Photograph from the Francis Sheidegger Photograph Collection, The State Historical Society of Missouri Research Center—St. Louis
They call it fanning—the yellowing of leaves on one branch at the crown. It’s a tiny clue the tree is doomed, and under its bark, beetles are chewing swoopy hieroglyphs in the wood and blighting the tree with fungus. In the late 1950s, in the midst of Elvis and missile tests and lunch-counter sit-ins, no one really noticed those first, withering leaves. By 1961—a drought year—all of St. Louis’ elms were dying. Kirkwood responded to all of that tree death with the Greentree Festival: The city sold baby elm, sweet gum, and locust trees in the park for a dollar, and there was a parade with tree-themed floats. A decade on, maybe because astronauts broadcast pictures of the Earth from outer space, the parade theme commented on the state of the whole planet. The Falstaff Optimists Club drove a huge white truck crawling with kids, who held a sign that read ECOLOGY; one guy glued thousands of silk flowers to his Ford Pinto. There were many pony wagons and twice as many bikes, including one piloted by a sad clown, decorated with green balloons and a Pfitzinger Mortuary flag. Just as 1970s college girls saw no irony in wearing polyester pantsuits with long, middle-parted hair and no makeup, the Noah’s ark above beached itself on AstroTurf, atop a faux–wood-paneled station wagon. It is a very modern ark: the elephant has an AstroTurf saddle, perhaps to keep that nervous monkey semi-Velcroed to its back. The dancing chicken is wearing a mini dress and go-go boots, and the tiger’s accompanist is a church lady with a Moog. We may never know his song list, though if the pop charts of the time are any indication, they were songs about the end of the world, with a good beat that you could dance to.
