Alley Op--Touring St Anthony Park's Backroads
August 2012
© Adam Granger
Growing up in Oklahoma, one of the big summertime thrills was when a city employee would drive down the alleys of my home town in an olive drab army surplus Jeep spraying for insects. We'd be playing in somebody's back yard when, like Mash's Radar O'Reilly, someone would hear the Jeep coming and yell, "The DDT guy!" and we'd grab our bikes and take off after him.
He was not hard to find, what with the loud hiss created by the compressor blasting Lord-knows-what chemicals into the atmosphere and the resultant opaque cloud. That cloud was our grail; riding through it while trying not to bump into each other (or the Jeep) was the most fun we had with our bikes all summer. We'd trail along about ten feet behind the DDT guy as he crept down alley after alley until eventually he'd turn around and say, “You kids probably shouldn't be breathing this stuff.” Understatement of the decade: imagine what 50s-vintage bug poisons comprised that respiratory cocktail. It's a wonder I still have lungs and that as far as I can tell they still function.
But I'm not writing today about Jeeps or the respiratory system or insecticides; the topic is alleys. I hope the reader will forgive the cumbersome and potentially lethal intro, but my love of alleys was born in those halcyon days, and the DDT guy was part of that—well—environment.
Ben Johnson, Renaissance man of letters and sometime Shakespeare rival, wrote of King James I, "He despises me, I suppose, because I live in an alley: tell him his soul lives in an alley." That was obviously supposed to be a slam on old James, but when I die, I wouldn't mind having the last half of that quote on my tombstone, for I much prefer alleys to streets.
Mr. Johnson's diss to the contrary, alleys are crawling with pluses: they are less-traveled by cars (which, when present, go slower); they are eccentric in length, surface, width and topography; and they offer a unique view of a neighborhood, back yard by back yard.
And what back yards! Many people save their best gardening chops for the real estate behind their houses. And while those houses themselves often have been remodeled, rebuilt or otherwise updated, a trip down an alley reveals century-old garages, carriage houses and sheds, as well as miscellanea like hay ricks, disc harrows and smithies. All right, I added those last three for color, but you get the picture: alleys are always the oldest parts of a neighborhood.
As a child, riding the Rock Island Line from Chickasha, Oklahoma to St. Paul took us through Kansas City, and I remember on one of those trips having what I assume was my first metaphorical thought: Train tracks are the Alleys—with a capital A—of the cities and towns through which they pass. (All right, it's not Ernest Hemingway, but the next time you take Amtrak to Chicago, check out the view you get of Milwaukee and tell me I'm wrong.)
From the vantage point of one who has Forrest Gumped alleys all over the country, I am happy to report that St. Paul's are world-class. I first experienced them visiting my grandparents over Christmas vacation, when we'd sled and toboggan down a hill in the alley between Sargent and Princeton. I'm sure this was dangerous, and I'm not recommending that anyone do it this winter, but, like tailing the DDT guy, sledding down alleys was countenanced if not actually encouraged back then. It sure was fun, and it was safer than the streets, I guess.
Half a century later, I daily walk St. Anthony Park's alleys, which are jewels on the backside of St. Paul's crown. Whether the long, straight up- and downhill alleys between Cleveland and Raymond and Hythe and Chelmsford or the smaller, curvier, generally-unpaved and sometimes-right-angled shorties that dot the neighborhood or the really cool H-shaped ones (of which there are several), these alleys are the best. The neighborhood even boasts an omicron-shaped alley.
My intent here is not to prescribe tours down certain alleys following certain routes, but rather to promote the traversal of our alleys in general. And lest homeowners get prickly with me for encouraging foot traffic behind their houses, let me point out a benefit not heretofore mentioned and one that must be included in 21st-century America: crime prevention. The presence of non-larcenous alley pedestrians discourages the presence of larcenous alley pedestrians.
In the fifty years since my first simple alley metaphor, I've come up with others: An alley is the little brown lump on your dinner plate that looks inedible but turns out to be a butter-soaked bacon-stuffed shiitake mushroom and only the best thing you've ever eaten. An alley is the mousy guy at the party who turns out to be a tipsy millionaire philanthropist. It's the “Likely” Paradox: The more likely things seem to be one way, the more likely they are to be the other way. Thus, everything requires our scrutiny.
So take your alley hike and see what you think. As for me, when I've walked my final alley, remember me thus:
“Here lies Adam
'Round his grave we rally
Like James the First
His soul lived in an alley”
He was not hard to find, what with the loud hiss created by the compressor blasting Lord-knows-what chemicals into the atmosphere and the resultant opaque cloud. That cloud was our grail; riding through it while trying not to bump into each other (or the Jeep) was the most fun we had with our bikes all summer. We'd trail along about ten feet behind the DDT guy as he crept down alley after alley until eventually he'd turn around and say, “You kids probably shouldn't be breathing this stuff.” Understatement of the decade: imagine what 50s-vintage bug poisons comprised that respiratory cocktail. It's a wonder I still have lungs and that as far as I can tell they still function.
But I'm not writing today about Jeeps or the respiratory system or insecticides; the topic is alleys. I hope the reader will forgive the cumbersome and potentially lethal intro, but my love of alleys was born in those halcyon days, and the DDT guy was part of that—well—environment.
Ben Johnson, Renaissance man of letters and sometime Shakespeare rival, wrote of King James I, "He despises me, I suppose, because I live in an alley: tell him his soul lives in an alley." That was obviously supposed to be a slam on old James, but when I die, I wouldn't mind having the last half of that quote on my tombstone, for I much prefer alleys to streets.
Mr. Johnson's diss to the contrary, alleys are crawling with pluses: they are less-traveled by cars (which, when present, go slower); they are eccentric in length, surface, width and topography; and they offer a unique view of a neighborhood, back yard by back yard.
And what back yards! Many people save their best gardening chops for the real estate behind their houses. And while those houses themselves often have been remodeled, rebuilt or otherwise updated, a trip down an alley reveals century-old garages, carriage houses and sheds, as well as miscellanea like hay ricks, disc harrows and smithies. All right, I added those last three for color, but you get the picture: alleys are always the oldest parts of a neighborhood.
As a child, riding the Rock Island Line from Chickasha, Oklahoma to St. Paul took us through Kansas City, and I remember on one of those trips having what I assume was my first metaphorical thought: Train tracks are the Alleys—with a capital A—of the cities and towns through which they pass. (All right, it's not Ernest Hemingway, but the next time you take Amtrak to Chicago, check out the view you get of Milwaukee and tell me I'm wrong.)
From the vantage point of one who has Forrest Gumped alleys all over the country, I am happy to report that St. Paul's are world-class. I first experienced them visiting my grandparents over Christmas vacation, when we'd sled and toboggan down a hill in the alley between Sargent and Princeton. I'm sure this was dangerous, and I'm not recommending that anyone do it this winter, but, like tailing the DDT guy, sledding down alleys was countenanced if not actually encouraged back then. It sure was fun, and it was safer than the streets, I guess.
Half a century later, I daily walk St. Anthony Park's alleys, which are jewels on the backside of St. Paul's crown. Whether the long, straight up- and downhill alleys between Cleveland and Raymond and Hythe and Chelmsford or the smaller, curvier, generally-unpaved and sometimes-right-angled shorties that dot the neighborhood or the really cool H-shaped ones (of which there are several), these alleys are the best. The neighborhood even boasts an omicron-shaped alley.
My intent here is not to prescribe tours down certain alleys following certain routes, but rather to promote the traversal of our alleys in general. And lest homeowners get prickly with me for encouraging foot traffic behind their houses, let me point out a benefit not heretofore mentioned and one that must be included in 21st-century America: crime prevention. The presence of non-larcenous alley pedestrians discourages the presence of larcenous alley pedestrians.
In the fifty years since my first simple alley metaphor, I've come up with others: An alley is the little brown lump on your dinner plate that looks inedible but turns out to be a butter-soaked bacon-stuffed shiitake mushroom and only the best thing you've ever eaten. An alley is the mousy guy at the party who turns out to be a tipsy millionaire philanthropist. It's the “Likely” Paradox: The more likely things seem to be one way, the more likely they are to be the other way. Thus, everything requires our scrutiny.
So take your alley hike and see what you think. As for me, when I've walked my final alley, remember me thus:
“Here lies Adam
'Round his grave we rally
Like James the First
His soul lived in an alley”
