Easter hoodlums in St. Louis in the 1950s

ALAN writes:

As my thoughts amble back down Memory lane, over the Easter Sundays of yesteryear, my most precious remembrances are those day-dreamy St. Louis Easter Sundays.

Always balmy, warm, windless…..folks walked to and from church.

After Easter Sunday services everybody joined the Easter parade. We’d promenade through Forest Park, Shaw’s Garden, and along Kingshighway.

 The ladies done from head to toe in fashionable “hobble skirt” creations of the era strutted alongside their escorts, arms linked, smiling their prettiest, bowing to this one and that one….

 The promenades reeked of elegance. Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief brushed elbows in the Easter promenade, disguised by Easter finery, inspired by the scent of new grass, lilac and magnolia blossoms….”

  — Madeline Dahl Nagle, “A St. Louis Easter Back Then,” Letter to the Editor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 25, 1951

I can’t remember scenes like those from a hundred years ago, when I imagine many such people found themselves “in the rotogravure” in the big weekend newspapers. But I can remember Easter Sundays in the 1950s.

In March 1956, my mother took me to see the Easter Seals Parade on Washington Avenue in downtown St. Louis. It was held on National Crippled Children’s Day and included floats decorated with an Easter Lily floral theme.  Members of clubs, schools, and scout groups marched in the parade along with thousands of American service men.

On Easter Sunday that year, my mother took this color slide, as I stood in the back yard of Aunt Leona and Uncle Gus’s home in southwest St. Louis.

I was six years old and holding the Easter eggs that she had hid throughout the yard for me to find.  It was one of those days when I was immersed in the company of people who represented everything decent and worthwhile. I am standing by the enclosed back porch where the grown-ups often sat and talked when it began to get dark. In the yard were a tree, a walkway, and a bird bath.  At the back of the yard was the garage where Uncle Gus kept his two-tone Pontiac.

One of my fondest memories is how all of us would sit in that back yard on Sunday afternoons filled with blue skies in the 1950s.  From our vantage point high up on a hill, we could look down the hillside over a dozen neatly-kept back yards.  And every so often Aunt Leona would be inspired to say “Pretty bird, pretty bird” in a sing-song manner in response to the songs of birds we could hear in the quiet of a Sunday afternoon.  To this day, I think immediately of her when I hear birds singing that particular song.

Fifty-two years later, long after they were gone, I walked into that same back yard when the house was unoccupied and being renovated.  A friend who was with me that day took a snapshot as I stood there near the bird bath.  The tree was now gone and the back porch had been dismantled.  The house and the yard seemed smaller than they did in the 1950s.  But my memories were intact.  And how I wished that they were still there:  Uncle Gus in his tan shirt and brown trousers and brown shoes (brown was his favorite color; he had been a great fan of the St. Louis Browns baseball team) and smoking a cigarette as he talked about his sisters Pearl and Lill;  and Aunt Leona, not fat but pleasantly plump, always looking on the bright side of things, happily mimicking the songs of birds, and telling us about her shopping trip to Bettendorf’s Market at Hampton Village or to The Grand Leader department store downtown.

A few days after Easter in 1956, my mother took this color slide at Shaw’s Garden in St. Louis.

She knew nothing about flowers but enjoyed taking pictures of floral displays. This picture shows the interior of the Palm House, which was demolished a few years later. Observe that there are fifteen women and one girl in this picture.Observe that all the women are wearing dresses and dress shoes, and that seven of them are wearing hats – no trousers, no leggings, no athletic shoes, no t-shirts, no ball caps.

Madeline Nagle concluded:

…..I like to remember the years I still had ahead of me when I marched in those Easter parades….  I like to browse down Memory lane and recall my happy Easter Sundays in St. Louis.  You’re only young once—and so was I.

Me, too, and I would like to revisit those glorious Easter Sundays of yore when men and women knew how to dress and act for a sacred and festive day.

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