70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor • Downtown workers gathered around a loudspeaker at Eighth and Olive streets, outside the federal Custom House (now the Old Post Office), to hear a live broadcast of President Franklin Roosevelt’s war speech to a joint session of Congress. The day before, Japan bombed a U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Congress quickly ratified the declaration of war, as seen on the front page of the Post-Dispatch on Dec. 8. (The government didn’t confirm the destruction of the USS Arizona for another week.) You can see me at the bottom of the page — there was no “bird line” phrase that day. (Post-Dispatch archives)
A former Consolidated Service Car Co. driver picks up customers at Ninth and Cole streets downtown on Dec. 7, 1965, a few days into the Committee of Racial Equality boycott of Bi-State Transit System to save what was left of service cars. In 1965, they charged 20 cents per rider. That was 10 cents cheaper that buses, but buses allowed free transfers. The defiant owner-operators erased Consolidated’s name from their cars. (Lester Linck/Post-Dispatch archives)
Service cars operated like small buses
ST. LOUIS • A hybrid in between taxicabs and buses, service cars were large automobiles that cruised regular routes for hire, offering the relative comfort of a car seat on a schedule.
Cabbies and streetcar motormen loathed service cars because they siphoned customers and clogged downtown corners. Bus company executives called them “parasites.”
Before World War II, almost 500 service cars plied the city and suburbs, charging five-cent fares. Many people called them “jitneys” — old slang for a nickel. Separate cars and routes served blacks and whites. Police officers hounded service-car drivers for failing to possess commercial licenses or veering from assigned routes.
"I’m no angel, but I intend to lead an honest life after I do my seven. I’m man enough to take my medicine."
Ray “the Fox” Renard, one-time wheelman for the notorious gang called Egan’s Rats, testifying about a big Rat caper — the robbery of $2.4 million in cash and bonds from a mail truck at Fourth and Locust streets on April 2, 1923.
Ray “the Fox” Renard, former gangster with Egan’s Rats, enjoys a Prohibition-era swig in February 1925, shortly after testifying against his former cronies in federal court. Renard, 26, had grown up in an orphanage and was a young pickpocket when he joined the gang. Egan’s Rats was formed in Kerry Patch, the Irish neighborhood northwest of downtown, and muscled into bootlegging during Prohibition, but its specialty was big-time robbery. Renard was sent to federal prison for a freight-car robbery and, upon hearing that his fellow gangsters might try to kill him to keep him quiet, went to the prosecutors. He said he knew all about two big heists, the $2.4 million robbery of bonds and cash from a mail truck at Fourth and Locust streets on April 2, 1923, and of a $54,000 payroll robbery at the Staunton, Ill., train station the following May 26. When the picture was taken, he was soon to be returned to federal prison. (St. Louis Star)
Gangster turns stool pigeon in '24 trial
ST. LOUIS • The courtroom’s cast-iron shutters were slammed shut. Only people with passes were admitted. A phalanx of federal agents surrounded their star witness.
Ray “the Fox” Renard, one-time wheelman for the notorious gang called Egan’s Rats, was back in town.
Renard, 26, became a Rat as a teenage pickpocket. The gang formed in Kerry Patch, the hardscrabble Irish neighborhood northwest of downtown. When Prohibition began, Egan’s Rats muscled into bootlegging. But their specialty was big-time stickups.
Execution part of Missouri's brutish civil war
ST. LOUIS • Six prisoners of war were tied to wooden posts and blindfolded with cotton bandages. A squad of 36 riflemen waited at 10 paces. One of the condemned asked to speak.
“I am now to be shot for what other men have done,” said Charles W. Minniken, 22, a Confederate soldier from Arkansas. “Oh Lord, be with me.”
The volley ripped across a field northeast of present-day Jefferson and Shenandoah avenues at 3 p.m. Oct. 29, 1864. It was a vengeance execution, ordered by the Union command in St. Louis for the murders of Union Maj. James Wilson and six soldiers who had been captured by Confederates. Their bodies were found in Franklin County.
Teammates welcome Cardinals third baseman Ken Boyer as he reaches home on a sixth-inning grand slam homer on Oct. 11, 1964, in Game 4 of the World Series against the Yankees. Greeting him are Cari Warwick, Dick Groat and Curt Flood, all of whom were on base when Boyer hit the homerun. At left is Bill White, the next batter. Boyer’s blast put the Cardinals in front, 4-3 at the time. The Yankees were not able to recover; the Cardinals won the game 4-3, and won the Series. Boyer is among 10 candidates for baseball’s Hall of Fame. (Photo by the Associated Press)
Beer wins applause in 1932 campaign
ST. LOUIS • The serious speechifying was about hard times. The cheers were for beer.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Democratic candidate for president, stopped in St. Louis on Oct. 21, 1932, barely two weeks before Election Day. More than 12,000 Democrats jammed the St. Louis Coliseum, a convention hall at Washington and Jefferson avenues. On the sidewalk outside, an additional 5,000 gathered around scratchy loudspeakers.
Roosevelt delivered a ponderous 50-minute prepared speech on farm policy, railroad debt and President Herbert Hoover’s “dangerous” budget deficits. Democrats, sensing the landslide to come, were easy to please.
They gave their most joyous applause for two lines that weren’t in the typewritten text.
Expressway gave a taste of the future
ST. LOUIS • In the late 1940s, the city’s only freeway was the Oakland Express Highway along Forest Park, from Skinker Boulevard to Vandeventer Avenue. Car ownership was growing quickly, and motorists clamored for relief from downtown gridlock.
Progress in concrete began with the short-lived Third Street Highway, called the Interregional, from Washington Avenue at the Eads Bridge south to Gravois Avenue and 12th (Tucker) Boulevard. Only 2.3 miles long, it took seven years to build. A turf-minded state senator got the Legislature to delay it. Condemnation lawsuits in crowded neighborhoods consumed more time. Some of the buildings in the way dated to the 1840s.
