It started out as a fairly routine weekend trip to Columbia, Mo., to attend a Saturday Halloween party hosted by granddaughters Alexandra and Leah-Bo and their next-door neighbor (I think her name is Megan). The moms and others chipped in and really had the two yards decorated for the occasion, including a descension into the basement for a little fortune telling.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
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Once the Cardinals got through Thursday night's insane game and were headed to a Friday night Game 7 World Series game in St. Louis, and since St. Louis is right on the way to Columbia, My Dear Sweet Sainted Wife and I decided to get out of Blytheville as early as possible Friday and meet up with eldest sons Jeffrey and Kit in St. Louis and check into the availability of tickets.
We got out of town around 2 p.m., and when we stopped just north of Cape for a bathroom break, who did we run into but Dick Caldwell, who is sort of a CFO for Rust Communications, the outfit the Courier News and more or less all the other newspapers in northeast Arkansas and southeast Missouri are affiliated with in one way or the other. Dick was also on his way to Columbia to visit his new grandson for the weekend, but he didn't have any Cardinal aspirations (he's from Gary, Ind., or someplace Yankee like that).
Anyway, after a chat with Dick, we made it to St. Louis around 5 p.m. and met up with Jeff and Kit outside O'Mally's bar on the south end of the stadium, more or less underneath the I-44 overpass.
Even two hours before game time, there was a 50-person thick crowd on the sidewalk and road around O'Mally's (I think that's the name of the place) so we started asking about tickets.
This quickly proved to be no option, as standing-room-only tickets were going for $400, and anyplace with a seat around $2,000, so My Dear Sweet Sainted Wife and I wandered over to the Westin Hotel, just across from Stan Musial's statue to see about someplace to watch the game.
We got luck and found a couple of seats in the Westin restaurant right between two big-screen TV's and proceeded to eat appetizers for an hour or so 'til game time.
By the time the game started, the place was packed with Cardinal fans with no ticket to the game; there were probably 2,500 people crowded into the restaurant by game time.
And every other downtown restaurant and bar was just as packed.
When the game was over, everybody rushed out and crashed the stadium right across the street and there must have been 40,000 people going into the stadium as 40,000 others were trying to get out.
It was a madhouse, but not being much of one to fight through crowds, I took up residence standing on a wall right next to Stan Musial and watched the whole scene, which included my Dear Sweet Sainted Wife making it all the way through the throng down to the field where she claims to have exchanged high fives with Chris Carpenter's 6-year-old son.
An odd highlight, but a highlight nonetheless.
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After a few hours of cavorting with ecstatic Cardinal fans, we met back up with Jeff and Kit down by O'Mally's and prepared to head to Columbia. Naturally, Jeffrey was going the other way, down to Memphis to some kind of Trombone Shorty concert or something, but the rest of us made it to Columbia about 3 a.m.
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Back to the Halloween party.
There was plenty to eat and about 40 kids and their parents to eat it, including a batch of cookies my cousin down at Palace Ayers made for us, and games and dunking for apples and hay rides on my sister Karen's flatbed trailer full of hay for her horses (Karen lives around the corner in Fulton and had loaned Kit the trailer to move some furniture, then decided to come to the party her own self).
Anyway, the hay rides were a big hit about dark then the party started winding down.
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I got up early Sunday for an 8 a.m. tee off with Kit and a dozen of his golf buddies out at Kit's golf course, Tanglewood, outside Fulton. It was a bit chilly, but Kit says these guys tee off at 8 a.m. in January, so there you have it. The gambling was light (Kit and I each won 50 cents) but the golf was fun and gave the women-folk time to get up and running for the day.
We spent the afternoon swimming with the granddaughters, then headed out the next day back through Van Buren to wrap up a few things at the cabin before getting home Tuesday afternoon.
It was indeed a long and busy weekend.
dtennyson@blythevillecourier.com