The Lithium Spring

Lithium 10-28-2014We had to take Wife Lila and her buddy Jane Rudert McMahan to the airport in St. Louis way too early in the morning. Mother and I had lunch at Pappy’s Smokehouse, then paid $2.55 a gallon for gas at Peveley before hopping on Hwy 61 to take the scenic route home.

Just south of St. Mary and just north of Perryville, I saw a sign pointing down M to Lithium. Since our goal is to find a road we had never been on before, we set our sights on Lithium.

Before long, we spotted the city limits sign of a hamlet so small they didn’t even bother to show the population. (The 2010 census reported 89 people, 28 households and 22 families living there, but those figures may have included folks living in rural Perry county outside Lithium proper, an AP account said.)  Lithium had a ZIP Code of 63775, but it has since been declared by the United States Postal Service to be “Not Acceptable – Use Perryville.”

This well-kept church didn’t have a name on it, but it is the St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church, organized in 1896.

The Ole Houck

Lithium 10-28-2014The village has a sizable park which contains this artifact labeled “The Old Houck.” It looks more like a cart you’d find in a mine than a railroad, but I don’t know exactly what it was for.

Fungus? Mushroom? Toadstool?

Lithium 10-28-2014These brown somethings were dotting the park here and there, particularly where there was a tree stump or other organic matter. I’m assuming it was some kind of fungus.

 Lithium Spring

Lithium 10-28-2014The most interesting thing for me was this white, shake shingled gazebo with a sign “Lithium Spring.” Inside the structure was a pit that contained a pipe with clear water running into a basin from one side and going out a grate on the other. The flow wasn’t as strong as the artesian well outside Marble Hill, but it was steady.

Mother wanted to taste the spring, so I emptied a plastic bottle and handed it over to her. “Tastes like water,” was her verdict.

A contributor to findaspring.com said it is “It is a highly mineralized spring, more like water for healing…Not your everyday drinking water but will definitely start to heal you. I drink it every once in a while, additionally to my regular Spring water from Mountain Valley Spring.”

Lithium had TWO big springs

Lithium 10-28-2014The State Historical Society of Missouri’s website of Perry County Place Names, 1928 – 1945, has this information about the town and springs:

  • The town: A small town in the eastern part of Saline Township. It was surveyed and laid out as a town in 1822 by C.F. Laurence. The first settlers were Dr. Henry Clay Tish, R.P. Dobbs, and James G. Christian, who came from Illinois and settled at this place where they found two springs of mineral water known as lithium, because containing one of the lithium salts. The town grew rapidly because of the springs and was incorporated in 1883.
  • [Note: a reader sayid Henry’s last name was actually “Fish,” not “Tish.”
  • The springs: Two large springs located in the northern part of the county in the present town of Lithium. One of the springs is owned by the town; the other by Mrs. Richard P. Dobbs, wife of one of the first settlers.

Licking the Gateway Arch

Matt and Sarah Steinhoff St Louis Arch 12-26-2000I tell newcomers to St. Louis that it is a tradition that first-timer visitors have to lick the arch. I elaborate that in the summertime, entrepreneurs sell alcohol wipes to the germphobes and in the wintertime they sell cups of hot chocolate to chug so your tongue doesn’t stick to the frigid stainless steel.

I tried that at Christmas in in 2000 when Son Matt’s newly-minted wife Sarah joined us at Brother Mark’s for a Christmas celebration. She had been around the Steinhoffs long enough to be inoculated against that kind of foolishness. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

Friend Jan almost bit

Jan Norris at Gateway ArchI came very close to convincing Friend Jan to do The Lick, but she remembered who she was with at the last minute and backed out.

Young and gullible Curator Jessica

Gateway Arch 11-04-2013_9916It was time to get Curator Jessica up to St. Louis to catch a plane back home to Ohio. Over the kitchen table at Brother Mark’s, I asked if he had any alcohol wipes she could use at The Arch in the morning. Without missing a beat, he said he could provide some, which would save her bunch of money over the ones the vendors sold to tourists.

The hook was set.

On the way to Cahokia Mounds the next morning, I said, “Drat! I forgot to get the wipes from Mark before we left.”

“No problem,” she responded, “I was going to ask you to stop at a Walgreens on the way. I can get some then.”

As soon as she left the car, I called Wife Lila in Florida. “Guess what Jessica’s going to do?” I asked.

“You didn’t?”

“Yep,” I did.

 I get The Look

Gateway Arch 11-04-2013_9924When we arrived at the arch, a group of high school kids were standing on their hands with their feet on the stainless steel. “You might want to lick a different section,” I suggested.

In return, I got The Look, something common to all the women in my life.

Getting down to business

Gateway Arch 11-04-2013_9927It’s time to pull out the wipes. “All they had was a big package,” she said.

Swabbing down the Arch

Gateway Arch 11-04-2013_9932Miz Jessica makes sure that no germs are left.

Holy Cow! She did it

Jessica Cyders at Gateway Arch 11-04-2013_9935Contact is made. Mission accomplished.

That Tram sure is small

Gateway Arch 11-04-2013_9938When Jan was here, we ran short on time and she wasn’t crazy about climbing into the tram that carries you and four of your soon-to-be closest friends to the top. You can see why here.

We watched a movie on the building of The Arch, something that Jessica’s engineering prof husband would have appreciated. I tried to get her to buy him a copy of the movie in the gift shop, but she saw how much it cost and said, “I love him, but not THAT much.”

When it came time to board the tram, she was less claustrophobic than I was. Of course, she’s about half the size of me and the other guy who was in there with two other women. You develop friendships in a hurry when you’re crammed into a tin can like that.

“You know, you and I are sitting closer than I got with my first four girlfriends,” I told the woman across from me. Funny how it didn’t take her long to exit when the door opened.

On the way down, we met a guy who painted such a succulent picture of the food at Pappy’s Smokehouse that we made a beeline there as soon as we could get back to the car. Like I said, quick friendships.

We made it to the top

Gateway Arch 11-04-2013_9956After what didn’t feel like a long time at the rate of about 3.86 mph, we made it the 630 feet (7,560 inches, the website translates) to the top of the structure. It seemed like lots of folks were sharing our space, but it’s designed to hold up to 160 visitors. The Gateway Arch website has lots of interesting factoids.

Leaning out feels strange

Gateway Arch 11-04-2013_9950Miz Jessica wasn’t bothered by the tight quarters in the tram, but she has a touch of fear of heights, so she wasn’t sure how she’d feel in The Arch. I warned her that leaning out to look at the window can feel like you’re going to cause the thing to sway.

A tour guide assured us there was nothing to worry about: it was designed to sway as much as 18 inches, nine inches to either side. I tried to convince Jessica to get the visitors to run from side to side to see if it would start it swaying, but she nixed the idea.

That was probably just as well she didn’t waste her effort. The guide said that it only sways about 1.5 inches in a 50 mph wind and will, in theory, survive a major tornado and earthquake.

A friendly group

Gateway Arch 11-04-2013_9958Everybody on the top was friendly, with lots of people volunteering to take pictures of groups. Maybe the knowledge that you might be trapped in a tram with your neighbor if it jams, something that happened quite a few times in the early days of operation, puts you on your friendliest behavior.

View to the west

Gateway Arch 11-04-2013_9946We were lucky to be there on a fairly clear day when visibility could have been as much as 30 miles. The green-domed building is the Old Courthouse, which is part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.

A lot of new buildings since 1967

View from St Louis Arch c 1967Compare this photo I took in 1967 with the one today. There has been a lot of new construction over the years.

Ballpark to the southwest

Gateway Arch 11-04-2013_9948The round, reddish structure to the southwest is Busch Stadium.

Yellow building is the Casino Queen

Gateway Arch 11-04-2013_9960The yellow building on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River is the Casino Queen. If you strain your eyes to the horizon, you might be able to see Monk’s Mound at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site. (Or it might just be the massive landfill to the west of it.)

Gateway Geyser

Gateway Arch 11-04-2013_9964The round body of water is the Gateway Geyser, which shoots water as tall as the arch three times a day during the spring months.  It is all part of the Malcolm W. Martin Memorial Park, which includes a 40-foot Mississippi River overlook. Malcolm Martin was the man who was instrumental in protecting the area from commercial development and as a green complement to the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial grounds across the river.

Project started in the 1940s

Gateway Arch 11-04-2013_9973What I didn’t realize until this trip was how long the project had been in the works before the gleaming stainless steel structure was yanked out of the ground. It got its start in the 1930s, partially as an urban renewal project to get rid of scores of old buildings that cut off the view of the waterfront.

The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial was envisioned to occupy the 62-plus acres where the original French colonial town of St. Louis was founded. Architect Eero Saarinen won a 1947-1948 competition to design the site. His vision of an arch became the focal point of the memorial instead of just a point of interest. Construction of the arch started in February 1963; the north leg opened in July 1967, and the south in May 1968. That must mean that I really was one of the first visitors.

It was all about the river

Gateway Arch 11-04-2013_9962St. Louis became the gateway to the west because of its location near the intersection of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers and being just upstream of the Ohio River in Cairo. Like Cape Girardeau, it’s still a river town at heart.

Basilica of Saint Louis

Gateway Arch 11-04-2013_9952The Old Cathedral, the building with the colorful trees around it, was closed when we visited, so we couldn’t go in it.

[Editor’s note: I think this may be the last of the Curator Jessica stories from this trip. If you are wondering who she is, Jessica Cyders is curator of the Athens County (OH) Historical Society Museum. We became acquainted about a year ago when one of her interns stumbled across my collection of protest photos. I made a swing through Athens with Friend Jan at the end of January and we hit it off. Since then, I’ve done several exhibits and presentations at the museum and at Ohio University. She’s working on persuading me to donate my Ohio photos to the historical society when I go toes-up.

[She stared following this blog and listening to my many tales of growing up in Swampeast Missouri and decided to take a road trip with me to see if anything I told her was true. As you can tell from this account, every word that comes out of mouth or pen is absolutely gospel. (OK, maybe it’s gospel according to Ken.)]