The St. Louis Expressway

Back again - although this entire project bled with excitement, the whole St. Louis expressway thing did its best to keep us from enjoying the moment….or should I say hour(s)??

I’ve lived and worked in the Wash DC area, Baltimore, PHX, Denver/Boulder area and played music in many other east coast cities….BUT….I have never, no WE have never, been privy to any such nonsensical transportation design than what our fair city of St. Louis had to offer us. Now I know this will sound quite melodramatic, but if you are reading this then you must have given in to some sort of trust. We felt like Spinal Tap lost under the stadium in Cleveland. No matter which way we drove, looked or turned it was the wrong way. How can an expressway have all wrong ways? Well, they don’t. They have special ways. Like the special names they have for the expressways, which reminded me of complicated pro football cadences. For instance, a main thoroughfare through the city was Rt. 55 64 40 70……..Not a typo. That’s the “name” of the highway. My EP, who was driving, asked me “well which is it 55, 64, 40, or 70?”, and I said “It’s all four of them”. She said that’s impossible and I of course agreed with her but by the time we had agreed to disagree we had already gotten waaaay to close to the dreaded east St. Louis, and anyone that’s ever seen 'Vacation' knows what can happen down there.

So, we luckily found a quick return to the “highway” and made our way onto Caseyville, Ill. where we would begin the intervention….after a quick stop at Rally’s for a burger. Oh BTW, yes we had a map and yes we asked for directions but I gotta tell you, those directions didn’t really get us to where we were heading…In fact, I think the only way to successfully navigate ones way through St. Louis is to live there all your life. Either that, or once you're an official resident, you're summoned by the MVA and given some sort of secret code on how to get through the city and when asked for directions by an out-of-towner, your explanation sounds as if is being spoken backwards and in another language.

Man, how frustrating.

We were looking for Natural Bridge Rd. Easy enough, right? Sure. We locate the road on our trusty little map and head towards it. But, as we see the road not 50 ft. to our left, we see no way to get over there. Fine, so we ask for directions. How tough can it be to get 50 ft.? After three failed attempts to navigate to Natural Bridge Rd., we finally locate a Quik Shop. So my EP and I stroll inside to ask for some asistance.

US: "Can you please tell us how to get to Natural Bridge Rd.?"
CLERK: "Sure thing."
US: "Whew, thanks alot. We've been driving back and forth desperately trying to get to that $#@! road to no avail."
CLERK: "Oh, well, it's easy"
US: Heavy sigh...
CLERK: "You just take a right outta here and take your 2nd right up the street."
US: "And that's Natural Bridge Rd.?"
CLERK: "No, that's not it but you need to turn there."
US: "So when do we get to turn onto Natural Bridge Rd.?"
CLERK: "You'll see it but you don't want to turn onto it."
US: "Ok. So we'll SEE NBR but we DON'T want to turn onto it? That's what we've been doing for the last half an hour. Trust me, we really want to turn onto it."
CLERK: "No, not that one. There's another one down the street."
US: "Another NBR? It's not on the map."
CLERK: "Yea, you're gonna have to turn right two turns up this road and then when you see NBR, don't take it. Wait for the next NBR."
US: "So, once we see NBR, we ignore it, THEN proceed to the new and improved version just up the street?"
CLERK: "Yea then you're home free."
US: ".................uuhhh, well I guess I'll take these M & M's too. Thanks"

Amazingly enough, we found the "real" Natural Bridge Rd. soon thereafter and made it to our hotel, no thanks to that silly code of theirs.

Ok, I’m done with that. Whew, I need a break. See you all in a few. I guess I should probably talk about the intervention a little next time, eh? What a concept!