Our Tale of Two Cities --Part III

Monday, July 25, 2005: Lost in St. Louis!

Monday dawned fresh and new, as we eagerly planned our next set of excursions. Unfortunately, the next one on the list—the Anheuser-Busch Brewery—was the only one that required us to move the car from its place in the parking garage. No form of public transportation would take us to that location. We asked at the front desk of the Drury Inn about the best route to get there. They printed one out for us off of their desk computer, telling us that it was painless and easy, just make a couple of turns and follow that road straight out there.

Right.

Remember above, when I said their information desk was one of their few sticking points? Well, it turns out the road to which they directed us changes names about three or four times in only a few blocks. So we ended up losing our sense of direction, getting lost twice, going the opposite direction at least once and tearing our hair out before we finally landed at the brewery. Even there, we went into the wrong parking lot and had to be directed by a gate guard to a point further down the street. It was like all of my nightmares about Big City driving had come true. But finally, we were there and able to begin our next chapter.

The 45-Minute Interactive Informercial—Touring the Anheuser-Busch Brewery

Okay, the tour didn’t cost anything, so you know that a large corporation like Anheuser-Busch (A-B) is going to have to recoup something, like advertising and PR, for their spirit of generosity. The tour was essentially a walk around their grounds, where we looked at some of their manufacturing equipment and listened to them tout how “crisp, clean and refreshing” is the beer produced by A-B. It’s beechwood aged for a smooth flavor that is absent in all other American beers. That’s what makes Busch the “King of Beers,” after all. ;) But even still, it was a good experience. We found a tour group led by what appeared to be two young college girls, and proceeded to go where directed. There was much to see and the grounds were beautifully and meticulously maintained. Everywhere we went outside, there were colorful flowers, and inside the various departments, all of the equipment was polished and spit-shined. One benefit of making your plant a tourist attraction is that you make your infrastructure accountable to the public!

Our two leggy co-ed guides pointed out these enormous pipes that ran for thousands of feet around the many city blocks of space consumed by the plant. Inside of all of those “beer vessels,” each probably three feet across, was a river of beer. They basically shunt it from place to place as it moves through the manufacturing process.

One of the more fascinating features of the A-B Brewery was the stable where they keep the signature Clydesdale horses that one always sees pulling the Busch sleigh. According to the guides, each horse stands about six feet tall at the shoulder, weighs about 2,000 pounds and consumes about 100 pounds of feed per day. They are groomed and walked for four hours daily. Each is selected for a particular coloring, namely a toffee brown with white feet. Those things were huge! Horses unnerve me anyway, but I had never seen any this big. They stand six feet at the shoulder, but their necks and heads add almost another two feet!

The Thornberries stand before an image of the Budweiser Clydesdales.

After the horses, we were led into a refrigerated warehouse, where the beer is aged in gigantic tanks that each have a layer of beechwood shavings in the bottom. Notable at this point was that we were not allowed to take pictures, presumably because there were engineering secrets to the vats that A-B didn’t want shared with competitors. It was about 50 degrees in there, an experience of religious ecstasy after our previous steeping in the soupy atmosphere outside. We were told that one of the huge tanks would hold so much beer that if a zealous consumer was to drink a six-pack per day, every day, it would take them 137 years to finish it all. And the company has some 300 of those tanks. Overall, I believe they said the entire assembly held some 200 million gallons of beer.

Some time after the refrigerated aging section, they took us to the mashing section. To contrast it with the 50 degrees of the former, the latter was about 110 degrees! Sweat became our unwelcome companion yet again. Fortunately, we didn’t spend long in there, but it just goes to show how everything is relative; by the end of that section, it felt good to go back outside!

The tour ended with a couple of glasses of free beer! I took a glass of Amber Bock, which I learned is dark because the rice is toasted prior to mashing, while Jennifer went for the signature Budweiser. Our second glass was a Budweiser Select.

The Thornberries enjoy free beer.

While we quaffed our selections, our guides brought three volunteers forward for a taste test to illustrate how fresh and perfect Bud can be when treated properly, rather than stored in hot temperatures. We sat for awhile and let our beer settle before we comfortable with jumping back into the car. Nonetheless, we got lost again before finally finding our way back to the Drury Inn.

The Arch at Last

Then we prepared for the pinnacle of our trip to St. Louis…the Arch itself. This time, we both put on more comfortable clothing. Personally, I went for a nice thin “wife-beater” shirt (a more dangerous term for a recently married man!), though I carried a bundled-up regular shirt in case the Arch turned out to be fancy-shmancy. We set out through the blood-warm bog, passing through Union Station for an iced Starbucks coffee and a big, hot, cheesy pretzel on the way. As we left the mall on the other side, I got walloped by the roughly hewn stone wall…okay, the reality is that I wasn’t looking and floundered right into it, but it sure felt like being aggressed against. It left quite a scratch on my upper left arm, which was exposed to the elements by the wife-beater shirt. And yet again, as we marched our way along Main Street, we hemorrhaged a sweat-spray in all three dimensions. But it was worth it to see the Arch from several blocks away, slowly getting closer with every sweat-stained footstep forward, and taking more of the available view as we went.

Jennifer forgives Thomas' being a bit of a "bear" after his wounding against a stone wall.

Once we got to the Arch, we couldn’t resist taking pictures from every angle. Since Jennifer was there years ago as a teenager and already has pictures of herself before its grand majesty, we focused on getting pictures of me in front of it. The thing is massive—630 feet tall and 17,000 tons of steel and concrete—so one can’t help but feel both humbled and marginally frightened at such ambition. The sun reflected off of it, giving it a heavenly halo, if one can imagine an angel with a 630-foot skull.

We bought our tickets for the next ride up and killed 30-40 minutes exploring the sublevel museum dedicated to the Western expansion. Then we waited in line for another 25 minutes or so until we were allowed to climb aboard a South Tower teeny little train car that was so close inside that the five passengers within could almost touch knees. The sloped, capsule-like walls made it impossible to straighten one’s back. At times like that, I’m glad I’m only 5 feet 8 inches tall. The most annoying part about the train rides through the Arch was the other set of passengers. Two cute teenage girls and a guy rode up with us. The older girl and the guy appeared to be a couple, while the younger girl, a ditzy blond, seemed to be the older girl’s sister. Anyway, they were as bubble-headed as one could be at that age. The blond was warbling some kind of indecipherable mall-speak as they got aboard, with the only clear part being something like, “It’s like, o-muhgod, I’m like really claustrophobic!” I thought to myself, “Well honey, you came to the wrong place.” The guy was just an idiot who probably found himself alone most of the time with his belief about how funny he was.

Once we reached the top, it was quite crowded, but if we waited long enough, windows eventually opened up for a spectacular view of the city. We got pictures out of both sides, some of them showing the massive shadow of the Arch spanning across the Mississippi River. The city was so tiny from up there! It looked like one of those views of a circuit or transistor magnified thousands of times.

Views of St. Louis as seen from the Arch.

The floor at the Arch’s pinnacle is curved, of course, so it is possible to do weird things like lean forward or backward at 60 degree angles, much like those old fun houses at places like Opryland or Disney World. We played around with it for awhile before deciding to catch the North Tower transport back down again.

Wouldn’t you know it, despite being separated for several minutes and probably a hundred other tourists, somehow our little teeny-bopper Trio-of-Dumb managed to find us again and we had to share another car with them on the way back down!

We wrapped up the Arch by finishing out the museum and then hitting the gift shop, where we managed to find a few souvenirs and gifts that quickly added up to $92! Ulp!


Hard Luck at the Hard Rock

Jennifer only had a couple of things she had really committed her heart to doing while we were in St. Louis (other than the Arch, of course). One of those events was to visit the Missouri Botanical Garden. Unfortunately, it was so damn hot that she decided to abandon the idea, since the Gardens are primarily an outdoor venue. One of her only other wishes was to have a meal at the Hard Rock Café, which has always been a fascination for her because it doubles as a museum for classic rock exhibits. Imagine the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame en micro, and you’ll understand her glee. So after the relentless slogging for better than an hour to the Arch and back, we grabbed a shower and headed over to the lot of Union Station, where the Café resided. Naturally, we get there and they tell us they’re sorry, they can’t let us in the door, because someone has rented out the entire damn restaurant for the night! Jennifer was quite peeved by this, saying that it borders on hubris that someone would waltz over and deprive the entire public of a restaurant so they could keep it for themselves. Grumbling, we ended up having to fall back on our Plan B, which was…

Sampling New Hooters

Yes, they had a Hooter’s restaurant over at Union Station itself. We had initially planned to eat there instead of the Mexican place the night before, but figured that since we could have those at home, somewhere different would be preferable. It turned out that going over there Monday night was a blessing, because they offered two different buffalo wing flavors that we do not have in our home city: Cajun peppery and Samurai teriyaki. Ultimately, it turned out to be a delightful meal, just sort of disappointing that yet another of Jennifer’s choices got quashed. But we didn’t give up on it.

Joy to the Fudge!

One of the establishments in Union Station was called The Fudgery, a bakery that specialized exclusively in fudges of all different flavors. The place also doubled as an entertainment venue, since their kitchen was out in the open, where the public could see the employees making the fudge. So they turned it into a show, getting the crowds that would gather there involved in hand clapping and singing. One of their songs was a bastardized rendition of Three Dog Night’s “Joy to the World,” with “fudge” used as an alternative.

We decided to purchase a pound of fudge, a his-and-hers ensemble in which Jennifer would get chocolate nut and I would get maple nut; however, the cashier up-sold us because they had a deal for 1½ pounds for $12. We added a chocolate-peanut butter swirl. Both of us were laughing because the cashier spontaneously broke into song along with the bakers behind her while she was ringing us up on the cash register. It sounded like a Afro-Gospel and Soul festival in there!

Wife and Husband at the Cat House

Not much happened after that. We went back to our room at the Drury Inn, weeded through a series of syndicated programs on the cable, and settled on some mildly entertaining HBO documentary show about a brothel that offered gratuitous nudity.


NEXT: Another day in St. Louis passes, and the Thornberries move on to the Windy City.

Click for Part IV