Affton Days
Affton, Missouri is a town of about 20,000 located in South St. Louis County, where my dad moved into a ranch-style divorce cottage after my mom left him for my best friend's mom.
Affton is 96.62% white, and has a higher percentage of retirees in its makeup than any other municipality in St. Louis county. My dad is a 58 year old white male.
It is early October, and the autumn is beautiful everywhere in St. Louis. Even here. The leaves are still on all the trees, and have started to turn in only a few skyward patches. The temperature has dropped from the high 80s to the low 50s in the space of the past week. The sky is a clean, pure blue, and cumulus clouds dissipate as they roll towards the southwest. When the clouds are gone, the birds will leave, and our skies will empty until March. Now, though, it is easy enough to ignore this fact. The weather is ripe for light sweaters and pumpkin picking and playoff baseball. Mornings like are disinfecting me of the cynicism of the East, even if they still have a long way to go.
My dad, a notorious penny-pincher when it comes to groceries, clothes, and toilet paper, has filled the house with Halloween-themed nicknacks, most of which appear to be new this season. Pumpkin ashtrays adorn every room, filled with cigarettes left to burn unsmoked. In the small square patch of well-manicured front yard, painted plywood figures of a witch, a ghost, and a gigantic black cat stand five feet tall around a bubbling plywood cauldron.
When my mom and dad were still together, they made one of these scenes for every holiday from forms they saw in magazines. We had Christmas carolers and two nativity scenes, and a big purple bunny with a half dozen purple babies getting hatched from Easter eggs.
My dad would cut them out with a jigsaw and my mom would paint them with brushes and flat paint. My dad kept all of these, although he gave the old nativity scene to a local church and never got it back. My mom no longer decorates.
My dad is especially pleased with this current display, even though it has started to show its age after ten years.
When we first moved here, I didn't know my way around the neighborhood very well. I asked my Dad's sister, who has lived here all her life. "Got any parks around here?" I asked. "Parts? Oh sure, there's one place out Gravois' got everything you need--mufflers, brakes. There's another one up here on Mackinzie that don't have as much in the store, but he can order whatever you need--"
"No no... Not parts. parks." "Oh, parks? No nothin like that around here."
Affton is unincorporated, and consequently lacks many of the amenities of other communities, such as a city hall, a dedicated police force, public parks, or indeed public space of any kind. The citizens here have resisted incorporation several times. The generally agreed upon rationale for this resistance to collective government is a desire to prevent higher taxes. Others might argue that a healthy distaste for authority and the concept of government and a touch of senile dementia is also at play.
Across the street lives a retired Polish immigrant couple, whose carless garage is stacked to the gills with collapsed cardboard boxes that the husband has lifted over the years from people's trash piles. Last week he grabbed a new TV box from off of our pile and I watched him gingerly open his garage door by hand, and carefully place it into one of the few remaining crevices, as though, placing the last card in an elaborate house of cards, he suspected great danger of the whole edifice collapsing on top of him. By day, he sits on a lawn chair on his front stoop oiling and testing the sight on a rifle that looks to be vintage. Behind him, hanging from the top of his front door in lieu of a curtain or a blind, is a yellow vinyl flag with a picture of a coiled, hissing snake that reads DON'T TREAD ON ME. We do our best to steer clear of the neighbors.
Sometimes, though, it's not always easy. Two weeks ago today, on a Saturday, the community presented its annual "Affton Days" celebration. It's really only one day, actually--like I said, the tax base is small--but pluralizing the name lends a certain pastoral touch that people seem to associate with "halcyon days." The festival takes place in an open air square, bounded by multicolored plastic flags, right there next to the electric plant, which starts up where our backyard leaves off...
Affton is 96.62% white, and has a higher percentage of retirees in its makeup than any other municipality in St. Louis county. My dad is a 58 year old white male.
It is early October, and the autumn is beautiful everywhere in St. Louis. Even here. The leaves are still on all the trees, and have started to turn in only a few skyward patches. The temperature has dropped from the high 80s to the low 50s in the space of the past week. The sky is a clean, pure blue, and cumulus clouds dissipate as they roll towards the southwest. When the clouds are gone, the birds will leave, and our skies will empty until March. Now, though, it is easy enough to ignore this fact. The weather is ripe for light sweaters and pumpkin picking and playoff baseball. Mornings like are disinfecting me of the cynicism of the East, even if they still have a long way to go.
My dad, a notorious penny-pincher when it comes to groceries, clothes, and toilet paper, has filled the house with Halloween-themed nicknacks, most of which appear to be new this season. Pumpkin ashtrays adorn every room, filled with cigarettes left to burn unsmoked. In the small square patch of well-manicured front yard, painted plywood figures of a witch, a ghost, and a gigantic black cat stand five feet tall around a bubbling plywood cauldron.
When my mom and dad were still together, they made one of these scenes for every holiday from forms they saw in magazines. We had Christmas carolers and two nativity scenes, and a big purple bunny with a half dozen purple babies getting hatched from Easter eggs.
My dad would cut them out with a jigsaw and my mom would paint them with brushes and flat paint. My dad kept all of these, although he gave the old nativity scene to a local church and never got it back. My mom no longer decorates.
My dad is especially pleased with this current display, even though it has started to show its age after ten years.
When we first moved here, I didn't know my way around the neighborhood very well. I asked my Dad's sister, who has lived here all her life. "Got any parks around here?" I asked. "Parts? Oh sure, there's one place out Gravois' got everything you need--mufflers, brakes. There's another one up here on Mackinzie that don't have as much in the store, but he can order whatever you need--"
"No no... Not parts. parks." "Oh, parks? No nothin like that around here."
Affton is unincorporated, and consequently lacks many of the amenities of other communities, such as a city hall, a dedicated police force, public parks, or indeed public space of any kind. The citizens here have resisted incorporation several times. The generally agreed upon rationale for this resistance to collective government is a desire to prevent higher taxes. Others might argue that a healthy distaste for authority and the concept of government and a touch of senile dementia is also at play.
Across the street lives a retired Polish immigrant couple, whose carless garage is stacked to the gills with collapsed cardboard boxes that the husband has lifted over the years from people's trash piles. Last week he grabbed a new TV box from off of our pile and I watched him gingerly open his garage door by hand, and carefully place it into one of the few remaining crevices, as though, placing the last card in an elaborate house of cards, he suspected great danger of the whole edifice collapsing on top of him. By day, he sits on a lawn chair on his front stoop oiling and testing the sight on a rifle that looks to be vintage. Behind him, hanging from the top of his front door in lieu of a curtain or a blind, is a yellow vinyl flag with a picture of a coiled, hissing snake that reads DON'T TREAD ON ME. We do our best to steer clear of the neighbors.
Sometimes, though, it's not always easy. Two weeks ago today, on a Saturday, the community presented its annual "Affton Days" celebration. It's really only one day, actually--like I said, the tax base is small--but pluralizing the name lends a certain pastoral touch that people seem to associate with "halcyon days." The festival takes place in an open air square, bounded by multicolored plastic flags, right there next to the electric plant, which starts up where our backyard leaves off...
posted by Michael Deuser at 9:15 AM
2 comments
