Photograph by Bob Reuter
We’ll start with a quick story of Bob Reuter, ice skater.
For dozens of college-aged St. Louisans over the past decade, their first meeting with Bob Reuter came through my Intro to Media Writing coursework at Webster U. With the ability to offer a $50 stipend to guest speakers, I’d invite Bob to come in twice a term to sit with the classes for an hour, giving them a chance to speak to him about at least three topics: his musical career as a songwriter and bandleader, his black-and-white photography and his radio show on KDHX. From this information they’d write short bios, 500-word pieces on a life worthy of a lot more material that that. But in brevity lies the soul of wit, as well as an “A” in Intro to Media Writing, so they’d condense the pieces into bite-sized, yet coherent biographies.
Once, a student mistook his statement of coming up as a “North Sider,” hearing instead the words “ice skater.” As in: “Bob Reuter grew up as an ice skater.” The comment had me on the floor laughing, once I unknotted how the mistake was made. Dropping off photocopies of the bios in his KDHX DJ mailbox, I left the papers without comment, preferring to let him find the mistake on his own. He did. And, for the remainder of his side-career as a WU guest speaker, the “ice skater story” was a key part of every session.
To set up Bob’s visit, we’d view a short film produced by Bill Streeter, a Lo-Fi St. Louis episode called “Bob Reuter, Southside Photographer.” After a scheduled break, Bob would arrive and together we’d take in an 11-minute cut of the long-in-progress Bob Reuter documentary by Josh Rolens, Broken and Wonderful, since removed from YouTube. The funny thing about the experience was that Bob would face outward, sitting directly in front of them at the front desk, intently watching the students watch the video. It was an interesting twist, as he said that he’d seen the piece enough; his curiosity was in how his stories played to an audience. This happened every time we met. Other moments came and went. Like the time he undid the last couple buttons on his shirt to show the scar he won by surviving heart surgery. Or when he’d pass around racy pics of beautiful, young, South Side ladies, reclining topless in a bubble bath, the images mixed into the thick stacks of pics he’d habitually carry around town in worn-out, Ilford Film boxes.
There was never a dull moment with those lectures and Q/A sessions, especially when he plugged in and played his own music, usually including a signature track called “The Dirty South”; no conceits were made for the college setting, as he’d play it with the same passion and volume of a club date.
A couple semesters back, student fees for my class were dropped; with this, my ability to pay stipends ended. I never asked him to come back. ‘Cause ice skaters, like everybody, gotta get paid.
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When students worked on their pieces, the trick was to boil down a life into a single page of text. Bob’s life had multiple chapters, each of them containing their own sub-stories, full of villains, comedy, drama.
Meeting him at the same age as my students, I neglected to learn that backstory and my ignorance got us off on the wrong foot. Though writing a local music-themed column for The Riverfront Times, my sense of the relevant past extended as far back as the first time I’d walked into a club; as a history major, this was especially unforgivable, eventually to myself, but especially to the older heads, like Reuter, who’d already done time in a few important St. Louis bands by then.
At times, we’d circle each other at a club like Cicero’s, taking in acts like Atomic Fossils, Chicken Truck or Electric Sheep, bands that he played alongside. Surely, at these shows, we’d be smiling at the same, pretty bartenders, who simply glowed in the light of the Basement Bar’s hundred candles. We shopped at the same record stores, too, and would come across one another in the street, along South Grand, early Washington Avenue or Delmar. Looking back, I’d have benefited from a scene vet to pull me aside and drop some knowledge, maybe applied with gentleness. But Bob could be a tart sort and wasn’t a teacher (at least to me, at least not then). And my lack of appreciation for his current and past projects was something we’d only allude to later, years later, though it was usually left understood and unspoken.
While we weren’t best friends, there was a time when we might’ve been best collaborators. It took years for the ice between us to melt, but we finally found a project to bring us together, a book called Portraits Along the River, which profiled 50 St. Louis City working people. During several months of afternoon drives, we bonded through visits to parking lot attendants, seamstresses, lawyers, tattoo artists and realtors. At the time of our work, the bulk of 2003, I’d come off a stint at STLtoday, where days of writing two and three stories weren’t uncommon. For Bob, photography came from bursts of inspiration, a process that often took place after dark. Two people, two styles of working. In time, we’d settle on a rhythm and our interview-then-photograph “portrait” sessions found a familiar pattern.
On our drives, wide-ranging discussions were inevitable. Our surface-level familiarities were there, obviously, like living on Connecticut Street. We both drove hand-me-down cars that seemed a step removed from the junkyard; simultaneously we brightened city streets with matching, dented Toyota Corollas. We both worked the door at Frederick’s Music Lounge. We bonded during KDHX pledge drives, as I served as the wind-him-up, bring-him-down second banana to his ranting, raving, membership drive persona. Occasionally, we’d share our fandom of someone’s look, adding the third, essential conversation crutch that we could always rely on: a holy trinity of rock’n’roll, photography and girls, girls, girls.
In time, we’d find out some other things that matched. Both of us grew up largely without father figures and had bouts of religious rebellion in our childhoods. We were each city kids, with stints in the county, though his days were spent north and mine south. In the ultimate act of mimicry, I was hospitalized with blood clots, though Bob’s case was the more-intense and life-changing. At 17 years my senior, he beat me to that episode. And to rock’n’roll and photography and girls and drugs and all the rest. He lead, I Iearned.
We’d chip away at other things over the years. I’d interview or feature him for this project, or that. He’d contribute gratis pics to various websites of mine. I’d eventually ferry him through an entire semester of class work at Forest Park Community College, where he’d labor in the darkroom, a defining place that introduced him to countless FPCC students and faculty. Every week, I’d arrive at his apartment on Connecticut and Bent; never was he ready to go at 11:30, usually throwing on a shirt or hat as we hustled out of the door, not so many hours after laying down his head. On a lot of days there was a run to the Taco Bell on Hampton; I felt guilty stopping for fast food, considering his occasional bouts with health, but, hey, this was Bob Reuter. If the man wants a gordita, order the man a gordita.
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As an aside: the all-knowing casting director defined Bob Reuter as a man of the streets, a hardscrabble, all-growed-up urchin in fedora, denim and leather coat. And that was, at heart, a fair casting, his comfort level never higher than when cruising into interesting situations in gritty, urban settings. This rep once earned him a call from The Riverfront Times, which assigned him to shoot a piece on the seedy, hourly motels of the North Side, many of which are framed by walled courtyards, giving them an intimidating, almost prison-like vibe.
Bob didn’t wanna go out on these sessions alone. He called a friend.
We drove into some of the motels with speed. This ensured us the look of criminals, not that of a photojournalist and his driver. We’d zoom in, I’d brake, hard, accelerate, harder, Bob snapping photographs of people and walls and the parking lot’s surface and his own hand. He clicked like a madman and, flipped out by his rising energy level, I’d drive even stupider. We scared people that routinely scare other people, that much I know, my Corolla peeling out, Bob’s camera banging around, both of us nervous-laughing our way through an assignment that I wasn’t even paid to be on, but that I enjoyed immensely.
It was probably the most fun we ever had together.
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The social media tributes to Bob Reuter, rushing in over the past two days, have been fascinating to read and take in. They’ve been touching, profound, heartfelt and run the gamut, from contemporary tribute to historical reflection. He died this past Saturday afternoon, the victim of a surreal accident. Within hours, his impact on the community came into focus. Most of the words have been rightly focused on all the things worth celebrating: his talents in drawing, photography, songwriting, left-of-center broadcasting, non-fiction writing. Some allude to the fact that he was also cantankerous.
There was a time when Bob had a fundraiser going; his latest car had been deep-sixed and there was an effort going around to raise some money. Not content to just contribute, I felt comfortable going to him with a fully-formed idea. It went like this: if Bob, once and only once, did a color photography show, the interest would be so intense that he’d easily make a few thousand dollars. I’d loan him the camera, would do the publicity, I’d locate printers, would find a gallery, etc. Whether it was the message (too fleshed-out?) or the messenger (too-headstrong?), the idea didn’t just go flat, it set Bob off.
We rowed inside of Mangia and out. We left there mad. And over the next weeks that proved really awkward. Back when David Burmeister ran Mangia, Bob and I were both members of the Mangia Italiano Buffet For Creatives Program, eating free daily meals just a few seats from one another. When either of us would leave, the other’d engage in some shit-talk. Eventually, bartender and all-around-nice-guy Jason Hutto tired of it and brokered a peace, tricking us into a meeting at Mangia’s secluded back table. Unless I’m imagining this, Bob said he loved me, or something close to it. I said something like the same, but we both kinda pulled off the pitch at the last second, verbally hitting hard fouls instead of straight-and-true linedrives.
In the next few years, “Bob’s Scratchy Records” would follow my own “Silver Tray” on KDHX. Every Friday, we’d transition, sometimes with Bob pouring into at the station during the movie review between our shows. We’d needle each other; I’d say it all came with assumed goodwill, but that’d be revisionist thinking. He’d often make fun of whatever song I was playing. The next week, I’d play an old, Bob-Reuter-as-new-waver cut that I’d found on a Jason “Rerun” Ross compilation CD. It was annoying; we were annoyers.
We never fully found our way back to unqualified friendship. And now Bob’s had an accident. I didn’t. So I’m writing about Bob. And now we’ll forever be circling each other in the cosmic Cicero’s Basement Bar, smiling at pretty, glowing bartenders, loving some of the same music, traveling the same streets after the show, but still wary and self-conscious and unable to bridge a gap.
We had a minute of understanding together, though. And it was sometimes great.
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During the Hoosierweight Boxing years, Steven Smith threw the cards and Bob Reuter (among many others) shot them. Bob, though... he had a way with the fights. The boxers looked like badass gladiators, not softening office workers or nerdish students. The ring girls, tattooed and blithe, looked amazing. The crowds seemed intense and attentive, when seen through Bob’s lens. Weirdly, we all looked as if we’d beamed in from 1962-84, Bob’s battered camera a handheld time machine.
In March of 2003, I fought at the City Museum and Bob was there, ringside. He snapped a few classic photos that night, which are captured here. I can say, without doubt, that it was the greatest night of my life: I won my fight in front of 1,500 friends and enemies, in a makeshift ring built by Bob Cassilly. And, so, my getting my hand raised in victory would then qualify as the greatest moment of the greatest night of life, the pinnacle. And since Bob was there, ringside, he was shooting and he got an image of me that I’ll want to remember should I get old and gray: my arms are stretched, looking stronger than they really were; referee Pat Smith’s raising my strangely-strong right arm, while his kid awards me an artisan-made “championship belt”; the crowd’s there, but obscured.
Maybe I’ll grow up someday and’ll have an even better moment, something more mature and fitting than a boxing match’s outcome. It’s nice to think that Bob might’ve been able to shoot that next best thing, whatever the circumstance or setting.
The defining photo he did leave me with, well, I like it. Actually, I love it. Love it a lot.
