- [Jim] If you read the comics, you see her work every day.

How this St. Louis comics fan got the opportunity of a lifetime.

- I'm I interested in syndicated comics?

So I said, "Yes.

I am, tell me more."

(laughing) - [Jim] The pandemic has a lot of people getting back to the basics.

This has been a good year for the bicycle.

You can see the problem right here, and there's bad stuff in the water you can't see but the problem, it starts here, and maybe this simple reminder will help.

And we look back at a brutal winter and a terrible fire that changed the city.

It's all next on Living St. Louis.

(upbeat music) - I'm Jim Kirchherr.

And I think a lot of people have taken up things like drawing and painting even paint by number projects while being stuck at home, along with board games and jigsaw puzzles and bread baking.

And as Anne-Marie Berger shows us, when the weather was nice and it came time to get out of the house, a lot of people decided to downsize from four wheels to two.

- Yeah.

So this is like, we're really super fortunate.

So like most of the bikes like this, they're gone.

- [Anne] For some, the pandemic has allowed more time for people to pick up some new hobbies, for others, it's left a lot to be desired, quite literally, with the shortage of things like hand sanitizer and of course, toilet paper.

But for a surprisingly large group of people, it's been both, with one shortage that was maybe not so predictable, bikes.

Bike sales have skyrocketed since March.

And while that is great for business, Mike Wiess, owner of Big Shark Bicycle Company explains it's also presented some interesting challenges.

- So we're really cyclical, right?

So it's a seasonal, especially at this latitude in Missouri.

And so we were sort of looking to, what I call a standard year, where we normally have a spring pickup.

And most of our businesses weighted towards the nicer months.

When COVID first hit, I think like a lot of businesses, we had no idea what it was going to mean.

And then, much to everybody's surprise, the trajectory for the bike industry has been straight up.

I mean, it has been explosive.

- [Anne] This sudden shift in aspiring cyclists is due to a few factors.

When indoor facilities closed down, gym goers were looking for alternatives to continue their fitness routines.

With event and vacation cancellations, families were looking for safe outdoor activities to pass the time at home.

And this may not apply so much to St. Louis, but in bigger cities, people were looking for less crowded modes of transportation, rather than cramming into buses and train cars that have a higher risk for exposure to the virus.

But with a sudden increase in demand, there comes a decrease in supply.

- I think the statistic I heard was the quantity of bikes that was expected to be sold in the United States had been sold by May, for the calendar year.

And so we're ordering containers of bikes now from the countries where they're made, unfortunately not the United States.

And the lead times we're getting are almost a year.

- Is that part of the problem?

That the parts and manufacturing of a lot of bikes are not done in the United States?

- You know, I think like all industries, there's so many components that go into a bike.

It could be rubber, it could be a plastic part, it could be a metal part.

They all come from different sources, and you need a hundred percent of them to put it in a box.

- [Anne] And it's not just an increase in bike sales, but with people wheeling their old bikes out of the garage only to find rusty chains and cracked wheels, there's been an uptick in bike repairs.

But with relying on the fragile supply chain of overseas factories who have seen shutdowns in the pandemic, some repairs are also seeing delays in back ordering of parts.

So you might be looking around the shop seeing all these bikes thinking, "This doesn't look like a shortage to me."

Well, a lot of what you see on the floor is either already spoken for, has an unfamiliar brand name, or a very high price tag.

What if I came in today and I said, "I need to get a bike."

Would I be able to get one?

What would that look like?

- Everything is normal, we want to find out who you are, what you want, what's your budget, what's going to meet your needs.

And so we do the normal things, and then we have to say, "Here's your option."

If we have it in stock, we'll like, it's anything you want- - [Anne] That information is nice.

- Is that it has to be this one.

- [Anne] Well this is what you get if you want to buy today.

- Yeah.

Or, we can look at the various suppliers forecasting tools and we'd say, we are going to get this in two weeks.

(bicycle bell ringing) - [Anne] With so much unknown about the pandemic, it's hard to say how bike sales will continue in the future.

But Mike hopes to see a shift in gears for the growing local bike community.

- You know, we're such a car centric city, we're so spread out.

Riding a bike, slows you down, makes you appreciate your neighborhoods, makes everybody a little healthier.

And I think like right now, I feel for these kids that now everything is on a screen.

And so just having something where they're able to use the refract light in a normal way.

I mean, our hope is all these bikes we're selling, we hope that we continue to see people using them for the next several years and make it a habit.

- I'm one of those people who gets a post dispatch every morning, the news, the sports, yeah.

The comics.

Now we've done stories that are news-related and we've done some sports stories, but Kara Vaninger story is about the comics, because one of these, while it's nationally syndicated, is actually a local story, and a local success story.

- People ask you, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

And cartoonists is almost never on any ones mouths, and when you don't really like, see anyone do it, it doesn't really feel like something that you can do.

- [Kara] Which is why becoming a nationally syndicated cartoonist wasn't even on the radar for artists, Christina Steenz Stewart, when she was selected to inherit the long running "Heart of the City" strip from creator Mark Tatulli in May, 2020.

- It wasn't until I started working at Star Clipper, the comic bookstore in the loop, where I started looking at the creators behind these comics.

I didn't even consider comics as a career until I saw Brittany Williams do the art on the "Samurai Jack" comic.

And I had been following her forever, and so I knew what she looked like.

I knew she was a black woman.

And then when I saw her stuff in front of me that I could hold on the shelf, I was like, that's when I clicked and like, why don't I just try and do comics?

- [Kara] Steenz began to explore this form of visual storytelling, and soon was being published in a variety of anthologies, including "Elements, Fire", which won an Eisner award in 2018.

She also collaborated with writer, Ivy Noel Weir on the graphic novel "Archival Quality".

- I usually say the best way to become a better cartoonist is by continuing to create.

I feel like I learned more from drawing Archival Quality than from like any class I've ever taken.

- [Kara] Consistently producing work helped her to build momentum and expand her range.

But Steenz also credits the supportive comics community, with not only her growth but also her exposure to what was possible as an artist.

Wanting to give back, Steenz came up with a program that has been inspiring and educating comics fans for almost a decade.

- I created "Comics University" where every Wednesday during the summer, you can learn something about comics.

You can learn history of comics, myths in comics, women in comics.

It was a really good opportunity for me to get that community building skills, and I was reaching out to people in St. Louis, like what can you teach?

- [Kara] And after years of encouraging others to share their knowledge at Comics University, Steenz was asked to do the same at Webster University.

- I have definitely remodeled the syllabus to focus on not just the skills of cartooning, but the skills of being a working artist as well, because you don't want to throw someone out into the deep end, like, "Well, you know how to draw.

Good luck."

You want to teach them about how to actually promote themselves, how to read contracts, how to pay your taxes.

What kind of jobs do you want to take for the experience, and which ones do you want to take for the money.

As a freelancer, there's a lot that you have to learn on the job, and it would be a lot better if you learned it when you were in school, paying for that information.

- [Kara] While teaching others to develop their artistic style and business savvy, Steenz was focusing on the same things in her own career.

- Once I was a full-time freelancer, I wanted to do my own stories as well.

So I did a Encyclopedia Brown fan comic, I did a sci-fi comic for myself, and after continuing to put out my own work, people reached out to me for different projects.

- [Kara] And one of those projects would turn out to be the chance of a lifetime.

- Shena Wolf reached out to me from Andrews McMeel syndication, and she was like, "I love your work.

Are you interested in syndicated comics?"

So I said, "Yes, I am.

Tell me more."

(laughing) So I read many years of "Heart of the City" just to get a good understanding of the comic, the characters, all the different kinds of stories that were in it.

- [Kara] But before she landed the job, Steenz had to do several weeks of auditions to make sure she was the right fit for the strip.

- So every single day, the stories had to be self-contained, but it had to be an overarching story.

And then I also had to do Sundays, which are different.

It's a whole puzzle to figure out.

And I did that about four times, (laughing) with different stories, different character designs.

They were more concerned about getting the writing correct over the drawing because they already knew that I had the drawing skill.

But with this they're like, "We believe the art's fine.

Can you tell a joke in four panels?"

- [Kara] In addition to the expectations of taking on the writing and illustrating of a long running well loved comic strip, Steenz also experienced the kind of pressure that is unique to pioneers.

- When I first got the job, I was like, okay, I want to see how many other like black women are doing it, and there are two others, Bianca Younis, who is a part of Six Chix, and the other one is Barbara Brennan Kraft, from "Where I'm Coming From".

It's a lot of pressure on your shoulders being like one of three, and especially one of three nationally syndicated.

Jackie Ormes, who was the first black female cartoonist was not nationally syndicated.

The one she's most recognized for is Torchy Brown.

Yeah that's who's on my arm.

(chuckles) I love her.

(laughing) It was really heartwarming because lot of the comics that I read when I was growing up that featured black families like "Curtis" or "Jump Start", like those are still going on today.

And those creators reached out to me, like welcome to the comics family.

It's two sides of it, one of them is really cool to be a part of that history of being a black cartoonist, but the other one is like, uh, it's kind of crazy that I've already talked to all of them.

(laughing) So, it's a double-edged sword.

(chuckles) - [Kara] After being inspired by trailblazing artists like Jackie Ormes, Steenz is hoping to do the same for others by being intentionally visible.

- As I was teaching the history of black comic creators at the library, there was a girl who was not even in the class, she was just walking through the library and saw this out of the corner of her eye, and she was like, "I've always been into like illustration and drawing, and I didn't know what I wanted, but it was really cool to like see you up there talking about comics because I feel like that's something that I can do now."

And I'm just like, (laughing) it's like, it's all happening.

(laughing) - [Kara] In addition to changing perceptions as to who can create what kinds of art, Steenz also hopes to build awareness around the incredible diversity within the comics community itself.

- So many times we were like, oh well, comics are becoming more social justice-y and they're more women, and people of color are doing it.

I'm like, "We've always been here."

I think it's more about media representation.

If you watch a TV show and someone goes into a comic shop, all you see are white dudes, but if you go into any comic shop, like in St. Louis, that's not the case.

I'm hoping that all the work that I do and all the work that everyone else in my community does, you can see that it's rather diverse.

It's just, it's taking some time for the spotlight to be on more than one type of person.

(upbeat music) - Over the years we've done a lot of stories about sewers and water quality and trash.

They're important stories, and we've talked to a lot of officials and experts, but we've also found a surprising number of volunteers who have taken this on as their issue, as their cause.

Brooke Butler has a story about one group that went out, not so much to clean things up, but to get us to pay attention.

- [Brooke] Something a lot of people don't realize or even think about at all.

Everything that gets washed down our storm drains, it all goes directly into St. Louis area waters, which can be more harmful than just the eyesores of cumulated trash.

When it's pollutants that aren't as simple to clean up.

With the help of volunteers, placing these inlet markers next to storm drains serve as a reminder of the importance of keeping our water systems clean.

- It's always been kind of an issue.

It's sometimes easy to not really realize that those storm drains drain into those rivers, creeks and streams, or sometimes people put it down the storm drain thinking, "Oh it's going to go to a wastewater treatment plant, get treated and cleaned."

They're not really making that connection, so these inlet markers are designed to help kind of build awareness.

- [Brooke] Partnering with Earthway Center, Missouri Botanical Gardens and MSD, the inlet marking is a new volunteer opportunity of the annual River Des Peres Trash Bash, that's been organized by the Great Rivers Greenway for the past 14 years.

Volunteers range from all walks of life, but live with the common investment to improve the health of our environment.

- Part of it is not just the inlet marker, but everybody who becomes engaged and does a project then learns, "Oh, this is important.

This is why we need to do it.

Why we mark inlets."

So they become advocates, and then they help spread the message.

It's really an education awareness piece as well, on top of the little plastic markers that are just, again, gentle reminder for people who might not know.

- [Brooke] St. Louis with two major rivers, of course has a lot of connection with water.

And the water connects us even more than we may realize.

So for example, if you're in the Brentwood area, and you're doing some work on your car, and some excess oil spills down your driveway.

No big deal, right?

The next rain will just wash it away.

Well, but now those chemicals drain into the storm inlet, which flows into Deer Creek, that connects with the River Des Peres, that ultimately ends up in the Mississippi river.

That seemingly harmless spill has now polluted the waterways in which we use for both recreation and household water supplies, not to mention the effects on the animals and plants that also rely on our rivers, creeks and streams.

Well, this is the first year that the storm drain marking has been a part of the Trash Bash.

It's been standard practice for MSDs project clear efforts to improve the water quality in our region.

Also standard practice for MSD is partnering with organizations to strengthen their community outreach.

In this case, Earthway Centers with the Missouri Botanical Gardens and the Great Rivers Greenway.

But because 2020 has been far less than standard, the event looked a little different this year.

- This event is different this year because of the pandemic, so typically, we meet up all as a big group at Wilmore park, and kind of get dispersed out with team leaders.

So it's a big kind of like team building community event.

So you get your hardcore stream teamers who are out at every event, kind of getting down, down and dirty in the streams, pulling out big pieces of refrigerators and tanks and things like that.

And then you get folks who are just beginners, who are just getting outside and just looking to pick up litter and things like that.

- [Brooke] And this was a good year for those beginners to join the Trash Bash efforts.

In place of the group outings, Great Rivers Greenway encouraged individual households to continue the trash pickups in the comfort of their own time and safety.

- So we hope through this event, in this experience that people walk away with a sense of accomplishment, right?

And a sense of community feeling empowered about the impact that they can make on their local creeks and streams, their local parks in the neighborhoods.

(upbeat music) - I'm one of those people who likes winter, like chilly days, cold nights.

I like sledding in the snow.

I'm a fan of the season, but only up to a certain point.

And nearly 60 years ago, St. Louis went way beyond that point.

The city was in the middle of a brutal cold wave, and then there was this explosion and massive fire near downtown.

So it happens I know somebody who knows somebody who can really tell this story.

Here's Anne-Marie Berger.

- When you're a kid there's nothing better than fresh falling snow, (lady laughing) but with the fun there's also everyday life that must go on.

Streets must be plowed, sidewalk shoveled, cars pushed.

Winter can be a challenge.

There's cold hands, cold feet.

Often the season presents the worst conditions.

But when duty calls our first responders, they'll never say no.

- It's your job, and everybody there, that was our job to try to put that fire out, or try not to get hurt themselves.

This is when I was promoted as chief.

- [Anne] This is retired St. Louis fire chief, Tom Long.

He also happens to be my uncle.

- That's him driving- That's grandpa From the top, I can tell that.

Uncle Tom is about to turn 94.

- Well, these were my badges here.

- [Anne] His career with the fire department span nearly four decades.

And when it comes to firefighting, he remembers details like they happened yesterday.

- It was so bitter cold.

I've never been that cold in my life.

- [Anne] The chief is talking about January 10th, 1962, when he was captain of the Seventh Hook and Ladder.

And temperatures dipped to their lowest in over 20 years, bottoming out at negative eight.

- It was bitter cold.

And the night before, I have a fire 10th and CAS, and my ladder froze up on me that night.

I couldn't retract it.

Couldn't bring it back down.

- [Anne] A frozen ladder was nothing compared to the conditions Long and the rest of the fire department experienced the following days.

The next afternoon, a grain dust explosion ignited a fire in the manufacturing plant at Checkerboard Square, the Ralston Purina company's industrial complex.

- [Long] I was very familiar with Ralston Purina.

What it is, they had grain in the place.

- [Anne] Back then, Ralston Purina's primary business was animal feed and cereal.

- These are some newspaper articles that we have from the time of the fire.

- [Anne] Susie Anderson-Bauer is the corporate archivist at the Nestle Purina pet care company.

- In the early sixties, at that time, we weren't producing dog food on a massive scale.

Most of the people who were here were working on animal feed.

So feed for farm animals, cows, goats, turkeys, pigeons all kinds of animals.

- [Anne] Checkerboard Square was actually 22 separate buildings, making it a massive complex that included offices as well as the mill.

- And we had mills all over the United States too at that point.

So we were just- the mill was just one of many mills, but the offices were the general offices worldwide for Purina.

- [Anne] Ralston Purina was a booming company, in fact, the morning of the fire, president Ray Roland, and CEO Donald Danforth were in New York city.

January 9th, 1962 was the day Ralston Purina was listed on the New York stock exchange for the very first time.

- And so that morning they went to New York did all the publicity.

Mr. Danforth bought the first set of stock that was for sale.

And just a few hours later they get this horrible call that there's been an explosion back in St. Louis, and they rushed home.

- They had a spark up there.

- It was something that was not unanticipated, it was something people knew could happen, and there were a lot of safety precautions in place, but it was an inherently dangerous process.

- Once you have a grain elevator, if you have any kind of explosion or anything, it causes more dust and more explosions, more fire.

So you had to be very careful when you went in to work on a fire like that.

(firetruck siren blaring) - [Anne] The department dispatched more than 20 pumper trucks to Ralston Purina, as the fire spread across the entire complex.

(firetruck siren blaring) As if grain dust combustibles and unexpected explosions weren't dangerous enough, firefighters had to battle the frigid temperatures.

- Our ladder, we had an awful up on the top of the ladder where we tried to do the best we could, but we were getting covered with ice.

- Helmets are covered in ice, the jackets are covered in ice.

Do you remember having that on you?

- You had that on you, you can't even take your clothes off because you're frozen to your rubber coat.

You can't get those buckles off.

So you're in there.

You don't get out of that until you get back into the firehouse where you could thaw out a little bit.

- You would think, with a big burning fire in front of you that that might offset.

No?

- It made no- no way, no way.

It was so bitter cold.

We couldn't breathe because our nostrils were closed, so every time you take a breath your nostril closed on you, so you would try to just breathe through your mouth.

That's all you could do.

- [Susie] The firefighters were unbelievable.

There were 150 firefighters just at the period of fire.

- [Anne] But despite the manpower, they struggled to combat the Purina blaze, and the bone chilling temperatures.

The firefighters weren't the only things turning to ice.

- If you shut your nozzle down, your hose froze up right away.

There was no waiting, you froze up.

You had the water.

You can't move around.

It's so slippery.

Many firefighters fell that day and hurt themselves.

I got a minor injury.

- [Anne] 36 Ralston Purina employees and 22 firefighters were injured in this blaze, but most tragically, two employees were killed in the explosion and a firefighter lost his life.

- One fire captain, his name was Roy Simpson, Roy Simpson.

He died of a heart attack.

- [Anne] It was reported that 29 million gallons of water were dumped on this blaze as firefighters worked through the night, and the following days to put it out, bearing fire equipment and the sprawling Ralston Purina headquarters under a mountain of ice.

It burned for nearly a week.

- The second day, I went back to that fire.

There was still fire up the very top of it.

And we had climb up these stairs, and the walls were out.

We were like climbing Mount Everest with this ice.

It was very hazardous, trying to get up there.

And I had to ask myself, "What am I doing up here?"

To get to this little bit of fire that was still up there.

- Did you make it?

You got up there?

- Well I'm here.

(both laughing) Well, you got back down, that's for sure.

- I came out real fast.

(calm music) - [Anne] Ralston chose not to rebuild the downtown mill.

- You know, reduce the risk to the nearby office complex but they decided they would expand, build more office space here on the Checkerboard Square campus, and then build two smaller production facilities.

One was in Montgomery city, Missouri, and the other one was in Vandalia, Illinois.

So they could manufacture and distribute closer to the farmers.

- This plaque here came off that firehouse down there at (indistinct).

- [Anne] And as for uncle Tom, he will never forget the winter of 1962.

- When you showed me these little pictures, I kind of felt, I said, "Hoo!

I remember that."

It sent a chill through me.

That was the coldest fire I (indistinct).

Not the biggest fire I was ever in, but it was the coldest one.

(somber music) - And that's Living St. Louis.

Thanks for joining us, I'm Jim Kirchherr and we'll see you next time.

- [Announcer] Living St. Louis is made possible by the support of the Mary Ranken Jordan and Ettie A. Jordan Charitable Foundation, and by the members of Nine Network.

(upbeat music)