ECOVIEW
No.4
St Louis
to Minneapolis
Not your usual neighborhood
art show!!
Carl Lahser
ECOVIEW
No.4
St Louis
to Minneapolis
Not your usual neighborhood
art show!!
Carl Lahser

Copyright © 2000 by Carl Lahser
All rights reserved. If you must copy any part of this work please give the author appropriate credit.
Published by: Pretense Press
6102 Royal Breeze
San Antonio, TX 78239
Other books by the author:
Teacher, Leaves Don’t Change Color
Forty Years of Fishing
Weather watching
Chasing the Enterprise
Searching for the Phantom Crown
Cross-section through a Rainbow
Backdoor to the Yukon
Ecoview 1 - Not Your Usual Neighborhood
Ecoview 2 - Texas
Ecoview 3 - D.C.
Ecoview 4 - St Louis to Minneapolis
Ecoview 5 - Southwest
Ecoview 6 - Green Things
Summers End
Hey Momma, When we Goin Again
Bigfooting Around
Under the Southern Cross (Under Clouds)
Alamo Road Texas to Alaska
Mr. Cuul in Yucatan
Thinking of Flying
Do Bears do it in the Woods
Traffic Games
All titles are available from Pretense Press. Booksellers
are encouraged to write for seller’s information.
Printed in USA.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Five for St Louis 1
St Louis Center 1
Metro 1
Stitching It Together 2
Winter Walks Down Sixth St 2
First Impression 3
Union Street North 4
Union Station, Then and Now 6
Heartland 8
Illinois Winter 9
Winter Creeks 9
Winter Fields 9
Missouri Farmland 10
Rusty Red Islands 10
Minneapolis 11
Minneapolis Spring Evening 12
Peregrine Falcon Canyon of Glass 13
Minneapolis Spring 14
Milwaukee WS 15
Wisconsin Lakes 16
Milwaukee Hotel Swimming Pool 17
Ecoview No. 4 is the fourth of a series of geographic portraits. It contains a sensitive, mater-of-fact, and possibly controversial collection of verbal ecological pictures of St. Louis, Minneapolis, Milwaukee and environs. Snow. Trees. Neighborhoods. No politics or political associations. Neither for nor against anything in particular, these are observations, just the way I see things. Feel free to disagree. Even I sometimes change my mind rereading some of these insights.
St Louis, MO 1
Today’s St Louis and yesterday’s are, in some ways , as different as night and day but some things defy change.
FIVE FOR ST LOUIS '95
ST LOUIS CENTER
The painted steel panels
of the St Louis Center
fits the prevailing brick architecture
of down town St Louis
like a fez fits an Irishman.
METRO
Clean cars but the tunnels?
bare rusting iron, graffiti,
contractors chalk marks,
dark caverns behind chain link.
2
STITCHING IT TOGETHER
Restoring old structures -
cutting them apart
and stitching them up again
with someoneelse's heart.
WINTER WALKS DOWN
SIXTH STREET
The sky turned gray
and a cold blast of wind
walked down Sixth Street
shaking leaves
off the Bradford pear trees.
3
FIRST IMPRESSION
Red brick warehouses covered with soot.
Steamy sidewalk grates
smelling of urine and stagnant water.
A wino
offering used rubbers for sale, cheap.
These impressions greeted me
in July of 1956.
Now the urban renewal arch
and skyscrapers grow
from century old roots
plowed under.
4
A Bus Ride
Union Street North in St Louis
Neighborhoods of row houses
sooted brick of different hues
steep slate or copper roofs
Blocks of brick shotgun houses
with windows boarded up
but vegetable garden in the rear.
"No Trespassing" signs abound.
Stores not boarded up
have bars on windows and doors.
A dead catalpa tree
stands behind the burned-out shell
of someone's dreams.
Black catalpa seed pods,
two feet long, hang
like blighted Christmas ornaments.
4
5
Emanuel Baptist Church
has black iron bars
on doors and windows.
A maple standing in a blaze of red.
Yellow leaves on ash and elm trees and
leafless honey locusts shiver in the 'hood.
St Marks Freewill Baptist Church -
"God Loves You"
under gang colors.
One half a duplex
decorated
for Halloween.
The bus route
ends
at the cemetery.
*****
5
6
Union Station, Then and Now
1956 was my breaking away year:
high school graduation,
leaving home for the first time,
active duty in the Air Force Reserve,
passing through Union Station in St Louis,
electronics school at Scott AFB.
My family and my girl friend
saw me on to the Missouri-Pacific
with my Air Force ticket to St Louis
a sleeperette but no meal ticket
for a 24 hour thousand mile ride.
The next day at noon,
a thousand miles from San Antonio,
the train pulled into Union Station.
A hundred other trains
in the biggest building I had ever seen.
A crystal chandelier,
a gold leaf ceiling
and stained glass windows -
it looked more like a cathedral.
7
Trains went away and airplane travel
became the way to go
with one day travel time
instead of three to five days
by train or bus.
Union Station,
the crossroad of America
abandoned.
Twice as many people
passed through Union Station
as now pass through the Lambert Field.
The twenty acre wreck
was bought for a million and a half.
It took another $150 million
to restore Union Station
to near original architectural glory,
but it is now a destination
not a transfer point
with a hotel and a zillion shops
and not a train in sight.
*****
8
Heartland
Illinois and Missouri in the winter is a different world. Its a world of creeks and fences, roads and winding paths.
9
Illinois Winter
1. Winter Creeks
A white winding path peeks
from beneath
overhanging leafless trees,
snow covered ice
a stream
hidden in a shady deep freeze
2. Winter Fields
Black and brown fields,
fence lines and roads
scribbled upon by a white crayon
ice and snow standing
in swales and furrows
waiting for the warm erasing sun.
10
Missouri Farmland
Section lines marked by narrow roads
Tan and rusty red fields
overlaid by green dendritic patterns
of trees along streams
Streams join larger streams and
white sand crescents flash
through the trees
like an African necklace
*****
RUSTY RED ISLANDS
Hundreds of rusty red islands
in a sea of green
Fields and forest
in the autumn sun
*****
11
Minneapolis MN
The home of the biggest mall in the country and Mary Tyler Moore. Nine months of winter and three months of poor sledding.
12
Minneapolis Spring Evening
A cold, wet April evening settles
on the still-bare trees
and brick streets.
I look up and see
a tall, blue-green glass building
almost invisible
against blue-gray clouds
spitting snow.
Where are the flowers and
the stars of spring?
*****
13
PEREGRINE FALCON IN A CANYON OF GLASS
Look down Marquette Street
in Minneapolis
Look up at buildings
of steel and
mirrored blue and green glass
It looks surrealistic,
a cold canyon
of blue sky and ice.
A pair of Peregrine Falcons appear.
One stoops
and takes an unwary pigeon
the scene reflected
in cold green glass.
The tough survive.
*****
14
Minneapolis Spring
A bleak gray dawn breaks
over Minneapolis.
It's 30 degrees warm
and spitting snow.
A cold false dawn sharpens the view
of soot blackened
brick buildings.
I see eleven stacks eye level
with my sixth floor window
discharging water vapor
and hot stack gasses
horizontally
curling downward into
into an inversion
an air stagnation
bubble.
This is spring?
*****
15
Milwaukee WS
Views of the land of lakes and dairy products in the early spring.
16
Wisconsin Lakes
The state of Wisconsin
is measled with lakes
and prairie potholes
of all sizes,
their cold water
reflecting the afternoon sun.
And Lake Michigan,
lying to the east,
disappears into the overcast
separated from the land
by a strip of white sand
glowing in the heavy spring air.
*****
17
A Milwaukee Hotel
Swimming Pool
May is still spring cool.
Willows are in leaf and
buds on other trees
are breaking.
Bluegrass turf is ready to mow.
Tulips and hyacinths are blooming.
Whitewing doves have paired and
are looking for nesting sites.
The hotel pool is empty
but for a pair of mallards
sitting in the shallow end.
Will they share with the other guests
when the water comes?
*****
St. Louis, Minneapolis/St Paul and Milwaukee are nice places to visit but I prefer someplace warmer.