During the sweltering days of summer heat lay heavy on slow moving man and beast alike. The slightest stir of a wandering breeze, no matter how welcome, could send a dense cloud of choking dust aloft. It would clog the nasal passages and line the throat with grit. And before it settled it had the intimate pleasure of covering the prettiest bonnets of rich matrons or the grease-blackened buckskins of a stumbling trapper, enjoying a respite from the wilds as he moved from tavern to tavern seeking to quench his thirst.
But the dry summer heat would pass periodically when a sky-ripping, percale and parfleche-drenching storm would wash St. Louis momentarily clean. And in the place of the dusty heat would be a climate not unlike attempting to breathe inside a wet leather bag.
In spite of adverse weather conditions St. Louis was a thriving little burg, full of confidence and self-importance. And why shouldn’t the lady have been? She was the wide open door to the entire western portion of what would surely, according to many, become the United States of America. There were even those who had an idea that St. Louis, in time, would become the capitol city of the whole dad-burn country. Wasn’t she just about dead center in the middle of the whold she-bang, east to west and north to south?
St. Louis was still primitive enough in the early 1820s compared to some eastern cities. But who wanted to be hemmed in back ‘thar’ in that worn out country. No-sir-re-bob, not when a feller could park his carcass on the very doorstep of the whole wide west. And at that, St. Louis was becoming a bit too crowded for many who preferred to be neighborly, but from a distance.
For many of the high-uppity folks in the fur trade St. Louis was just right. These citizens, with gold rolling around in their pockets, built what was considered palatial residences. Some even had other homes back in the east where they waited out the winter storms and the breaking up of the ice on the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. For most of the regular folks, their homes were pretty small and mean. But for all, rich or poor, St. Louis was their city.
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