St. Louis Bucket List

When you live somewhere, you think you have all the time in the world to go see the local sites. We had a general idea of things we wanted to see while we lived here, and now we're scrambling to check things off our list.

We finally made it over to the Scott Joplin House. It's where the famed ragtime composer lived as a newlywed in the early 1900's. It's believed this is where he composed his most famous piece, "The Entertainer." We got to pedal-pump the player piano and listen to "The Entertainer," watch a brief video on the composer's life, and tour the home. When we lived in our first apartment here, the exit we used on the freeway to get home was the exit marked with directions to the Scott Joplin house. So we were very close the whole time, but it took us almost four years to get over there.

Like the most famous composers, his life was too short and quite tragic. His first wife left him. His second died after just ten weeks of marriage. He spent all of his money trying to launch his opera which was received without any acclaim. He died penniless at only 49-years-old.

They have a quote from him on the wall, "Maybe my music will finally be appreciated fifty years after my death." Sixty years after his death, his opera was produced and Scott Joplin received the Pulitzer Prize for it.