Its a Midwest thang, yaaa'll

Upon opening my Yahoo Home page this morning, I ran across an article citing the 11 Most Dangerous Cities in America. Surprised I was not, that St. Louis earned the top mark. I mean when I lived there, I lived and worked downtown. I borrowed my dad’s Dodge Ram pick-up truck for a week shortly after moving there so that I could haul some furniture. As I was walking to the company parking lot at 4:45PM with a co-worker, he asked, “Where’s your dad’s truck?”

I was shocked. Where in hell was the truck? We went back to the office and went back through some security surveillance tapes of the parking lot, and I’ll be…there was a man that walked up to the truck, confirmed it was all locked up, had the door open in less than a minute, and had it started within 5. No rookie I assume.

The spooky part is that this all went down about 15 minutes before I walked out. What if I’d left earlier when he was mid-steal? Eek, probably best not to think of that. They did find Dad’s vehicle a couple days later in downtown STL’s northern neighbor, a hood named “North City”. It was on fire and stripped of all its parts. The parts my dad so adored. You know, like dual exhaust and chrome everything. Of course this wasn’t exactly surprising either because what do they do in north city? They make a living by running black markets (black markets filled with stolen goodies), roam the streets in packs; daring someone to make a wrong move, and what bad neighborhood is complete without an active drug trade?!

It was interesting to see that the #9 spot was taken by Kansas City, MO. I mean essentially Missouri has an abundance of rural space, lots of lakes, a plethora of sports bars, Imo’s Pizza,  a few major universities, and only two major cities. Its major cities made this list. And you thought Midwesterners were sweet and innocent. Ha!