Thoughts on St. Joseph, Mo. & Peoria, Il.
I’m back from our annual pilgrimage to the beautiful and historic river town of St. Joseph, Missouri. Their official slogan is “Where the Pony Express started and Jesse James ended”, but I would add “and where it is very difficult to actually see the river because someone thought it was a good idea to build a double decker interstate bypass fronting the Missouri river.”
I ran across a signed 1,000 copy limited edition book called Mt. Mora 1851, about a place which strongly resembles Springdale Cemetery. A historic cemetery where the city founders and prominent citizens are laid, but new plot sales are down, trust funds are rapidly depleting, the front gates were smashed through, and vandalism was rampant. Like Springdale, it is slowly turning a corner and getting rebuilt, albeit with much work to do.
Although St. Joseph only has a population of 80,000 and no ‘burbs, I always find many similarities between our two towns, with obvious exceptions because of the size. Their population hasn’t changed much over the years, and they are experience a bit of sprawl, but their inner city never had the working class as ours did and still does, so older neighborhoods still remain vibrant. Today’s front page story was about a meth lab bust… a story which would have been buried in the Journal Star.
We were built on liquor; they were built on trading and outfitting for the journey west, but we’re both very old and storied midwest towns. St. Joseph was long ago a larger town than Kansas City until the railroads put their lines through KC because of St Joe’s rich folk thought it uncouth. Their best attributes and our biggest downfall is how we deal with the past. While we like to tear down our past or push it under the carpet, they embrace it, and that is what I most admire about them. History is living and breathing all around us. They seem to understand that. Maybe as an outsider I don’t fully “get it” and I’m sure there’s all kinds of funny business going on under the surface, but as an outsider, I see an historic town which remains historic. In Peoria I see a historic town with a random patchwork of preservation.
St. Joseph Missouri is no utopia. Even though they have a glorious vaudeville era theatre fully restored and owned by the city, their once thriving downtown has seen better days. They have sprawl, strip malls and payday loan places just like us, but they do handle history differently than we do here, as evidenced by street after street of classic and grand homes. It seems to be in their blood. I wish it was in ours. With that being said I’m proud to be from Peoria and I love my hometown with all its good, bad and quirkiness included. It’s always nice to come back home.
January 8th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
The Gipps Jr. boys softball team of Peoria won the national junior championsip in St. Joe in l947. Athletes from Manual, East Peoria, Woodruff, Morton and Spalding comprised the team. They had won second place in l946.