After our talk at the St. John UCC, Ky flew back home to be with family for almost a week while we continued on. All our hosts through this St. Louis stretch lived far off the trail and Ky left her camper with parishioners of the St. Paul UCC in Oakville, a connection through her nephew who also went back East for a Byrne family reunion. That left us with the puzzle of getting both ourselves and Ky’s van to rendezvous with her in Oakville on New Year’s Day.
We drove the van to our first hosts, Tom and Anna Sandidge, a Quaker connection that ultimately started with our stay at the Light Center. Both Quakers, Tom came to that identity from a military background; Anna from the Assembly of God. Anna taught social justice classes at St. Louis University (SLU), which of course meant I needed to interview her about humanitarian issues.
Anna informed me of two additional demographics in the food challenged category. College graduates end up with so much debt that many need assistance with food. Surprising to me was that military families often fall in the food challenged category as well, with food pantries located near many military bases. When you add these two demographics to the ones I discovered in Pueblo … baby boomers let go of work before retirement, grandparents and single fathers … you have the evidence for the middle class shrinking over recent decades.
Anna also provided enlightening details about two tent cities in the St. Louis area. A tent city in the St. Louis area came into existence organically; homeless people found a place and a means to make the best of their living situation. As a highly organized, rule-based society the tent city won over the support of officials, including police officers turned advocates for them.
The tent city became such a model of success that a well-intentioned activist for the homeless attempted to imitate their model with homeless people being “evicted” by bridge repair and construction. Being formed top down by an outsider, rather than organically, could not emulate the order and docility of the original tent city, causing city officials to ban both of the tent cities, though they dragged their feet with dismantling the first one. The top down approach deprived the new tent city residents of the ownership and responsibility shared by the residents of the first tent city. When you think about it, my favorite quote from our journey, “confuse who is giving and who is receiving,” stems from this same principle.
Tom dropped us off in the western suburbs of St. Louis for our walk to the Gateway Arch, where Anna picked us up, took us out to dinner and brought us to their home again. Our route to the Gateway Arch was the most scenic city walk of the journey. We went by the campuses for both Washington University and SLU, as well as Forest Park, site of the 1904 St. Louis World Fair. We stopped in briefly to see the free exhibits at the National History Museum at Forest Park.
Our destination came into view while still about a couple miles away, with glimpses of Gateway Arch darting in between and sometimes over tall buildings. Adrenaline built up inside us as we drew nearer to the famous landmark. While hiking through Kansas we passed the geographic halfway mark in Kinsley and the journey’s halfway point near Ottawa. Neither gave us the feeling of transitioning from west to east like the towering man made arch, a feeling rivaled only by cresting the Front Range and first seeing the expansive plains ahead of us. We now felt homeward bound! This explains why the Gateway Arch became the most photographed object of our journey.
We “rinsed and repeated” our shuttle routine when we drove Ky’s van to the St. Paul UCC in Oakville the following morning. Pastor Bruce met us there to drive us back to where we left off at the Gateway Arch. He also picked us up at the end of the day, after we hiked through East St. Louis on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. Not since San Francisco and Oakland had we hiked through such a stark contrast in neighboring cities.
To my knowledge, East St. Louis has the worst reputation of any city along the ADT route, earned in part when an ADT thru-hiker called Lion King got mugged there. However, we were walking through this area in the middle of the day during winter. Despite entering an obviously depressed area once we entered Illinois, I had no apprehensions for our safety.
Even if I had apprehensions about East St. Louis they would have been dispelled quickly. Soon after crossing Eads Bridge over the Mississippi River, we came upon Aintee’s Barbecue, located by the side of a convenience store, which consisted of a grill cut out of a 55 gallon drum, a pair of very long tongs and “Aintee ” herself. “Aintee,” or Lisa, overcame a troubled background to put her heart and soul into her entrepreneurial barbecue business. In the process she took care of a nephew and stepdaughter on her own.
While we chatted with “Aintee” the owner of the convenience store came out to give a disheveled man nearby a tool for picking up trash. I soon learned of the synergy between these three people. James was a homeless vet whose government check was not enough to keep him from sleeping underneath a bridge, but enough to be occasionally mugged. Lisa outfitted her pick-up to both transport her barbecue and provide a safe haven for James. The convenience store proprietor, impressed by Lisa’s entrepreneurial spirit and positivity, allowed her to run her barbecue business by the side of his store without cost. In the land of diversity, Caucasion, African and Indian (subcontinent) Americans created a circle of support for each other.
As we headed south along the Mississippi River we transitioned from city streets to a state highway passing through an industrial area. I took a photo of the factories, documenting our journey as always. Within a minute a police car drove up to us and the officers got out to insist I delete the photo I just took. When I queried why, the officers responded that the photo needed to be deleted for homeland security. So as they looked over my shoulder and watched I deleted the photo I just took. I did not delete any other photos that might have, um, also captured the factories along our route, many of which likely belonged to Monsanto.. Thankfully they did not confiscate my SD card.
Irony saturated this little photo incident. The “natives” of East St. Louis and the neighboring area did not hassle us, just the police in Monsanto territory. When I published “Systems out of Balance,” which contributed to my call for increased community involvement, I also faulted the way corporations disguise and/or distort information. Monsanto was this country’s arch villain in this regard. I had no idea which factories in my photos belong to Monsanto, since I am not a corporate spy. Honest to God, I swear I am not.
Fortunately, we were not carrying guns. I mentioned that the growing trend of carrying guns to protect oneself from hypothetical dangers reflects poorly on the increased apprehensions and even cowardice of the nation. The ironic flip side is that carrying a gun in certain situations actually increases the hassles faced. I guarantee we would have missed out on a few heartwarming stories like “Aintee’s Barbecue” along our way if we were packing, while the police likely would have done more than simply look over my shoulder as I deleted a photo.
From Oakville we drove the van north to the home of Debbie and Pat Syano in O’Fallon, Illinois, a significant distance away from our route, but worth the trip because Debbie also hiked the ADT west to east, though taking a couple of extended breaks. Debbie used her journey to raise awareness and funds for building a library in Kenya, where she met her husband Pat. She succeeded in raising $47,000 and the library was built.
On our first evening with Debbie she brought us over to her friends Bob and Susan Hoff, where we had dinner and watched Avatar. I also learned about Susan’s initiative of providing a maternity home for women 18 years or older. They provide both a safe haven in the present and educational tools for the future.
The next day of New Years Eve we were supposed to hike a stretch of the trail together, with Debbie and Pat dropping us off and meeting us later in the day. That failed when I attempted to commit the map to memory but made a wrong turn that prevented us from meeting our host until near the end of the day. Fortunately, we spent New Years Eve together, comparing photos of our ADT journeys past and present. I enjoyed Pat’s reference to our forests as “jungles” and our deer as “gazelles.”
We returned to Oakville on New Years day in time for a potluck luncheon at the St. Paul UCC. We said our final goodbyes to Pastor Bruce and proceeded to spend the night with John and Carolyn Hicks. John Hicks took charge of the Missions committee upon retirement and proved to be an innovative thinker and leader. When an elderly woman lamented she could not go on a mission trip he suggested that making and freezing meals for the trip would make her as much a participant as anyone else. The Hicks also stored Ky’s camper while she was gone and we united with her again that evening, though not for long.
We backpacked for the next two days. We in fact spent our coldest night of the journey the next evening, when we guerilla camped in a forest depression near the Mississippi River. One of my lingering apprehensions for Cindy was how she would deal with the cold of winter. My research indicated the historical coldest temperature along our route, coinciding with the date when we would be at the same place was, ironically, near Santa Claus, Indiana. That temperature was twenty-five below zero, but we spent no colder night than the low teens on January 3rd. Cindy did just fine.
In fact, Cindy now could help me set up and take down the tent, something she could not do at the beginning. The cold might have lent some urgency to her ability to learn, but this still represented encouraging progress for her.
