. Keep in touch.

So there it is. Seed planted!