My earliest memories were made in Maplewood, Missouri, a small suburb of St. Louis. It was home for many of my cousins, aunts and uncles, and a destination for city dwellers moving west looking for greener landscape and cleaner air.
I’ve been told that my first days were the hottest days on record in Maplewood — temperatures reached over 110 degrees mid July, 1954. Most likely many infants were covered with heat rash in and around our sweltering apartment building at Bellevue and Lyndover.
As a toddler, I have a brief recollection of a chicken staring me in the face from behind a neighbor’s chain- link fence. Maplewood wasn’t rural, but some people raised chickens, and probably sold some of them to the butcher in the 7100 block of Manchester, who kept live chickens out back.
Our family was nothing special economically or socially, but we stood out in one regard — our family owned the music store. Music stores and music schools were very special meeting places during the early to mid 20th century.
In addition to a myriad of instruments available for rental and purchase, there were records and sheet music, ordered from huge downtown St. Louis warehouses. Record booths allowed shoppers to listen before purchasing their records. At one point in time the store even owned a special recording booth which made live recordings on the spot.
During the 1930s a dime store called Newberry’s (now The BookHouse) offered a piano in the middle of a large open area, where people performed. In fact, pianists, violinists and vocalists would walk from Kennedy Music to Newberry’s with freshly purchased sheet music, and performed for the five and dime shoppers.
If instruments weren’t a first choice for a young student, dancing or baton twirling often were. Kennedy Music participated in the annual Maplewood Christmas parade, with brass bands, dancers and baton twirlers.
Needless to say, my mother spent many hours sorting sheet music and preparing costumes for me and my two brothers for the recitals held at Moose Lodge on Sutton, the Masonic Lodge on Manchester, the Admiral riverboat, Lyndover Junior High School and Maplewood Richmond Heights High School.
When we were hungry we walked down to McCoy’s restaurant. Since my grandmother hated cooking, she kept an open tab at McCoy’s for some of the grandkids.
We basically walked everywhere — home, school, church and work. Maplewood was, and still is, very accessible by foot to most of its citizens. The streets used to be jammed with streetcars, buses and cars, and there were parking meters up and down on both sides of Manchester. It wasn’t worth it to pull the car out in order to pick up a loaf of bread at Betterndorf’s Grocery or Sutton Bakery.
Music – Family – Community. For me, those three words will be forever intertwined because they describe my childhood in Maplewood in a nutshell. There are those of us who grow up musical and there are those of us who excel at something else. In my particular family’s case, all three siblings have always been professional musicians — teaching, directing and performing. We owe our professional beginnings, as well as happy childhood memories, to the music store in Maplewood.
There are so many signs of the old, juxtaposed with the new, throughout Maplewood. The buildings still hold clues to the past — the “Salle Ann” letters etched in front of LaCosheca and Great Harvest, the large painted letters spelling ‘WOOLWORTH’s” visible from the Marietta parking lot, the iconic post office — I could go on and on. It’s what helps give Maplewood a uniqueness shared and enjoyed by multiple generations of residents. I for one hope this distinctiveness never changes.
Contact The BookHouse in Maplewood for your copy of Kennedy Music — the latest novel about Maplewood.