What Almost Was: The Midwest Disneyworld

What follows is the stuff of legends: A true story with ramifications effecting me and pretty much everybody I grew up with and around.

It's a story you hear in Central Florida from time to time, but it's in Richard E. Foglesong's book "Married to the Mouse: Walt Disney World and Orlando" where the legend takes shape.

In November of 1963, a dinner party was held for Walt Disney and his people by the local bigwigs of St. Louis, including one Auggie Busch Jr. The excitement was mounting: the local St. Louis economy would be rejuvenated, and Disney's imagineers were already in the early stages of developing themes based on local folklore (presumably defanged Mark Twain-related Americana). Unlike Disneyland, way out in Anaheim, this newest Disney themepark would be right in the middle of the country, and much more accessible to the East Coast.

It was at this party when Busch, a little tipsy on the beer that made his fortunes, said the following to Walt:

"Any man who thinks he can design an attraction that is going to be a success in this city and not serve beer or liquor, ought to have his head examined."

According to Foglesong, "Walt Disney didn't say anything. He merely raised his right eyebrow in response to the offending remark."

The Mayor of St. Louis and the city's denizens apologized profusely, but to no avail. Disney immediately flew back to California. St. Louis bankers flew out no less than three times to try and change Walt's mind, but had no success. The St. Louis Disneyworld wasn't to be; instead, a huge plot of land was purchased south of Orlando for the cost of a song (song, hell: more like the first verse of a very short song), and, well, we all know the rest of this story, don't we?

This happened nine years before I was born. My parents were teenagers in St. Louis at the time. My Dad ended up in construction, ending up in Central Florida, where his company helped build much of the Disneyworld expansion of the late-1980's all the way to the present day, including many places where they do serve alcohol.

And that's really just a drop in the bucket of the literally billions of things that changed for so many, over one stupid beer-soaked remark from a St. Louis aristocrat. Anecdotes like that, you start to question how much control you really have over your life, and how the silliest little comments and gaffs from people "large" and "small" ripple outward until the effects are insansities like St. Louis up there with Vegas as "Vacation Capital of the World" and Lake Buena Vista as just another gator-populated body of water surrounded by orange groves. Or, vicey-versey: as it really is.

A story like that reminds me of when a man came to the soda factory my great grandparents owned in New Jersey. He offered to buy their factory and buy out the company for a decent sum, with stocks in the company he represented and a solid stake in the company's future, even offering them the chance to be the North Jersey bottlers of this new product. The man represented a rival soda firm, and the deal was off when my grandmother's aunt (I think) took one sip of the rival soda and thought it tasted like medicine.

The rival soda, as you probably guessed, was Coca-Cola. They put Kelly Beverages out of business anyway, and we were out a fortune that could have made me the biggest, most trust-funded bastard you'd never want to meet.

I feel more proud for the ancestor who turned down Coke for her integrity than anything else, but many in our family still share that nagging sense of "What if?" Nevermind that she was right about Coke, especially compared to the high-quality pop Kelly Beverages made, as I've been told at family gatherings. We could have been millionaires! Billionaires! I'd have been a polo player instead of a drummer!

The point is that so much is predetermined over decisions (many of them, on the surface, silly and capricious decisions) made well before we were even thought of, and as much as we like to think we're "self made" and "blaze our own trail," the past and its (to use Robert Penn Warren's word in "All the King's Men") Burden laid a template that is difficult to break, assuming you want to break it in the first place.

This grip on the past and the desire to break it surely had an effect on James Joyce, Richard Hell, Bob Dylan, Warhol, and Madonna, among others I'm too stupid to recall right now. It has surely inspired many a move to Florida, or the proverbial Big City. Such moves just lessen that unbreakable connection.

I'm just fascinated with it more than anything.