Photography by Bob Diaz for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, from the collections of the St. Louis Mercantile Library at the University of Missouri–St. Louis
Rufus Wainright’s aunt, Anna McGarrigle, once sang a song called “St. Valentine’s Day 1978.” In it, a woman is hanging out at home in pink pearls and red sneakers; she hears a pounding at the door. Her suitor knocks so hard, his fist leaves a smudge. He leaves a black heart on her porch, which she hangs on her piano with a ribbon. Valentine’s Day 1978 was more mundane in Overland. That morning—it was a Tuesday—Mary Ann Poston slept through her alarm. She took one of those swift, jittery 10-second showers where you’re huffing the Irish Spring to wake yourself up, because you don’t have time to brew coffee. Miss Poston, in fact, did not even have time to peel a banana before skidding out the door. She ran down the steps so fast, she got snow in her shoe on the way to the car.
She was about to curse her shoe, the snow, or both when she saw this 8-foot-tall plywood valentine propped in front of her boxwoods, delivered during the night by a certain Tom and Dan. The newspaper doesn’t say who they were. (Her brothers? Cousins? Neighbors, maybe? Was it a love triangle? Was she pals with a cartoon cat and mouse, the types who are known to pull these kinds of shenanigans?) But it does note, that morning “her mood was more suited for a Black Mass” than Valentine’s Day. (Nor did the reporter anticipate that Hallmark talent scouts would be phoning Tom or Dan anytime soon.) Miss Poston’s mood, the article noted, “brightened considerably” at the sight of it. Because a girl should be wary when a guy comes knocking with a cut-and-run black heart, or poetry—but if he’s pulling out the shop skills, it’s more serious than diamonds.
