Backyard

Since Stefan's and Evangelia's original intentions were to return to their homeland of Smyrna to live, their first home in St. Louis was a rented one in the Central West End, in an upscale neighborhood at that time. The address was 4724a Olive Street. Olympia, their first child was born there.

With the obliteration of their hopes of returning to their homeland, and realizing the United States was to be their permanent home now; they decided to buy a home in the adjacent area, at 761 Aubert Avenue. The time was about the year 1923. In the following years, their other children, Jennie, Platon and John were born in that house.

I have many tender feelings for that dwelling, for it has many memories for me of a carefree, happy childhood. My parents owned that house until 1944, when they bought the house at 5021 North Kingshighway Boulevard.

When I was a youngster I used to wonder about the house I was born in. It was a red brick building. One of the things that I noticed about the house was that the bricks were not the same color of red as some of the other houses on the street; another matter, it was built a few years before the other houses, probably at the turn of the nineteenth century.

The house was a two family flat, well built, solidly constructed as the other homes on the block. It was on a par with any of them. In the front of the house there was a porch stretching across, not only accommodating the entrance to the first floor, but also the entrance to the second floor as well. I have come to learn to recognize there are styles in homes just as there are styles in fashions and in automobiles. The style of the house was late Victorian, as well as I can determine. There was no gingerbread molding on the porch or on any part of the house, but there were two gables above the second story giving a deceptive appearance of a third floor, or possibly an attic. Actually it was merely to alter the appearance of the front of the house and make it look larger than what it really was.

Most of the homes on Aubert had a front lawn terrace; that is, from the street level sidewalk a person had to walk up ten or twelve steps to the yard above. From there, to walk a few steps to the front porch stairs and up five or six steps to the porch. On the lawn were three mulberry trees, which when they blossomed proclaimed spring had arrived. As children, it was our delight to sample the mulberries until we saw the stains the fruit would leave on our hands and clothes. In the back of the house were two large, screened-in porches, again one for each floor. On the hot humid nights that St. Louis is well-known for, the back porch accommodated the whole family for sleeping. Although the house was built on a city lot, thirty-five feet wide, there was a depth of two hundred feet all the way back to the alley.

As I look back upon it now, it was a comfortable house. The rooms were large and spacious. By today's standards it would be classified too big, too much wasted space, possibly a little awkward; but by the standards of family living, it was very well suited for raising an average sized family. There was room in it to breathe, to think, to romp, to play, to be an individual without getting in anyone else's way. In that house there was space in it, if the mood suited one, to be a part of the family circle, and then again the feeling of wanting to be alone, to curl up in one's own ivory tower, one could find a corner without being disturbed, and be alone.

One of the pronounced pleasures of the house on Aubert Avenue that recalled many fond memories for me, was the backyard. Not the typical small city lot; it was deep and level, stretching about a hundred feet from the back of the house to the alley. There was no garage to interfere with the expanse of the backyard.

Both sides of the backyard were fenced in. On the left side facing the yard from the back porch, was a metal cyclone fence; on the right side there was a wooden fence, unpainted, with several loose, rotting boards. On occasion those boards served as a useful exit and entrance to the house next door, particularly if one of us wanted to talk to or play with any of the children who lived there, Alex or Pete John, or Tula or George Alexandres. We had easy passage, both ways, our house to theirs, or their house to ours.There was a sidewalk along the cyclone fence on the other side of the yard, going all the way down to the three steps leading to the alley.

Every year my father tended with great care the flower garden which ran alongside the length of the sidewalk. It was long and narrow in shape, hugging the outline of the sidewalk, from the beginning of the backyard to the steps leading to the alley. He had a fondness for roses and had planted about twelve rose bushes. Many times my brothers had to dig small gullies around the individual rose bushes so the water could get to each plant. My father never watered his rose bushes by sprinkling over the top of the bush, he laid the hose on the ground and let the water run like a rivulet by the side of the bush's roots.

At the far end of the flower garden beautiful purple iris bloomed. For me it was an unexplained pleasure every spring to see the iris bloom; to enjoy the shape of their petals, which reminded me of exotic orchids. To this day, I can recall the beauty of their vivid color as they blossomed in early spring.

Midway in the flower garden was a cherry tree, which periodically was attacked by Platon or Johnny. The tree was a challenge to be conquered by them. Often several of the young branches were broken as one of them climbed the tree, the branches were not strong enough to withstand the onslaught of an aggressive boy. The cherry tree blossomed in late April around the twenty-seventh of the month, on my birthday. I secretly reveled that the blossoming of the tree was a private gift to me.

From the center of the back yard to the alley, my father planted a vegetable garden, leaving a section available for our upstairs tenants. One of my parents' favorite vegetables which did very well in the garden and which they used daily in salads was watercress (roka). Relatives in Greece sent them the seeds. As children we did not appreciate the uniqueness of watercress, and really considered it an odd vegetable, not knowing at the time how expensive and specialized a salad green it was, not frequently found at the grocery store among the standard vegetables displayed. The garden also had tomatoes, corn, zucchini squash.

The Laskaris family that rented the upstairs unit of our house also planted their own garden. My brothers Platon and Johnny remember well that my mother had them dig the renter's portion of the garden, even though the family had an older son Nick, who was in his late teens, strong and very capable of that chore. My mother always tried to accommodate our renters.

When Platon was in the fourth grade at Washington Elementary school, in those years, Arbor Day was celebrated on April 6. In order to teach children about the preservation of the environment, and care of trees in particular, it was customary for the school to give a tree sapling to a child to plant. When I became a teacher, many years later, that practice was still observed. Platon was given a Chinese elm sapling at school; he brought it home, and with eagerness and vigor, planted it. Platon took great care of it. In no time at all, the sapling had taken root, and in the following years it grew sturdy and spread branches. Even after we had moved away from the old neighborhood, driving down Kingshighway Boulevard, the street parallel and west of Aubert Avenue, we could see the backyard, and the huge branches of his tree. To this day we still refer to it as "Platon's tree"; it is still a strong and strapping tree, visible from Kingshighway Boulevard! I often wondered about the name of the street, Aubert. I wondered where the name came from. I have since learned that the street was named for Jean Louis Aubert, a French writer, who lived from 1731 to 1814. He was a professor of literature in the Royal College and editor of the Gazette de France. The name Aubert is on the original plat of Aubert Place subdivision in 1857. An interesting fact, since St. Louis was originally settled by the French in 1764.

Another facet of the backyard I recall with pleasure was the grape arbor my father built, next to the back porch. The height of the arbor reached to about eight feet above the ground, level with the entrance to the back porch. I enjoyed standing on the porch landing and looking over the top of the grape arbor, it gave me a feeling of being at the top of the world, and surveying the magnificence of the cosmos. Another feeling the grape arbor conveyed was one of protection from the outside world, no intrusive thoughts. It was with a refreshing feeling to stand in the coolness of it's shade, look above, and see among the grape leaves the clusters of dark blue grapes hanging down, beckoning to us. It was a special place to go to with a book, to sit and read, or just to be alone in solitary presence and enjoy the ambience. Needless to say, it was a favorite place for my siblings also.

My father placed coffee grounds around the roots of the grape plant, and he claimed the acid in the grounds was a very good fertilizer. In that period of time every home had an ashpit. The ashpit was also at the back end of the yard next to the alley where the ashes from the coal furnace and other trash that accumulated during the year were deposited. Once a year the ashpit was emptied, always in the summer. Usually a junkman, white or black, with a horse and wagon, or with an old worn-out truck would come by and give my mother a price to empty the ashpit. The price was negotiable, but I don't recall that my mother ever forcefully negotiated a lower price. I think she felt sorry for the men who had to do that filthy and menial work. The work required two men, and with shovels they would get in the ashpit, on top of the trash and ashes, and start digging their way to the bottom, usually encountering a rat or two. The job usually required a whole day to be completed.

The ashpit had to be empty for the fall, when the coal furnaces, the upstairs and downstairs ones, were in use again. Sometimes my mother, or my father, would complain that the men had not shoveled out the ashpit as well as they could, by not going down to the bottom of the pit.

With all those things in the backyard, there was still a sizable empty space in the middle of the yard for us to string laundry lines from the fences; one side of the yard to the other, and still have room for a play area. We had a big, straw laundry basket with handles at each end. It usually took two people to carry it out, each holding on to a handle. I remember helping my mother with that chore, lugging the basket full of wet clothes; and later that responsibility fell on my sister and me to do the laundry on Saturday mornings.

The sidewalk by the porch was wide enough for us to jump rope, try our hand at double dutch, or with chalk draw a hopscotch diagram on the sidewalk to play. On extremely hot days we would put on our bathing suits, go out into the yard squealing and laughing as the first spray of water from the hose hit our bodies, actions that alerted inquisitive neighbors to look down from their back porches at our antics, as we splashed each other with the water hose. Sometimes we were moved by the moment, we held the water hose and did a little quick dance, refreshing ourselves by sprinkling each other with the water.

The back porch stood on three feet high posts. The space underneath it was the ideal place to play when we were little. It was shaded, away from the sun, away from the elements; it was finished, paved with cement, and the concrete extended to even under the area of the steps that went up to the porch. Three steps on the side next to the wall led down to the basement. I remember playing there on rainy days with my sister, with our dolls and our doll buggy. I felt so secure and privileged to be able to play outdoors, protected from the rain!

The porch was screened in, and stretched from one end of the house to almost the other end. There were canvas awnings that could be rolled up and down, for privacy from the neighbors, and protection from the rain. The porch was large enough to accommodate the whole family for sleeping outside in the summer; my mother would set up a double bed and also move the day bed from her bedroom that my brothers slept on, to the porch. There was still enough room for a table for us to have our meals.

My brothers recall everyone in the family slept on the porch, except my father. No matter how hot the nights were, he slept in his bedroom. They also recall he slept wearing his long underwear, at the time referred to as BVD's, the ones he wore all year long. As the years pass, my siblings and I still recall happy memories of 761 Aubert Avenue; memories we cherish of an unforgettable childhood.

© 2003 by Jennie Constantinides Vlanton

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