STE. GENEVIEVE SAYS `WELCOME BACK'

STE. GENEVIEVE -- Ste. Genevieve's tourist events, including its recent Fall Harvest Fest, are designed to make visitors imagine they traveled backward in time.

Sure, cars line some side streets and teen-agers sport jeans three times too big, but everything else is much as it was in the French colonial days when the town was founded.

Craftsmen line the streets peddling their wares. A woman wearing a long dress and apron strums her hand-held harp as her young companion sings "Edelweiss."

But there's more to the festival than a pleasurable day for tourists.

When Fall Harvest Fest was established last year, it was a cry for people to return to Ste. Genevieve's downtown after the town was left foundering because of the Mississippi River flooding.

While the area's levee held and downtown stayed dry, emergency aid coordinators used the media to warn tourists to avoid Ste. Genevieve.

Businesses were closed for only five days, but low sales blighted them all summer.

"It really started in April," said Marty Kaegel, publicity chairwoman for the French Colonial Ste. Genevieve Merchants & Tourism Association. "We had an early flood that receded somewhat, but things got really bad around the Fourth of July."

Bastille Days, scheduled for four days in July, was the first 1993 tourist event to go. The Jour de Fete followed in August, canceled for the first time in 27 years. The county fair, canceled.

About the only out-of-towners visiting Ste. Genevieve were there to fight the flood. Some of them wandered through Kaegel's Country Collectibles and other downtown shops, but no more than a few a day.

It was discouraging for Kaegel, who had moved to Ste. Genevieve from Webster Groves just over a year before. She and her husband bought their antique and collectible shop to get out of the fast-paced St. Louis life.

"It could have been a catastrophe if the levee had broken," she said. "Fortunately, we didn't sustain any direct damage."

A few downtown merchants, some not doing much business before the flood, were forced to close. Others took out Federal Emergency Management Agency economic hardship loans to stay solvent.

Once tourists were told to stay away, it was tough to get them back, even though floodwaters had receded by late August.

The downtown merchants hatched a plan to turn a one-day Voyage de Sainte Genevieve balloon event into a two-day Fall Harvest Fest, where all booths would be filled with Ste. Genevieve businesses.

"It went over well, being billed as the whole town pulling together and putting on a festival just like we pulled together to fight the flood," Kaegel said.

This year's fest, Oct. 22 and 23, attracted more tourists than its predecessor. New shops filled formerly deserted storefronts, and tourists traveled down the levee walk, dedicated to those who helped save Ste. Genevieve.

For many, it was a time to remember.

Claire Condon, an artist with an affinity for French folk songs, sat on Third Street last weekend, playing her harp and singing for passers-by. She recalled the end of last July, when there was no running water, the noise of sand-carrying dump trucks filled the air and she had to evacuate her precious art studio.

"But it was a very spiritual experience for the whole town," Condon said. "Everyone worked together day and night, interested in saving the town. When we canceled our tourist events, we knew everyone would understand there was no way we could have festivals. Our priority was restructuring our lives after the water went down."

Carol Flieg, who owns a farmer's market in Ste. Genevieve, spent the Fall Harvest Fest selling fresh honey and Indian corn. While her business wasn't affected by the flood, Flieg said many Ste. Genevieve residents were depressed about all the water. Last year's fest was a shot in the arm.

There is still much work to be done on homes, roads and sewers in Ste. Genevieve.

But the tourist trade is alive and well, thank you, and the merchants are smiling again.