Ken Steinhoff, Author at Cape Girardeau History and Photos

May 21, 2010May 21, 2010

Class of 65 Sophomore Party

Yesterday’s post showed the Freshman class of ’66 in the Tiger Den. Today, we’ll look at some pictures of the Class of 1965 at its Sophomore party.

I see a bunch of familiar faces at this table. There’s Steve Crowe, Ron Dost, Phil Vinyard, Della Heise, Chuck Dockins, Lonnie Blackwood and Vicki Berry. [Note: Ms. Berry’s name is spelled Vickey, Vicki and Vicky in various Girardots. She signed one mine as “Vicky,” so that’s probably the right variation.]

I keep looking at the guy on the right side of the table with glasses and wondering if that’s me. The only thing that makes me think it’s not is (a) I’m usually the one SHOOTING the pictures and (b) I don’t play board games. (I call them bored games.)

That might be Jim Stone

The guy dancing on the far left might be Jim Stone.

Is that Irvin Beard on the left?

I think that might be Irvin Beard, Class of 63, on the left. He was on the school photo staff. The girl in the middle, facing the camera, looks like Joan Amlingmeyer. Of course, since I’m not even sure of what I looked like, it’s hard to take any of my guesses seriously.

Dancing as a no-contact sport

Larry Points commented on my photos of the Capaha Park Pool Party, “My immediate observation would be that this was before corn fructose was put in everything…were we really all that thin back then? Dance moves also seem tentative, like the era of never making jitterbug contact again had just begun.”

He may have been onto something.

May 20, 2010April 10, 2016

Central High School Freshman Dance

I have two batches of negs. One was marked Freshman party; the other said Sophomore party. I’m going to break them up into two postings to make things a little less confusing.

Is this the 1966 Freshman Class?

I think I recognize some of these kids as being futures members of the Class of 1966. Anybody want to take a stab at filling in the blanks?

Was this the Tiger Den?

The sign by the door says “Book Exchange,” but this has the feel of the Tiger Den. I tried to get a photo of the Tiger Den when I was back in October, but that part of the building has been reconfigured into classrooms. The door was locked, so I gave up.

Soda machines with glass bottles

I ran a picture of this drink machine on my bike blog when I was advocating a glass bottle tax or deposit to encourage folks to recycle their beer bottles instead of throwing where I run over them.

There may be some Class of 65 guys here

I’m not positive, but I think I see some guys from my Class of 65 prowling around looking for freshmen girls.

Dancing builds up a powerful hunger

I’ll run photos from the Sophomore party tomorrow. I recognize a lot of those folks as being in the Class of 1965.

May 19, 2010July 29, 2015

Cub Scouts at Arena Park

Virtual buddy Missourian photographer Fred Lynch dredged up a Frony photo of square dancing in the Arena Building from the 50s.

I have a variety of photos from the park, but these of Cub Scout activities were the first that bubbled to the top of the pile. I think the Scout leader sporting the drill instructor’s campaign hat is Rich Renfro.

The flags in the background look like the same ones in Frony’s picture. I wonder if they’re still there. They could have been 48-star flags in those days.

Game with wheel and stick

Outside the Arena Building, there was some kind of competition involving rolling a wheel with a stick.

How you hold your tongue is important

Pinewood Derby Gallery

Time has not been kind to these negatives, but I’ll throw them out here anyway. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to move through the gallery.

May 18, 2010October 19, 2011

Capaha Park Pool Party

I got an email this morning from The City of Cape Girardeau promising that the new Cape Splash Family Aquatic Center will be opening on May 20. (Whoever came up with that name must have been paid by the word. I bet everybody ends up calling it The Water Park.)

I showed some photos of it under construction last month (and discussed Jackson’s Lickitysplit Water Slide).

Capaha Pool Dance

Let’s don’t dwell on the future, let’s wallow in the past. This appears to be a dance on the deck of the Capaha Park Pool. I don’t have a clue what the event was, when it was held or why.

It had a band

It was a big enough deal that a real band was playing and there were lots of spectators outside the fence. Despite all of the electrical cords stretched across the pool deck, apparently nobody got electrocuted. I’m pretty sure I would have remembered that.

I DO remember covering a swimming event there one night with a borrowed electronic flash. The way old-time strobes worked was that batteries would charge up a capacitor so there was lots of juice just waiting around to arch across a tube, producing a blast of light that was thousandths of a second in duration.

I was walking across the pool deck when my wet finger touched the place where the charging cord would normally plug in. There SHOULD have been a cover over those contacts, but there wasn’t.

As soon as my finger completed the electrical circuit, all of the voltage stored in the capacitor tried to light me up like a xenon tube. Failing that, it dropped me to my knees like I’d been poleaxed.

It wasn’t life-threatening, but it WAS unpleasant.

Looking for non-fried memories

This wasn’t the only time I had something like that happen. I was walking across a wet football field one night when I was knocked flat. I assumed that I had stepped in front of a play accidentally, but there was nobody around me.

I got up, took a few more steps and it happened again. Turned out that I had a short in the 510-volt battery pack that powered the electronic flash. The massive charge was looking for a path to the wet ground, and I happened to provide it.

Maybe one of you who hasn’t had his or her short / long-term memory fried by high voltages will be able to tell us who these folks are and what they are doing.