A Toast to St. Louis: The Henry Collins Connection

So yeah, sure, St. Louis can be a tough sell. Every other month, there’s some new Cities Ranked list we’ve not only made, but have probably finished Win, Place, or Show. Lists of the sort that don’t exactly make us sound like the perfect place to raise kids, go out for dinner without being shot at, or wear a bow tie in public. Or do much of anything more folksy friendly-oriented than setting up a nuclear dump site.

If St. Louis isn’t numero uno con una bala in murder in any given year, it’s usually because it was too hot that summer for the St. Louis bad guys to go out to buy ammunition. When it comes to Most Polluted Cities, we’ll see any other burg’s pair of carbon monoxide and sulfur and raise ‘em a full house of lead, ozone, and particulate matter. Doubtless if you took the time to look it up, you’ll find we’re contenders in the rankings of Cities With Particularly Ugly Dogs, Cities Most Likely to Hate Butterflies, Cities That Too Infrequently Signal Turns, and Cities That Floss Incorrectly.

Selling St. Louis, for the Convention Bureau or anybody else devoted to getting people to come visit or, Heavens to Betsy, actually contemplate coming to live here must be like trying to shill for time share condos in Fukushima. If there were anything meaningful to all those lists, we’d not have to ask the last person leaving St. Louis to turn out the lights only because someone would have already stolen them.

While we acknowledge all those rankings, we’d like to offer one perspective of the region in which all of us should take some pride. A lot. Now, it’s true this pertains more directly to East St. Louis, but it’s close enough. And the incident we’re presenting for evidence happened at a time when the two cities were closer in spirit and culture, not to mention firepower and breathtaking corruption.

It was in May, this month, of 1896. Henry Collins, who actually lived in the city of St. Louis, had wandered across the river in search of a saloon. What’re the odds, huh? Henry found one. And repaired to it.

History does not record why, exactly on that day, Henry was looking for a drink. For that matter, history doesn’t have much to say who Henry was at all. But we do know a great deal about what else was going on in the environs on that day, 27 May. In fact, there is even a song about the day. You can download it, and see the lyrics here.

Go ahead. Do it. If for no other reason that to see evidence St. Louis at one time was capable of producing music that did not, listening to it, make you want to stab your eardrums out with a Phillips screwdriver.

Anyway, it had been hot in St. Louis. Unseasonably so. Maybe that’s why Henry found himself a saloon. He probably had put in a long day at work, since it was about 4:30 in the afternoon, when, as the lyrics of the song suggest, “The streets were filled with people who were home from toil… Each one was smiling gay as they strolled along the way.” Which sounds a lot like St. Louis at 4:30 today. We’re still at strolling speed down I-270 and -70 and -64/40, and on every other thoroughfare and we’re still smiling because we simply cannot believe our fellow rush-hour commuters are really that laughably bad at navigating. And not a few of us are contemplating the wisdom of Henry’s approach to an after-work liquid divertissement. Like say, maybe right across the river.

It was about then, around four in the afternoon, back in 1896, that the heat broke, in a big way. Temperatures dramatically plummeted. West of St. Louis, the sky was the color of wet charcoal, gashed with incredible splinters of lightning. A few minutes later, all hell broke loose. It was a tornado. The Great Cyclone of 1896. It touched down first at the old City Hospital in the southwest part of the city. Then crashed along Jefferson Avenue, through Lafayette Park, Soulard, and across the river. To East St. Louis. And Henry.

Mr. Collins was bellied up to the bar, a glass of liquor in his hand. He must have heard the racket. The saloon doors would have been open. Others, looking out and assessing the situation, must have been hauling for safety. Henry did not. Henry remained at the bar, glass in hand, standing—or at least leaning comfortably—against the oncoming storm.

The tornado smacked the saloon more or less directly. The roof of the saloon was torn away, part of it collapsing. Henry was picked up by the furious wind and, according to an account of the time, “turned over twice or thrice.” That’s right. Henry got bounced end over end like a car getting parallel parked by Billy Joel. He landed, miraculously, on his feet. Even more miraculously, he landed still holding his glass. Which was, even still more miraculously, full.

Henry did not escape without incident, mind you. The roof, at least part of it, had come down on him. He broke his shoulder. Henry did a bit of self-triage, assessed the injury. And knew it was going to be painful. He hoisted that drink amidst the rubble and devastation. And Henry knocked ‘er back.

And my friends, any place that has spawned a man like Henry Collins, a man who looked into the eye of the Great Cyclone of 1896 and refused to put his glass down, who survived an exploding saloon with the dial set to Tumble-Dry and who managed to keep that glass not only in his hand but the contents within, it to serve as a do-it-yourself anesthesia, why that is a place where people know their priorities.

Sure, we may be nationally ranked #12 in the list of cities with Poorly Knotted Bow Ties. And, ironically enough, we are #3 in the country’s most violent tornadoes in terms of the damage and loss of life of that one in 1896. But we are also a city of people who know, in dire circumstances, what is important.

There are a number of harmonic convergences here. The anniversary of the Great Cyclone approaches, near the end of the month. Which is the beginning of summer. Which is marked by the three-day weekend of Decoration Day, which, as the writer Frank Sullivan said back in 1955, in a New York Times article, is one we should “celebrate by spending three days on the lawn, toying with a Tom Collins and watching someone else mow the grass.”

A Tom Collins. At the end of May. When another Collins, Henry Collins showed the world just what us St. Louisans are made of. Do we have to spell it out for you?

We urge St. Louisans to celebrate our ancestors, guys like Henry. And what more appropriate way to do it than with hoisting one, just as he did, to defy what’s coming in life—and to take a little of the edge off what will surely follow?

We propose the Official Start of St. Louis Summer drink should be the Henry Collins. To make a Henry Collins you’ll need this:

2 oz. gin
¾ oz. simple sugar syrup
¾ oz. freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 ½ oz. club soda
¼ cup blackberries, crushed

Plymouth Gin is the best gin in the world. We doubt that whatever Henry was slugging, it was Plymouth, but this is one of those unusual occasions when snobbery is not appropriate. Get whatever brand you like.

Syrup made from finely-ground sugar is best, but again, this isn’t the place for connoisseurship.

As for the lemon juice, here we are going to get picky. Use the real stuff.

The blackberries are what separates our Henry Collins from the Tom version. We like them because they would have been just coming into season back then as they are now and because the dark purply color they give the drink reminds us of the bruises Henry would have suffered. And the color of the sky that would have had turning tail those of lesser fortitude than we have here.

Build the whole thing on cracked ice, real ice, ice from an ice house ice, ideally in a Collins glass, also known as a narrow highball glass or, better yet, in a plastic souvenir cup from any St. Louis bar or eatery. And rather than shaking it, as one would a Tom Collins, take a swizzle stick and stir it, to create the vortex reminiscent of the Great Cyclone.

And drink up. Do it ‘cause it’s the start of summer. And because we live in a town that produced the likes of Henry Collins. And because there will probably be a list out tomorrow naming St. Louis as 14^th in Cities with the Least Affordable Housing for the Freckled.

(Editor’s Note: The story about Henry Collins is true; the namesake drink is a Dave Lowry creation. )