No matter when or where we grow up, the stories, people and places that populate our memories leaves an indelible mark on our life story.

A day at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904, meatless meals and hard times during the Great Depression, or knowing Mark McGwire’s precise home run count that summer of 1998 become galvanized in our own timelines, while other details fade into the background.

In Growing Up St. Louis: Looking Back Through the Decades, you can read the stories that stuck with 105 native St. Louisans over the last century, told by the very people who lived through them. Ranging from joyous to humdrum, and even to grim, these childhood memories offer a glimpse of life in still frame, from the start of the twentieth century to the present day.

A future local sportscaster falls in love with sports as he and his dad watch the 1968 World Series. With new and old photographs to accompany the essays, join veteran author Jim Merkel on a journey through twelve decades of coming of age in St. Louis. Whether they spark nostalgia or empathy, they’ll surely provoke commentary about how deeply our tender years impact us for the rest of our lives.

The author, longtime St. Louisan and journalist Jim Merkel, has written four other books about St. Louis, Hoosiers and Scrubby Dutch, Beer, Brats, and Baseball, The Making of an Icon, and The Colorful Characters of St. Louis. He lives with his wife, Lorraine, in the Bevo Mill neighborhood of South St. Louis.

To buy Growing Up St. Louis, click here.