St. Louis' own language: "Hoosier"

Starting off my series on words that have a STL connection or unique meaning, I wanted to explore the word hoosier. 

So you think you know what a hoosier is, eh? Well, I guess a lot of that depends on where you're from? If you're from Indiana, the word is a source of pride and local identity...ummm, not so much here. As a kid growing up in Belleville, Illinois just a mere 7.5 miles from St. Louis, I heard the term infrequently, but didn't really understand it, and rarely used it.  Some friends and family from the Metro East did use the word, but most don't.  I had to drop some knowledge of this fine St. Louis term on my parents among others. 
Hoosier has a very distinctly alternate meaning in the STL metro region than it does in other parts of the country.  From wikipedia:

Hoosier ( /ˈhuːʒər/) is the official demonym for a resident of the U.S. state of Indiana. Although residents of most U.S. states typically adopt a derivative of the state name, e.g., "Indianan" or "Indianian", natives of Indiana never use these derivatives. Indiana adopted the nickname "Hoosier State" more than 150 years ago.[1] "Hoosiers" is also the nickname for the Indiana University athletic teams. Hoosier is sometimes used in the names of Indiana-based businesses and organizations. In the Indiana High School Athletic Association, seven active athletic conferences and one disbanded conference have the word Hoosier in their name.

In other parts of the country, the word has been adapted to other uses. In St. Louis, Missouri, the word is used in a derogatory fashion similar to "hick" or "white trash".[2] "Hoosier" also refers to the cotton-stowers, both black and white, who move cotton bales from docks to the holds of ships, forcing the bales in tightly by means of jackscrews. A low-status job, it nevertheless is referred to in various sea shanty lyrics. Shanties from the Seven Seas[3] includes lyrics that mention hoosiers. Hoosier at times can also be used as a verb describing the act of tricking or swindling someone.

That last sentence is startling...ever been hoosier'd?  Another part of the above definition that caught me off guard is the use of the term for black people.  That just doesn't follow my experience.  The term hoosier has always been reserved for white people.  Agree? 
Either way, chances are, if you are a St. Louisian, or even a metropolitan St. Louisian in the burbs, you probably know exactly what a hoosier is and some version (likely with a mullet) comes to mind...and, it probably has nothing to do with Indiana University basketball.  Frankly, I love the word, it adds to our local flavor, history and it's a distinct description.  It's not a bad word, and the politically correct set that takes offense in it can get lost.  You've got to embrace this word...it works too well to not have it in your vocabulary.  Other variations of the term I've heard:  hoos-wah (noun), hoos (adjective), turbo hoos (descriptive noun).

For those readers who have never been to St. Louis, allow me to prove my point.  Go to google and type hoosier in the search box and select images.  You'll see many pictures of Hoosier brand racing tires, Indiana basketball players, and other Indiana-related images.  Nothing of the STL hoosier though.   Now type in St. Louis Hoosier and see what you get...ah, now that's more like it.  Here are couple of the images that popped up on the first page:

^Hot looks for hot times, indeed.  I hope this doesn't seem mean spirited, I'm not poking fun as much as I am fascinated by the conscientious, deliberate work that it takes to hone this look.  It's on purpose, it's not an accident...these men seek this look out...this is a big part of who they are.  Notice the shirtless theme? Notice the many photos taken at Busch Stadium?  The Blues get the local rap for having hoosier fans, but I think that is tied to the old days at the Checkerdome with it's cheap seats/beer and proximity to Dogtown that brought that on.  When the Blues moved to the Scottrade Center and starting charging major $$ for admission, the hoosiers started staying at home.  I think Cards game are more hooʒ than Blues games.

But being a hoosier is so much more than ridiculous tattoos, mullets and sleeveless shirts.  More than anything, it's an attitude...a thought process...a way of life.  Lord knows I've done things that are hoosier (usually involving duct tape); I get the mindset...it comes with the y chromosome...although women are not immune from being hoosiers.  Hell, there may be a little hoosier in all of us.  But, at their core, are hoosiers funny?  Or, are hoosiers mean spirited and destructive to a dignified way of life?  I don't general find the latter to be my experience, but I have seen some crazy fights and lewd behavior from hoosiers.  Usually alcohol induced.  There are some great South City bars that are prime hot beds for hoosier sightings....I won't name names, but I'm sure everyone has their own favorites.  I've generally found hoosiers to be harmless and even quite endearing.  They are tough to have as immediate neighbors though, I've lived that.

Let's give the regional aspect of the hoosier some more thought...

Today, is the STL hoosier more common in the suburbs of St. Louis?  Rural counties on the outskirts?  St. Charles and Jefferson County?  Or is the hoosier more prone to settle right here in the City of St. Louis?

Sure STL professional sporting events, Soulard Mardi Gras and other city events and locations are great for luring in hoosiers from far and wide.  But are they coming from somewhere else?  Are they coming from the STL neighborhoods?  Hoosiers used to be strongly associated with Carondelet and the Patch for sure, maybe even the 3 neighborhoods of Dogtown.  But is that true today?  Are they an endangered species, are they leaving for the suburbs and rural areas?  Does the modern hoosier still listen to classic rock or has he morphed to a more contemporary country music, a mod-hate rock/nu-metal ensemble as can be heard on  105.7 F.M., or even better yet, the urban white hip hop hoosier?

As a middle-aged guy, the hoosier vision that is etched into my brain is the one who identifies with Molly Hatchet or Metallica.  But the old KSHE 95, cut-off-jorts hoosier may be going the way of the dodo bird.  But I think his spirit will live on for my kids generation to continue to experience.  But the future STL hoosier probably will not have a mullet and a sleeveless shirt; the future hoos I envision is a more ghetto take on the original hoosier.  One who tries to identify with low-class black urban lifestyles (ghetto is another misunderstood word that I'll approach next...stay tuned).  I think there is a new brand of white trash or hoosier in town that has sprung up in the post hip-hop error.

What's your description of a hoosier?  Where are they most spotted?  Are they leaving St. Louis or gaining in numbers?  Will the STL hoosier live on, or is he/she a dying breed?  Is hoosier an endearing term (like homie) or is it an insult or mean-spirited?

Back to wikipedia:

The term "hoosier" began to take on its negative connotation in St. Louis during the mid-1950's when the Chrysler Corporation built a large automobile assembly plant in the St. Louis suburb of Fenton and closed a plant it had been operating in Indiana. At the time, the city of Fenton, was at the then-rural southwest rim of St. Louis county. During this time, Many former employees of the closed Indiana plant moved to Fenton for employment; so many, in fact, that entire subdivisions of new homes sprang up south of the plant, near what was then US Route 66. It became something of a local joke to refer to the new arrivals from Indiana as "hoosiers", and before long, anyone from the rural edges of St. Louis County was considered such.

That last sentence is an important tie to my understanding of the word.  I truly think this is a St. Louis and St. Louis County term...not used as universally in the Metro East and maybe not as common in St. Charles and other exurbia counties.

And finally:

Thomas E. Murray carefully analyzed the use of "hoosier" in St. Louis, Missouri, where it is the favorite epithet of abuse. "When asked what a Hoosier is," Murray writes, "St. Louisans readily list a number of defining characteristics, among which are 'lazy,' 'slow-moving,' 'derelict,' and 'irresponsible.'" He continues, "Few epithets in St. Louis carry the pejorative connotations or the potential for eliciting negative responses that hoosier does." He conducted tests and interviews across lines of age and race and tabulated the results. He found the term ecumenically applied. He also noted the word was often used with a modifier, almost redundantly, as in "some damn Hoosier."

In a separate section Murray speaks of the history of the word and cites Baker and Carmony (1975) and speculates on why Hoosier (in Indiana a "neutral or, more often, positive" term) should remain "alive and well in St. Louis, occupying as it does the honored position of being the city's number one term of derogation." A radio broadcast took up where Murray left off. During the program Fresh Air, Geoffrey Nunberg, a language commentator, answered questions about regional nicknames. He cited Elaine Viets, a Post-Dispatch columnist (also quoted by Paul Dickson), as saying that in St. Louis a "Hoosier is a low-life redneck, somebody you can recognize because they have a car on concrete blocks in their front yard and are likely to have just shot their wife who may also be their sister."

I don't agree with the Elaine Viets description.  Are hoosiers murderers?  My definition is a more harmless one...annoying, sometimes crude yes, murdering thugs, no.  I also don't think hoosiers use their look and lifestyle to intimidate others.  I could be wrong.

So who is this Thomas Murray?  I must know more.  He wrote a book called: "The Language of St. Louis, Missouri: (American United Studies XIII, Linguistics, Vol 4) 1986".  So I went to my trusty public library website to order a copy of this book from the central stacks.  It was shipped to my local branch (Barr) and in my hands within 5 days.  Damn, we have a great library system...but anyhow, here's the book:

Now, I take issue with Murray's sampling methodology because he chose not to interview any black people.  His research was done in the 80s yet he didn't speak to one black person...ummm, did you know that 1/2 the city is made up of black people.  He explains the broad range of ethnicities:  southern blacks, Czechs, Italians, Dutch, Irish, German, French, Poles, etc.  but when he sampled the population he excluded blacks and he goes on to say that St. Louis is now populated "almost exclusively by blacks".  Huh?  Did this guy look at the demographics of St. Louis at all?  Here's the paragraph I'm referring to:

It becomes clear, then, that the linguist who wishes to study "the" language of St. Louis faces the problem of selecting informants that will not bias the final results of the study.  Rather than choosing equal numbers of each ethnic sub-population of the city, I elected to avoid "pure" informants as much as possible.  None of the ethnographic collecting of data reported above was done in strongly ethnic sections of the city, just as none of my other informants came from any but an ethnically mixed background.  Furthermore, because one of the requirements to be met by all non-phonological informants was that both they and their parents had to have lived in St. Louis all of their lives, all of my data come from the mouths of white speakers.  It is true that Inner St. Louis is now populated almost exclusively by blacks, but the vast majority were born in other parts of the country and then migrated to the Gateway City; thus, I could not, strictly speaking, label their speech "the language of St. Louis."

Am I missing something here?  St. Louis has never been almost exclusively populated by blacks and in the 1980's there are plenty of black families whose parents had lived in St. Louis their whole lives as did their progeny.

Aside from disagreeing with his sampling methodology, I also don't think there's much to gain from this book regarding the word hoosier:

66. PEJORATIVE TERM FOR A WHITE PERSON
Hillbilly occurs in the speech of one middle-class female over the age of 60, but the popular favorite in all other demographic cells in hoosier.

And:

68.  PEJORATIVE TERM FOR A BLACK PERSON
The two favorite in this semantic category are hoosier and [the n-word (sorry, I can't do it)].  Hoosier is preferred most often by members of the upper class except males between the ages of 20 and 40, middle-class males over 40 and middle-class females under 20 and 40 to 60, and lower-class males under 40.  Spook is used infrequently by members of each gender and socioeconomic class, hillbilly is reported by one middle-class and two lower-class males over the age of 40.

The book has some insight on other debatable words like crawdad vs. crayfish and soda vs. pop.

Anyhow, hoosier is a word that has a completely alternate meaning in St. Louis.  Enjoy it, use, it...we own this word.  It's ours.  Cherish it.

I'd love to hear your personal take on the word and where you first heard it and where you are from (please be specific on the last one i.e. Des Peres is not St. Louis).

Jefferson Avenue In The Fox Park Neighborhood

Jefferson Avenue is brimming with potential as a commercial corridor.  Just take the stretch that serves as the eastern boundary of the Fox Park neighborhood which goes from I-44 down to Gravois.  I'm going to take some photos and talk up the western side of the street in this post.

View Larger Map

First of all, this is such a critical part of our city. It is the gateway to the south city neighborhoods directly south of the burgeoning Downtown and Downtown West neighborhoods which were two of the few St. Louis neighborhoods that actually saw a gain in population from 2000-2010. The 3 neighborhoods of Fox Park, Benton Park West and McKinley Heights are critical to St. Louis' future wedged between the successful neighborhoods of Compton Heights and Lafayette Square.  A strong, vibrant Jefferson Avenue could serve as the main corridor to the southeastern neighborhoods.  Some of these near south neighborhoods had taken a beating when people started packing it up for the burbs starting after WWII and continuing through the 1990's crack epidemic years when things were completely out of control in this part of St. Louis.

Things have calmed down from a crime perspective and historic tax credits urged rehabbers to come into these neighborhoods and help make a much needed change for the better.  There are lots of residual effects from those bad years, but these neighborhoods are clearly on the rise.  And Jefferson Avenue should be the attention getter and commercial business district that it could and should be to attract more people to choose this part of town as their home.

In its current state, Jefferson is a speedway where cars travel at high speeds mainly getting to I-44 and I-64. I would like to see a road diet here, similar to the changes made on Grand between Arsenal and Utah. Angled on-street parking, median plantings, street trees and wide sidewalks could make a major difference. Actually, just a little clean up and infrastructure improvements would go a long way toward making Jefferson less...um...gritty...and more inviting to a pedestrian/neighbor/visitor.

So let's take a look at what exists today along Jefferson on the east side of Fox Park.

Starting on the north just south of I-44, you have a typical suburban McDonalds complete with 24 hour drive through.  This place is always crowded and must do an amazing business being right off of a major Interstate off ramp.  it is also one of the main nutritional sources for many in Fox Park as evidenced by the excessive amount of littering of McD's trash throughout the entire neighborhood. Whatever you think about these junk food restaurants, this one is probably going nowhere anytime soon judging by the traffic.

Geyer and Allen Avenues dead end with a cul de sac preventing traffic to enter Fox Park from Jefferson.  In fact many if not most of the perpendicular streets are intentionally cut off at Jefferson; Accomac, Ann and Armand all dead ends.  Russell, Shenandoah, Victor and Sidney are the only streets one can use to access Fox Park from Jefferson.  Allen and Geyer pick back up on the eastern side of Jefferson in the McKinley Heights neighborhood only to be butchered again by I-55 and then picking up in Soulard again.

The 2000 block of Jefferson is more attractive between Allen and Russell.  Infill and rehab could transform this block.  I love the old sign on one of the available buildings in this block:

There are gaps between nearly every building between Allen and Russell where buildings once stood. The building just south of the McDonald's is literally falling in on itself and the sidewalk surrounding the building. The back half or so is completely missing and the second story is falling on the sidewalk. In this part of St. Louis, this kind of crap is completely tolerated. This is the ghetto element of the near south side that leaves an impression with passers by. It doesn't have to be this way, but it is. It gets better though as you head south.  Here's what the falling building and adjacent sidewalk looks like:

Again, there are many gaps where buildings once stood.  These are currently empty lots or surface parking, so this block does not appear very contiguous.  Here's are some other buildings between Russell and the McD's:

Just south of Russell, you have the 2100 block of Jefferson which currently has a former suburban fast food drive thru and restaurant.  I believe this used to be a Taco Bell and it now serves as an ATM.  I'm not kidding, it's an ATM.  This vacant eyesore was built in 1994. 

I can only imagine what beautiful buildings were destroyed to make way for the junk food restaurant...and now it stands vacant and shuttered just a few years later.  The point I'm trying to make is that destruction for these fast food joints is a major failure for our historic neighborhoods.  They almost always go out of business in a matter of 15 - 20 years or so, leaving major scars on the landscape and sucking the soul out of St. Louis.  Look no further than the former Burger King across the street in McKinley Heights...same story.

The good news is South Side Day Nursery (SSDN) has purchased the property of the former Taco Bell along with 2 beautiful brick storefronts/ and a large dwellings right at Ann formerly owned by DeSales Community Housing Corp.  The Beacon reported on this back in December, 2011 and the buildings that SSDN are proposing seem like an upgrade over the surface parking and drive through ATM.  It appears to be built to the street with decent looking modern design.

South Side Day Nursery has been around for 125 years as a non-profit to provide kids with a safe and healthy place while their parents are at work.  They currently serve 97 kids between 6 wks and 5 yrs of age.  The new 19,000 sq. ft. building will increase the capacity to 140 kids.  More on SSDN from the Beacon article:

Started in 1886 by 15 Unitarian women, the Nursery's mission was to provide children with education and a hygienic place to stay while their parents worked. The first home was at 10th and Sidney, where they remained until 1954. The move to Iowa Avenue was caused by construction of Interstate 55.

The bad news (in St. Louis nearly all new uses come with a loss of our brick beauties) is that we are losing several classic buildings in the process.  There will be no intricate design or craftsmanship on the new buildings.  There was of course plenty of history and care and charm in the old buildings.

So the historic buildings have been demolished and the brick nicely palleted up for somewhere else. 

The Beacon article says the historic buildings will be taken down before the ATM/Taco Bell is dealt with:

According to South Side Day Nursery's plans, the store fronts and residence would be demolished and work begun before dealing with the American Eagle part of the parcel. 

So if this thing really gets built to the street with the design proposed, and the shuttered ATM is replaced, I'll consider this a net gain even though we lose more of St. Louis' treasure.  I'm sure SSDN will provide a great resource for many in the city and it will bring some life to a dead stretch of Jefferson....but it comes with the cost of losing a piece of our history and charm.  I welcome SSDN to Fox Park and wish them nothing but the best, but I'm disappointed they did not give this historic neighborhood enough consideration when it came to bulldozing the one thing that will draw more people to our neighborhood and our city.

The next block gets better.

Kakao Chocolate, the Warehouse, the Way Out Club, Trader Bob's Tattoo are all spots for quality products and entertainment.  Just imagine if a few more businesses moved into these storefronts?  The potential is huge.  Another quality addition to the Fox Park stretch of Jefferson is Tenth Life Cat Rescue which will be renovating and occupying a currently empty building south of Kakao.

There are other businesses including a tire shop and a sock/resale shop among other things.  Successful neighborhoods need successful and useful businesses.  There are several spaces ready for immediate new life and other ready for future rehab.

I know cities need gas stations and other auto centric businesses, and the Fox Park stretch of Jefferson has several suburban examples:

Jefferson along the Fox Park stretch also has many beautiful homes and churches both old:

And some much needed new in fill to take care of those gaps:

A healthy Jefferson means a healthy near south side.  Jefferson is a major north/south connector.  We need simple beautification like sidewalk repairs and street trees.  We need on-street parking.  We need to attract more business, we need more infill.  We need a commercial corridor not an Interstate feeder.  We need a little TLC for the sidewalks, the trees, the street lights and everything else to spruce this stretch of STL up.  Otherwise we're left with the current state which just isn't good enough.

Here's to attracting more people and proprietors willing to be good stewards of their property and streetfronts.