​HILLCREST         NEIGHBORHOOD

Sunday I spoke with my two brothers.  We agreed on the strong memory of the milk and the ice men with their horse drawn wagons coming up and down the alley between Arundel and Aberdeen.  On a hot summer's day when you received a large piece of freshly chipped ice you felt as if you had been gifted with something equal to a free ice cream cone.  You don't have an alley behind your house now but I think that at one time there was such an access.  The alleys were the place of ash pits.  Ash pits were omnipresent.  Each house had one.  They were large outdoor incinerators.  They were of solid concrete, about eight feet by eight feet and about six feet tall.  The Pevely Dairy horse barn was about where the Ritz is now as was the famous lighted Pevely fountain.  In the summer in the evening everyone drove to park in the spiraled drives about the Pevely fountain, have an ice cream soda, and watch the show of the lights.  Certainly it was a simpler time.

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In the fall there was the ritual of burning the leaves in the street along the curb.  The aroma was sweet and as the fires needed to be tended they became impromptu social affairs.  

When I first went by myself to the drug store, then on the north side of North Rosebury at DeMun, Cytron's, at the soda counter a single dip cone was three cents, 3𝇍 (there is no longer an available symbol for cents on the keyboard).  A double dip cone was a nickel.  That was 1944.

My brothers and I were fond of taking the street cars by ourselves.  The City Limits ran along DeMun.  To go downtown you took it north on DeMun and at what is now Skinker and Forest Park transferred to the car that took you all the way downtown. The 04 that ran along Wydown was a different car as it could go in either direction. The western end of the car was behind the Meramec School where it connected to the line that ran along Central.  The conductor got out, pulled on a cord and walked the boom that connected to the overhead power line to the other end, and the car went back in the other direction.  No turn around was needed.  The same thing happened at Skinker.

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The original DeMun School was designed by William Ittner.  It looked much like the present Glenridge school, also an Ittner design.  It was situated facing Northwood and its west end fronted on DeMun.  The school is now named for Ralph Captain.  He was a phys ed teacher in the Clayton elementary schools who served as an officer in WWII. He was a wonderful man who is still fondly remembered by many.  We called him Captain, as he was the captain of all the sports and we did not think of Captain as his name.

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Norman Hoffman