Rey got the job and even though I didn’t hit a homerun, I at least hit safely.  Rey starts work next week.  Today, I have the action item to arrange another meeting.  Rey will be a Group Sales Representative for the Smokies.  Rey wanted to take us out to dinner Tuesday night, to celebrate, but I had to go out with my work guests.  A half-dozen of us engineers decided to go to Blueberry Hill for dinner.  When we arrived we were surprised to see a dozen more people from work already there.

Blueberry Hill is a restaurant/bar that has a lot of character.  It has long been associated with Chuck Berry.  He still occasionally plays there.  It is decorated with gobs of memorabilia.  One of the first times we took Danny there, it was with Anne’s folks.  It was a winter night and it was snowing.  I pulled up to the curb to let everyone else out and no sooner does Dan see the place, then he exclaims, “Your not taking me to another cowboy bar?!?”  Later when Dad thought to bring a roll of quarters to facilitate playing all the many arcade games there, all objections ceased.

Blueberry Hill is in an area known as The Loop.  The Loop is so named, because back when Saint Louis use to move by street cars, the terminus to one of its many trolley lines was in The Loop.  The street cars would loop around to head back downtown, hence the nickname, The Loop.  The owner of Blueberry Hill is Joe Edwards.  There is a smiling holographic portrait of him in the entrance.  In addition to the Hill, Joe Edwards is the proprietor of the Tivoli Theater, the Pageant nightclub, the Pin-Up Bowl cocktail bar, the Moonrise Hotel and is the founder of the St. Louis Walk of Fame.  In addition to these properties, he owns more than twice that number of lesser notoriety, in The Loop.  Have I mentioned shopping?  He has almost singlehandedly restored The Loop to its gilded age prosperity.  Joe Edwards’ current project is to restore a trolley line that runs from The Loop to Forest Park.  This project will bring back the original meaning of the nick name, The Loop.  He started all this work with the Blueberry Hill.

Joe Edwards has done a lot, but by starting in The Loop, he didn’t start from nothing.  The Loop is in University City.  This city is so named because that is where Washington University resides.  In addition to Joe Edwards’ endeavors U-City can boast two other Hollywood celebrities, Harold Ramis and Bob Gale.  Harold Ramis (from Ghostbusters fame) used his college experiences at Wash-U to write Animal House.  Bob Gale who grew up in U-City wrote the Back to the Future movies.  The U-City Lions are referenced throughout those movies.  So LA may have its Universal City, but Saint Louis has its University City.