I heard many stories, both happy and sad, when I interviewed more than 100 people for my book Growing Up St. Louis: Looking Back Through the Decades. The more someone told them, the more I knew they were prepared for a solid and happy childhood.
Annemarie Nauert is one of them. I met her at the Buder Branch of the St. Louis Public Library in October 2017, while I was interviewing subjects for possible inclusion in my book.
Annemarie is the girl to the right with all the red hair. Born in 1988, she told a story about happy times exploring a creek in the Crestwood Park with neighbor kids.
The majority of my friends that I palled around with lived in my neighborhood in Crestwood. We would cut through our neighbors’ yards, go up to their house and see if they were home almost every day after school.
Every day after school, we would pretty much spend the daylight hours together, and we had elaborate imaginary games that we had devised that kept us pretty busy. In the summer,
I know we spent the majority of the day exploring the creek in the Crestwood Park, climbing trees, playing games. My parents just encouraged getting outside and playing with our friends
You can read the rest of her story, along with the ones of more than a hundred others, in Growing Up St. Louis. To order, click here.
Jim Merkel the Writer 