Well it has been one of those weeks that started off so well and then just kept getting worse.  I started work on Monday heady after having this blog promoted all last weekend.  Everybody loved me!  Monday, Tuesday and most of Wednesday were fine.  Late Wednesday I realized that the bus was pulling out and I wasn’t on it.  I scrambled to get back on all day Thursday and Friday, but to no avail.  Anyway, I get to be back into work early on Monday morning, another big meeting,  just another chance to sell some wares.  Anyway it is the weekend.  Yeah!

Pictured above are some of God’s original fishermen.  Pictured below is a Missouri sportsman that had just caught a paddlefish.  He posed for me at the Riverlands.  That is Mel Price Lock and Dam in the background.  He even offer to let me hold it and take my picture, but I declined.

Paddlefish are primitive  ray-finned fishes.  The paddlefish can be distinguished by its large mouth and its elongated snout.  The American Paddlefish is Missouri’s State Aquatic Animal.

Saint Louis once had cable cars, just like the ones that operate today in San Fransisco.  In 1886 the first line began operation.  It ran from Sixth and Locust Streets to Vandeventer Avenue via Franklin Avenue and during the next year a second cable line was placed in operation to the Fairgrounds.  Cable cars enjoyed a short but profitable period of operation.  They were soon supplanted by the faster electric trolley car in the 1890s. 

Speaking of the 1890s, in the 1890 census Saint Louis was the fourth largest American city.  About this time Saint Louis fixed its outer boundaries.  The city fathers of that time did it because they wanted to shed themselves of the burden of the then rural Saint Louis County.  Today the situation is completely different.  Most of the money now is in Saint Louis County.  The size of the present day City of Saint Louis is only a fraction of its 1890s population.

Under the heading of news of the weird, I offer the following three news blips, courtesy of NPR’s Marketplace:

• A Dutch minimum security prison that furloughs its prisoners on the weekend, discovered on Monday that all of the prison’s TV sets had been stolen.  That’s right folks someone broke into a prison, but it get’s worse.  This is the second time that this has occurred.
• No frills Spirit Airlines made the news a little while ago, when it announced that it would start charging people extra who used the overhead luggage compartment for their carry-on bags.  Spirit originated the trend that swept the airline industry, of charging for checked bags.  Spirit just announced another new service, “pre-reclined airplane seats”.  Basically, these are seats that don’t recline.
• In Idaho Pelicans are eating all the fish.  On the island where a lot of pelicans live, they’ve released badgers and skunks to eat the pelicans.  So it’s like these fish have recruited humans to use badgers and skunks to help them survive?