June 12, 2021, 1:30 P.M. – “Grow Up St. Louis” by Jim Merkel. This is the definitive look at what it was like to be a kid in St. Louis from 1900 to the present. Jim Merkel, who previously wrote four books about St. Louis, started by interviewing more than 100 people who grew up in the area – rich and poor, black and white, known and unknown. To this, he added many dozens of pictures, first-person stories by others about the early 1900s, commentaries about how kids lived in ten different periods since 1900, along with illuminating facts about each of those periods. Merkel’s presentation will clearly show how much the events of our childhood shaped the rest of our lives. Join us in the History Museum of Monroe County’s Allscheid-Metzger Gallery located at 724 Elaine Drive, Waterloo, IL 62298.