Buried under a century of time, the streets of F. Scott Fitzgerald's youth remain today, glimpsed through cracks in asphalt.
The trees, branches of memory, that he may have climbed and the stairs to the St. Paul Academy that he surely walked still await his steps.
One solitary third-floor window at 599 Summit, the window Scott must have stared out in despair, dividing his time between dreams of a golden girl and the writing of This Side of Paradise gives a glimpse to the past.
The University Club still holds dominion on Grand Hill, its view somewhat changed since the 1920s but still powerful and breath-taking.
The house of Marie Hersey, his best girl friend, this house where a young Ginevra King stayed during January of 1915, relaxes into the comfort of Summit Avenue. Ginevra King, without whom we may never have read "Winter Dreams" or The Great Gatsby, Ginevra King who stole Scott's heart and never returned it, and who saved all his letters through the decades even as she denied his importance.
That's what I really saw in St. Paul: the seeds of every story Scott Fitzgerald ever wrote, the backyards of his youth, the elusive grandeur of the Summit Avenue homes, the scene of a long-ago bobbing party that changed his life forever. No matter that he later declared that he didn't consider St. Paul his home; Fitzgerald's heart was lost here, and though he tried his entire life to regain it, he never found it again.
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