Saturday, June 23, 2012

Armour Stockyard Gates, South St. Paul

I had my oil change done at Jiffy Lube, and used a coupon and gift card. There's now just one card left, for Target. It knocked the balance down to $3.25. No big deal, except both of my cards wouldn't take. So I had to pay the remaining balance in cash money. It reminded me of what was said in a letter I saw when working customer service before, someone who spoke of how 'cash is still legal tender here'. I could picture them saying it verbally. Technology is wonderful only when it works, and I knew full well my cards were just fine.
    In the afternoon, I went with my date to Kaposia Days, a festival in South St. Paul. I had been there two years ago, but a scheduling conflict kept me away last year. I told a coworker in advance about attending, as that colleague lives in there. We liked seeing the car show at the high school's parking lot, and it looks like the pink Chevy Impala was the same car we saw at a car show at Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis last month. A wide variety of cars there, I liked this. As expected, many of them were 'muscle cars'.
  On the way over to the show, we had somebody help us with checking out the history of the town. I knew it was a stockyard town, as the high school athletic teams are called the 'Packers', but didn't know for sure where some of this was. We were informed how the entrance gates were kept when the rest of the stockyards were demolished, eventually we found them. It helped to stop at a park at the edge of town that looked like a welcome center rest area on the interstate. There were some stockyard photos, which gave us more clues. One historical marker was close to I-494. This was the Armour marker, next to the gates. The Swift marker was farther away, but not by much. We even found a street there named Armour. Most of the gates were made of brick, and the middle part was a swinging iron gate. I needed a second look at it as a mental picture, it made more sense. The left one looked like a pedestrian entrance, and the right one seemed to be the manned guard shack. The year built was visible, 1918. It made sense on wanting to keep the gates up as a reminder of the stockyard days, as Armour closed in 1979, 10 years after Swift did. I don't think anything was kept from Swift, likely less important when Armour was still there. It's not much different from what was done in my hometown when Lincoln School was demolished. A sign was made out of the cornerstone when a small neighborhood park was made out of part of the school grounds. I saw a park bench near the gates, but one of the gates didn't look well-kept. Some of the windows in the right one were boarded up. Even the stop sign was still a part of it. Also found was the Union Stockyards Exchange Building, which had four turrets on the roof. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
   In the evening I went with my date to the St. Paul Saints game, the Saints came from behind to beat Sioux Falls. The nightly theme was the Boxing Hall of Fame inductions, and the Cub Foods 'What's  In The Bag?' joke was a rabbit holding a punch bowl. My date cheered after a throwing error helped out the Saints and became the Fan of the Game, though we didn't get that particular coupon after the game. It was for Chili's, we got plenty of others handed to us.   

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