LOUIS PAST ------- Part twoThe St Louis Zoo has always been free but back when I was a child and a young father the Zoo also had three free animal shows. Pictured here is the world famous chimpanzee show. In addition there was an Elephant and Lion show and each had there own building for their performances.
I can vividly remember at age seven or eight going to the zoo with my paternal grandparents and seeing all three shows. We would get to the park by riding a street car and a bus. In addition we would bring a picnic basket lunch and eat in the park.
The pictures are from the sixties when I was a young father. We would go to the park in our air conditioned car and purchase our lunch. I sometimes wonder if my children and grandchildren are missing a lot of memory makers that public transportation brought to our lives
The chimpanzee show was the most popular of the three shows. I guess as the three animal trainers retired the shows were unable to continued.
2 comments:
Hi Ed. I did visit both your recent blogs, re: "It Happened in St Louis."
Both the activities you wrote about sounded like fun. We were way up in Nebraska at the time the Admiral was in its heyday. The zoo shows you mentioned were in the news not too long ago, questions being asked as to whether the chimps were well cared for by trainers. The son of one of the trainers praised his dad highly and said the chimps seemed part of their family. Betty N.
Hey- I think that is my cousin on the motorcycle! My mom always used to say, "Let's go to the monkey house and see our family." (sometimes it seems like they are a bunch of animals!)
Thanks for sharing you memories with us. It is cool to hear about how things used to be. It is so interesting to me to see how much STL has changed over the years. Sometimes I think things would be better if we could go back to the sixties or seventies and live in that world again... Maybe not though...that would mean bad hair and bad clothes again.
I enjoy your posts, KEEP WRITING!
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