I found an old book at the library about Carondelet, and while it was filled with the normal stuff about French Colonial history–which is really cool–what I really found interesting is the industry. I like to think about Carondelet not as a quaint little French town, but rather as a big, brawny Brooklyn on the Mississippi, which is what it really was for most of its history. I think the marketing of its history should focus on all of the cool industry, which I wrote about at St. Louis Magazine years ago. I think why it’s forgotten is that most if not darn near close to all of those cool old factories and foundries have been demolished. And for the better, as they were horribly polluting. Take the St. Louis Titanium Lead White Plant near the confluence of the River des Peres and Mississippi River, which was, as far as I could tell, right up next to the old Carondelet Coke Plant, which has now been redeveloped into some nice warehouses.
It was a dreary day when I got down there to photograph everything that’s been built, but wow, what a change from what I first saw when I explored the half demolished ruins of Carondelet Coke.
The house below is still standing. I’ve long been worried about the historic houses that once stood cheek to jowl with industry down this way going abandoned and then being demolished.
OK? I apologize in advance for this post. But whenever anyone mentions Carondelet, I am taken back to this:
Annexation of Carondelet
(in committee)
Missouri State Legislature
General Riley obtains the floor:
The most refreshing specimen of a speech in the “spread eagle” style, we have with for a long time, was recently delivered in the Missouri legislature, by one Gen. Riley. As the author is evidently a trump we feel disposed to help immortalize him by publishing his speech in full.
After a long and heated discussion on the reference
of a bill amending the charter of the city of Carondolet, to a standing committee of the House, Mr. Riley obtained the floor, and addressed the House :
Mr. Speaker : Everybody is pitching into this matter like toad frogs into a willow swamp, on a lovely evening in the
balmy month of June when the mellow light of the full moon fills with a delicious flood, the thin, ethereal, atmospheric air. [Applause] Sir, I want to put a word, or perhaps a word and a half.
There seems to be a disposition to fight. I say, if there’s any fighting to be done, come on with you corn-cobs and lightning bugs! [Applause.] In the language of an ancient Roman,
“Come — come all, this rock shall fly,
From its firm base, in a pig’s eye.”
Now, there has been a great deal of bombast here to-day. I call it bombast from “Alpha” to “Omega.” (I don’t understand the meaning of the word tho’.) Sir, the question to refer, is a rest and magnificent question. It is the all absorbing question —like a sponge, sir—a large immeasurable sponge of globe shape, in a small tumbler of water—it sucks up everything, Sir, I stand here with the weapons designated, to defend the rights of St. Louis county, the rights of any other county—even the county of Cedar itself. [Laughter and applause.] Sir, the debate assumed a latitudinosity. We have had a little black jack buncombe, a little two-bit buncombe, bombast buncombe, bunghole buucombe, and the devil and his grandmother knows what other kind of buncombe. [Laughter.]
fatitudinosity
Why, sir, just some of ’em a little Southern soap and a little Northern water, and quicker than a hound pup can lick a
skillet they will make enough buncombe lather to wash the golden flock that roams the azure meads of heaven. [Cheers and laughter.] I allude to the starry firmament.
The Speaker: The gentleman is out of order. He must confine himself to the question.
Mr. Riley: Just retain your linen, if you please. I’ll stick to the text as close as a pitch plaster to a pine plank, or a lean
pig to a hot jam rock. [Cries of “go on,” “you’ll do.”]
I want to say to these carboniferous gentlemen, these ingenious individuals, these detonation demonstraters, these peregrinous volcanoes, come on with your combustibles. If I don’t—well I’ll suck the gulf of Mexico through a goose quill, [Laughter and applause.] Perhaps you think I am diminutive tubers and sparse in the mundane elevation. You may discover, gentlemen, that you are laboring under as great a misapprehension as though you had incinerated your inner vestment. In the language of the noble bard,
“I was not born in a thicket,
To be seared by a cricket.” [Applause.]
Sir, we have lost our proper position.— Our proper position is to the zenith and nadir—our heads to the one, our heels to the other, at right angles with the horizon, spanned by that azure arch of the lustrous firmament, bright with the corruscations of innumerable constellations, and proud as a speckled stud horse on county court day. [Cheers.]
“But how have the mighty have fallen.” in the language of the poet, Silversmith. We have lost our proper position. We have assumed a sloshindicular or a diagonalogical position. And what is the cause?— Echo ‘answers “ buncombe,” sir, “buncombe.” The people have been fed on buncombe, while a lot of spavined, ring-boned, ham-strung, wind-galled, swine-eyed , split-hoofed, distempered, polleviled, potbellied politicians have had their noses to the public crib until there ain’t fodder enough left to make a gruel, for a sick grasshopper. [Cheers and laughter.]
Sir, these hungry brats keep tugging at the public pap. They say, “let down your milk, Suke, or you’ll have a split bag.”— Do they think they can stuff such buncome down our craw? No sir; they might as well try to stuff butter in a wild cat with a hot awl. [Continued laughter.] The thing can’t be did.
The public grindstone is a great institution, sir; yes sir, a great institution. One of the greatest, perhaps, that ever rose, reigned or fell. But, sir, there is too much private cutlery ground. The thing won’t pay. Occasionally a big axe is brought in to be fixed up, ostensibly for the purpose of hewing down the gnarled trunks of error and clearing out the brushwood of ignorance and folly that obstruct the public highway of progress. The machine whirls; the axe is applied. The lookers-on are enchanted with the brilliant sparks elicited. The tool is polished; keenly edged; and while the public stare in gaping expectancy of seeing the road cleared, the instrument is taken off to improve the private acres of some “faithful friend of the people.” What is the result? The obstruction remain unmoved. The people curse because the car lags—or if it does move ’tis at the expense of a broken wheel and, jaded and sore-backed team. I tell you, the thing won’t pay. The time will come when the nasal promontories of these disinterested grinders will be put to the stone instead of the hardware. [Applause.] 1 am afraid the machine is a-going to stop. The grease is giving out thundering fast. It is beginning to creak on its axle. Gentlemen, it is my private opinion, confidentially expressed, that all the ‘grit’ is pretty nearly wore off [Applause.]
Mr. Speaker, you must excuse me for my latitudinosity and circullutoriouness. My old blunderbuss scatters amazingly, but if anybody, gets peppered, it ain’t my fault if they are in the way.
Sir, these dandaical, supersquirtical mahogany-faced gentry—what do they know about the blessings of freedom? About as much, sir, as a toad-frog does of high glory. Do they think they can escape me? I’ll follow them through pandemonium and high water. [Cheers and laughter.]
These are the ones who have got our liberty-pole off its perpendicularity. ’Tis they who would rend the stars and stripes—that glorious flag, the blood of our revolutionary fathers emblemed in its red.— The purity of the cause for which they’ died—denoted by the white; the blue— the freedom they attained, like the azure air that wraps their native hills and— on their lovely plains. [Cheers.] The high bird of liberty sits perched on the topmost branch, but there is secession salt on his glorious tail. I fear he will no more spread his noble pinions to soar beyond the azure regions of the boreal pole. But let not Missouri pull the last feather from his sheltering wing to plume a shaft to pierce his noble breast; or what is the same, make a pen to sign a secession ordinance. [Applause.]
Alas, poor bird, if they drive you from the branches of the hemlock of the North, and the Palmetto of the South, come over to the gum tree of the West, and we will protect your noble birdship while water grows and grass runs. [Immense applause.] Mr. Speaker, I subside for the present.