TWIL: Downtown Chemicals

My mother said something once about how my Dad was sprayed with chemical agents when he worked downtown in the ’50s and ’60s.

Mom made that comment in the ’90s. I believe I said, “Wait … what?” because I was about 30. Had I been any younger I would have just taken it at face value and then assumed that was why my parents were hesitant about going downtown. All the mustard gas floating around? That does sound dangerous.

Mom said that evidently the military wanted to see how chemical weapons would disperse in a city, so they sprayed Saint Louis in case they needed to spray the Communists.

It was during the time my Dad worked downtown on 12th Street.

Cut to this past week. Something made me think of that. And now that I am old and have these flashes of clarity, I thought, “Wait … what?”

So. Facts:

1. The military wanted to see how chemical weapons would disperse in a city, so they sprayed Saint Louis in case they needed to spray the Communists.

Not facts:

• It was not mustard gas. It was Zinc-cadmium, which glows under ultra-violet light. I don’t know how they’d shine an ultra-violet light down in St. Louis to see the coverage.

St. Louis was picked because it resembles Moscow, with the river, if you tilt your head.

The blowers that dispersed the chemicals were on the roof of the brutally bad Pruitt-Igoe housing project, which is particularly awful because they picked it because it was a primarily black residence.

Pruitt-Igoe was so legendarily bad they blew it up and never built anything else on that site again.

Not a shining example of the military or Saint Louis.