Neman: The legend of the Des Peres pickle jar continues to fascinate and delight (2024)

Every year from 1949 through 2009, a mysterious figure in black placed four roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac on the grave of Edgar Allan Poe on Jan. 19, the anniversary of his birth. No one knew who did it, or why.

That’s nice.

Des Peres has a mystery of far greater complexity and intrigue. It involves a jar of pickles.

Every once in a while for the last 12 or 15 years or more, someone has been placing a jar of pickles on the concrete median barrier on the intersection of Interstate 270 and Manchester Road.

“It’s the most random thing,” says Kathy Stoddard, who works at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Des Peres, about a block from the intersection.

Stoddard has seen the jar “multiple, multiple times,” she says. It adds a cucumber-based injection of joy into her day.

“You’re waiting at the light, which is annoying. You say, ‘Oh, the pickle jar’s there.’ You’re happy when it’s there. You’re bummed when you don’t see it. You say, ‘No pickle jar today. Where’s the pickle jar?’”

Like Banksy, the English artist who works under the cover of night, no one knows the identity of the mysterious Placer of the Jar, or if people do know they are not saying who it is.

And that is as it should be. The delight inherent in a pickle jar on a concrete median depends entirely on the fact that the person responsible for it being there is unknown. If the mystery is gone, so is the fun.

The legend of the pickle jar has only grown over the years. It has its own Facebook page, Team Pickle (Des Peres, MO), with nearly 29,000 members. Some are as far away as Singapore, New Zealand and Malaysia.

Interest in the jar — or, let’s face it, jars — waxes and wanes over time, and so do the number of jar appearances. Interest in the jar has picked up, and so have its sightings, since a recent report about it on KTVI (Channel 2), says Corey Newgent.

Newgent is Parks and Recreation Manager, Facilities and Operations for the city of Des Peres. City Hall is close to the intersection where the jar can be found, and he says he has noticed it countless times in the 15 years that he has been working there.

Newgent had almost forgotten about the jar until the television news story about it. Then he started seeing the jar again.

“There’s no rhyme or reason. It’s just always there,” he says.

“It’s just a jar of pickles. It’s the dumbest thing ever. It’s the stupidest thing.”

The jar is rarely in the same place twice, he says. It moves, perhaps because of the difficult logistics involved in placing it at such a busy location without being seen. And that means looking for it can be hazardous, also because of the dangerous location.

When I talked to Newgent, he had most recently seen it on the entrance ramp to north I-270 from eastbound Manchester Road.

So that is where I went in search of it. And there, at the very end of the concrete barrier — just where Newgent said it would be — sat a jar of pickles.

I heard a choir of angels. It was like seeing Bigfoot. It was like seeing Bigfoot in the grotto at Lourdes.

On the other hand, it was also kind of like seeing a perfectly ordinary jar of pickles sitting on an unremarkable hunk of concrete.

Meanwhile, what we can call the pickle-jar effect continues to spread.

Heather Sherry works as a processor at Elite Title not far from the intersection in question. She has never seen the pickles, but she has recently heard about them from her daughter.

Her daughter told her about the jar a couple of Saturdays ago, on their way to a softball game. They were in Chesterfield, turning onto Interstate 64 from the Olive Boulevard/Clarkson Road interchange.

There on the concrete median was a jar of mustard.