Manchester Avenue

I have a decent, but not stellar, sense of direction.  On our recent trip to St. Louis, I was the designated driver to take the boys (in the van) to the science center and then to the zoo, while Scott took Jessica (on the Metro) to a Sunday afternoon Cardinals game.  I knew my assignment would not be difficult, because we had been to the science center two days earlier, and it was only about ten minutes from the hotel.  All I would need to do was to get back on I-64 headed east and take the Forest Park exit.  Simple.

So off we went.  Down through the lobby, out to the van, out the parking lot, and out onto the main drag.  But where was the freeway entrance ramp?  Hmmm. . .  Someone must’ve moved it.  It had certainly been there last night.  Oh, well, no big deal.  Here was Manchester.  It would take us back around to the freeway.  All we had to do was make a left.  Left turn lane, left turn signal, and away we go.

And go.  And go.  And go and go and go.  I have never seen these buildings before.  Where is the freeway?  And which way are we headed on Manchester, anyway?  Surely east.  We’re going the same way we should be going on the freeway; it’s just not four lanes.

Josiah is – as always – up to his eyeballs in a book, but I ask him to look at the map and try to navigate me.  I know we’ve brought the city map in the van pan, but no, it isn’t the city map.  It’s the Metro map!  Aaargh!  Scott needs the Metro map and I need the city map, but evidently they got switched somewhere along the way.  The Metro map does show all the streets, but they are all grayed out and most of them have no names.  Instead, only the bus routes are brightly colored and labeled.

I tell Josiah we’re on Manchester and that we’ve just passed whichever street it was.  He can’t find Manchester on the map.  I tell him to look for I-64, which runs east and west.  Then find the Richmond Heights area of town (where our hotel is).  He can’t find I-64.  He says none of the (admittedly very few) street names on the map match any of the names I’m calling out.

It’s an overcast day, and there’s no telling if we are heading east, which we should be, or west, which we definitely should NOT be.  If, in fact, we ARE headed west, we are driving away from the science center and will eventually end up back in Fenton!  Ah, well, it’s a grand adventure.  Josiah informs me that he thinks we’re going the wrong way, but my innate sense of direction tells me that we’re really okay.  If we just stay on Manchester eastbound long enough, we’ll hit Kingshighway, which will take us to Forest Park.  Since Manchester more or less parallels I-64, we are just taking the more scenic and more highly stop-lighted route.

Having gone several miles down Manchester and finding ourselves in a old monied residential area, Josiah all but insists that we turn around.  As a compromise, I pull off into a neighborhood and locate a woman my age out walking her dog.

“Excuse me, but I’m a lost tourist.  Can you tell me the best wat to get to Forest Park?”

She thinks a moment and replies that the only was she knows to get to Forest Park from here would be to get back on Manchester, continue in the direction we’d been going, eventually get on I-44, and take the Forest Park exit.  I thank her but decide that I-44 is way south of where we wanted to be.  Instead, we will simply turn around (much to Josiah’s relief) and take Manchester all the way into town.

Yes, we have driven some six to ten miles out of our way to the west on Manchester.

Making a U-ie in the road, back we go, and this time, Josiah is able to match up a street every now and then.  We trundle first through nice neighborhoods, then slums, and finally an eternal industrial area.  At long last, I saw the familiar Barnes Jewish hospital off to my left and head for it.  It sits catty-corner to the souteast corner of Forest Park, just a couple blocks from the science center.

When I finally park at a curb a short hike from our destination, it’s been 45 minutes since we left the hotel.  Both boys are rather disgusted with me, but I am actually rather proud of myself.  Anyone can do things the easy way, but I have successfully managed to stretch a 10-minute, 4-mile drive into a 45-minute, 20 mile excursion.

I am pretty sure that I have now seen EVERYTHING there is to see on both ends of Manchester Avenue, plus a double feature of its mid-section.  I can also testify that getting to the science center was NOTHING compared to parking at the zoo. . .