As Saint Louis University considers the fate of the Pevely Dairy complex, located at South Grand Boulevard and Choteau Avenue, I’m hoping that the site will be spared from the wrecking ball.
I don’t like milk because I’m lactose intolerant, and I don’t know much about the history of Pevely, but that dairy is part of my personal history. From the ages of 11 to 14, I often would catch the No. 56 bus from Kirkwood to Grand Avenue. A short walk south later, I would be at the Caroline Building, where I had my orthodontist work done at the SLU School of Orthodontics.
Nowadays, Caroline Street is still there, but you can’t enter from Grand. The building where my teeth were transformed from a snaggled-up mess to near-perfection is nothing like the one I knew years ago—thanks in large part to a doctor who trained there and won the lottery before donating to the school. To this day, young people still have their orthodontist work completed by dentists training at the school; it’s cheaper than a private doctor, and it helps create future orthodontists—truly a win-win situation.
Of course, when I completed the process years ago, I was told that I flunked out a few prospects—that’s how bad my teeth were before I had braces. My teeth were too big for my mouth, which many people say was impossible because I’m always running that very same mouth. Even as a kid, it seems, I had some of the biggest molars the doctors had ever seen. While most patients’ teeth can fit premade bands (the things that wires run through to straighten your teeth), mine had to be made by hand; my doc, Thomas Began, had to solder some together on the spot.
About a year after I was finished, one of my bottom teeth began to slip, forced back by the pressure of those giant molars. Picture how a glacier shapes the landscape—so slowly that you don't notice until an entire continent has shifted. I could have returned to an orthodontist and had it fixed, but I'd spent enough time in the chair. (Had I known that TV would be in my future, however, I might have actually got it fixed.)
I share this tale with you because today my oldest daughter, Bryson, will have her first bands put on her teeth as she begins to have her teeth shifted into straightness.
If my crooked teeth were a 10, Bryson’s are a four. She won’t be going to the orthodontist for as long as I did, and believe it or not, the price is not bad at all. This is a result of updates in the process, new materials, and health-care plans that now cover orthodontist work. Kids used to poke fun at those of us with braces, but now so many young people—and adults—have braces that it's not a surprise to see them on a daily basis.
Today, memories of the Caroline Building return to me when I hear certain songs on the radio. I know the words from all of that time spent listening and staring at the ceiling with wires hanging out of my mouth: “Saturday, in the park. I think it was the Fourth of July.”
I’ll have to listen to what station they play at Junction Orthodontics in Kirkwood.
Commentary by Alvin Reid
