Guess where we ate today?

This was our relatively free day, our only scheduled activities being coffee with a friend in the morning, and a family dinner party in the evening. It is very hot, even for St. Louis, with our car thermometer reaching 102 degrees. Thank God, not Celsius.

Our coffee was with Joe P______. And, as I show his picture below, I apologize to him. I thought I had taken a much better photo; but I was wrong. So I have to go with what I have.

Joe is the only friend we are seeing on this trip whom I have not known for 60 plus years. We have mutual friends, and I gave known of Joe for 60 plus years, but I am not sure that counts.

The details of our relationship probably would not make interesting reading, but one facet of it is how little I know about Joe’s background. But here is a coincidence that will surprise you.

Joe and our host, Judy, do not know each other. Judy lives an a development of very large, attached homes, around a small lake in West St. Louis County. This development abuts the large campus of Congregation Shaare Emeth. It turns out that Joe’s grandfather owned the land on which both Shaare Emeth and Judy’s development stand, and that was the developer of Judy’s home. More than that, if I heard it right, Joe spent some of his younger years living in a house on that exact site (or maybe that was his grandfather’s house). Talk about a coincidence.

We visited a couple of used book stores – the fabulous Dunaway Books on South Grand and the remarkably overpriced Hammond Books on Cherokee. I bought one book at Dunaway, a biography of Max Nordau, one of Theodor Herzl’s buddies from Budapest active in the formation of the Zionist movement. It was written by his daughter (named, believe it or not, Maxa) and inscribed and signed by her.

Eat Today (pictured above) is a small East African restaurant, run by Ethiopians, conveniently located near where we found a parking place. We had a delicious vege combo which we shared. Each item was good.

We drove around a bit and then went back to see our cousins Ed and Donna, spending most of the afternoon with them and their daughter Alison, also in for a visit from Washington. Then, at 6:00, Donna’s brothers, Bob and Rich, and their wives, Simone and Jacqui, came for dinner.

But that’s not all. Also a dinner guest was our second cousin Les, whom I had spoken to but never met, in from Sydney, Australia, to visit St. Louis relatives.

He regaled us with his stories, and we regaled him with some of ours.

Today will be our last day in St. Louis. We plan to be back in late October for my 65th high school reunion. We hope to see some classmates whom we have not seen for decades, and to see the dozen or so who we see by Zoom but not in person.

Today, we are scheduled to have lunch with four friends and dinner with two others.

I will report back tomorrow. Meanwhile, we will keep our eyes on the Nationals. Trade deadline is only 36 hours away and, as usual, I am prepared for disappointment.