I have only been a resident of Florida since early December 2009, when my husband and I moved here from the suburbs of St. Louis, MO. From my birth in 1958 until November 30, 2009, the St. Louis MO metropolitan area was my nearly continuous home. I say “nearly” because I attended two years of college in Rolla, MO – a whole two hours’ drive away!
The story of our move here and our circumstances back in Missouri that caused us to buy a business and home in Florida have been told and written numerous times already, so I will skip that part here.
A question that I have been asked by many of my new friends, on many occasions, is “So, do you miss St. Louis?”
My answer in December 2009, when we first arrived to the 70 degree temperatures, sunshine and palm trees, was a resounding “NO”.
I guess I realized early on that while I didn’t miss St. Louis per se, I did miss a few select people living there, and certain other aspects of St. Louis just a tiny bit almost immediately.
First was Food. Bandana’s, Imo’s Pizza, Anything on The Hill, Fortel’s Pizza, and a number of other smaller St. Louis restaurants and chains, became the stuff of fantasies that Stu and I shared. We had a craving for toasted ravioli one evening and Stu found a recipe on the internet to use with frozen ravioli from the store. They turned out pretty close to authentic, actually, and no doubt at least as fattening. “Toasted” is such a nice euphemism for the actual cooking method which is more like deep-fried and sprinkled with parmesan cheese. I don’t know whether the high quality of restaurants in St. Louis is due more to its being a major metropolitan area (as opposed to Highlands County, FL), but in hindsight, St. Louis MO sure seems like a food Mecca.
St. Louis is also known for its quality barbershop-style acappella vocal groups. Both the Barbershop Harmony Society (men) and Sweet Adelines (women) are very well represented in the area with both choruses and quartets. A number of those have won first place in regional competitions numerous times; a few have even won first place internationally. I used to sing with St. Louis Harmony Chorus, one of THREE good-sized women’s choruses in the area (the other two are River Blenders and City Voices) with different sizes, philosophies and music but many common goals. I had the privilege of singing with St. Louis Harmony for five years, culminating in a Region 5 first place in 2007 – a medal that is my prized possession along with a second place medal for each year. Every time I am on Facebook and see a post about my old chorus, or read about a show that’s being put on by the Ambassadors of Harmony (the 160+ member men’s chorus which is a several time International champion), I experience that twinge of “wish I was back there”.
It almost goes without saying that there are a lot of people back there with whom I keep in touch (at least on Facebook) regularly, and I do miss having them physically around sometimes. But their online presence is reassuring when I need it.
I also get to read about things on Facebook like last winter’s snow and ice, the tornado that touched down about 5 miles from our former home in St. Louis county, and of course the changeability of spring and fall weather. One Facebook friend literally bemoans that she is tired of switching from heat to air conditioning. Honestly, in central Florida, I have almost forgotten what heat is! I do know that even as nice as it is today in May here (windows open and nice breeze), it’s going to be part steam bath and part blast furnace, with an almost daily brief electrical storm of frightening intensity, just any second now. We have already had those 90 degree days and we will see our fair share of 100’s. We have taken drastic measures to insulate and seal off our upstairs with its thermostat set firmly at 88, hoping that by living downstairs only during the summer we will not have any of those over $400 a month electric bills that we saw last summer.
So, do I miss St. Louis? No. Well, yes, maybe a little. But I’m not moving back anytime soon. Maybe a visit when the airfares get more reasonable. But not during the winter.
