Last night via craigslist, Todd told this woman he'd come pick up a pair of free, vintage bowling pin lamps. (For the church office, not the house. Still, it feels like something out of
A Christmas Story.)
The lady lives in an area called Spanish Lake, which is probably 20 minutes from us. To get to Spanish Lake, you have to drive through parts of North Saint Louis, including Bellefontaine Neighbors-- both of which sound kind of ritzy... because both places were. A long time ago. Now it's mostly sad empty shops and run down mansions and cemeteries-- until you cross the county line and then it's pretty livable.
Anyway, so we're driving through North St. Louis and we pass a sprawling, iron-gated cemetery in the hills that is probably two miles long. I mean it goes forEVer and the grave markers at the tops of these hills are like shrines. HUGE. I've never seen such a thing. On the same road, we passed a plantation house that is now a museum, all white with huge columns and a wraparound porch.
Driving through places that that makes my imagination go crazy. What would it have been like to live here just 150 years ago? I wondered this aloud to Todd as we drove past the plantation house. "Can you imagine what it would've been like if we'd been born 150 years ago? Into the same families, just a different time?" Suddenly I was trying to work his character into a party in
Gone With The Wind. (He cracked up when I told him what I really wondered is what HE would've been doing, because
I'd most likely have been working in somebody's kitchen.) As we drove, I proceeded to make up a story about him being some charming farmer's son who made friends with the right people, did okay for himself, ended up in Texas trying to buy some property for farmland, having dinner at this property owner's house and falling in love at first sight with one of their servant girls and then spending all his money instead trying to buy her away from this man so she would be free and he could take her to the North to be his wife and start a church. :)
Anyway, so we finally made it to Spanish Lake (which is nowhere near as lovely as the name infers), picked up the lamps disassembled them and put them in the trunk, and headed home. On the way back, we detoured to take a look at a house Todd had found online. As we drove into the neighborhood, the first thing Todd pointed out was a house across the street from the one we were looking at. It has imposing, 12-foot doors out front, that are set with some kind of dark metal and glass.
We parked in front of the house we'd come to see, got out and were poking around the front yard when a man in his sixties spoke up to us from across the street. He asked if we were interested in the house and told us we were the first people who had shown any interest in years. He said if we had questions to let him know because he lived across the street.
In the house with the doors!
Todd had driven by the house before and had been admiring the doors for days now. So he mentioned to the man how much he liked them and the man said, "Well they're handcrafted stained glass, I made them myself. That's how I make my living. But you can't even see them properly right now." Todd asked what he meant. The man asked if we had a second and invited us inside.
Stained glass of course, is only visible from the darkest side. So outside in daylight, you see nothing but chunks of darkness, set between wooden and metal slats. But inside? It looks like this.
Un. Believable. Mr. Frei told us that his family has been in the business of stained glass since 1898 and has set windows in churches, cathedrals and basilicas all over the country, including half the churches in St. Louis. He's the 4th generation to own the business. His front doors were handmade over a period of 9 months and each door weighs about 400 pounds. It took 8 men to set them on hinges. (To read the remarkable history of the Frei family, check out the
website. Stephen Frei is who we met today.)
We ended up spending over an hour with Mr. & Mrs. Frei today, talking about gentrification in the city, about how the answer does not lie in running out to the county, about sticking to a neighborhood for better or worse, about real estate and rehabbing a home, about their family and their business, even about raising kids in the city (they bought their house as a shell for almost nothing back in 1977, before the neighborhood even had roads or sidewalks. They rehabbed it slowly while raising 5 children. All their kids are grown now and they are grandparents!) It was unreal, completely random and incredibly cool. The Frei's were so encouraging, yet totally realistic about the heartaches and irritations of home ownership and rehabbing a house while raising a large family. Their home is beautiful, if still unfinished in places. It has such a story, as do they, and hearing their about their experiences was like uncovering buried treasure. We were riveted.
Now. Those of you who are worried, hear this-- the Gentemans are not about to do something brainless and buy an old, jacked up house because they heard some romantic stories from a 60 year old couple across the street. But-- at this rate, that house isn't going anywhere quickly. Not for the price the owner is trying to get for it. So we'll probably set up a time to go walk through it, have the damages assessed by a friend of ours who's a pro and maybe-- just maybe-- consider the possibility when the time comes.
For now, we've made some new friends. And we had a wonderful adventure this morning on the two year anniversary of the day we met. :)
