Author: Ken Steinhoff

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Fishing in Cape

These two boys must have stopped by my house on their way back from fishing on Cape LaCroix Creek. I see my old toy tractor on the left behind them and the family’s 1959 Buick LaSabre station wagon on the right.

I think the fellow on the left is one of the Fiehler boys and the fish killer on the right is Kent Verhines‘ brother (Brad?).

A lesson in photography

I ran into this boy on Broadway at Capaha Park. It was a rainy day around dusk, do I debated whether to shoot him with flash or available light.

The flash photo is crisper and more contrasty, but the raindrops reflected light back at the camera and the background went almost all black.

Available light photography

The available light shot isn’t quite as sharp, but it more accurately captures the “drowned rat” look of the kid. I almost avoided flash whenever possible. After all, if God wanted you to use flash, he’d have lit the world with lightning instead of the steady light of the sun.

More kids in the rain

These kids were walking along splashing in puddles right about the time I saw the fisherman. You can tell it was shot with flash because of the light reflecting off the raindrops. That’s the reason why you don’t drive with your high beams on when it’s snowing or foggy. The light will reflect back off the snow or fog.

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Cape Aviation Day, 1964

I saw a mention of an Air Festival  on the City of Cape Girardeau Facebook fan page. That, in turn, led me to the Cape Air Festival 2010 homepage.

Follow that link to get tickets for the 2010 Cape Girardeau Regional Air Festival to be held June 19 and 20. The U.S. Navy Blue Angels will be among the performers.

10,000 attended 1963 Aviation Day

Sounds a whole lot bigger deal than the July 26, 1964 Aviation Day I covered. I don’t have any details because that week is missing from the Google Archives. An advance story said that about 10,000 people attended the show in 1963.

Today’s tower looks more substantial

I don’t know if the thing that looked like a plywood tower in the old photos was something cobbled together for the air show or if it WAS the tower.

Municipal Airport Terminal

Today’s Cape Regional Airport has a modern tower, but I don’t think it’s populated. In fact, I’m not sure there are any commercial flights coming into Cape these days. I can remember climbing onto those old lumbering DC-3s for the Ozark Airlines hop into St. Louis.

Airport Security 1964-style

Flying was still special

Flying in those days was still special.People dressed in their Sunday go-to-meetin’ clothes and were greeted by stewardesses (they were all young women then) who were actually pleasant. Kids were given tours of the cockpit and given pilot’s wings, among other things.

Airlines worked hard to hook young fliers by promoting discounted “student standby” flights. I recognize my caboose has expanded since those days, but I believe the seats WERE larger back then.

I cheated a bit with the shot on the right. It wasn’t taken at Cape. We talked an airline into letting us shoot an illustration of some kind on one of their jets while it was at the gate at Palm Beach International Airport.

My son, Adam, who was used as a model, took advantage of the opportunity to see what’s behind the curtain.

Cape Girardeau Regional Airport

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Serendipity in Old Town Cape

I was walking down Main St. in October shooting mug shots of  store fronts. Some of the buildings had neat patterns of light and shadow. Others had some nice reflections. Others were just there.

I shot 10 frames of this building or parts of it. None of them were particularly inspiring. Just record shots in case it burned down next week.

What’s that in the window?

It wasn’t until I looked at the photos on a large screen that I saw the cat in the window. Here’s a slightly tighter crop of the same photo. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

He / She was in the frame taken at 15:50:18 and was gone in the next frame at 15:50:25. I would love to lie and say I saw the feline and managed to capture the decisive moment, but shooting it was pure, dumb luck.

Serendipity made the photo, not the photographer.

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You’ll Have No Name Except Deportee

Forty years ago, a photographer named Dallas Kinney won The Palm Beach Post’s first (and only) Pulitzer Prize for Migration to Misery. It was a series of photographs of migrant farm workers who made the circuit from North Carolina to South Florida following the harvesting seasons.

You can see his images here.

Dallas’ work is one of the things that drew me to The Post. I never came close to winning a Pulitzer, but I spent months and months – most of it on my own time – in the farming areas around Belle Glade, Pahokee and Immokalee in Florida documenting as much as I could about how produce gets to our tables.

Woodie and Arlo Guthrie’s Deportees

At some point, I heard Arlo Guthrie singing his dad’s song, Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos), an account of a “skyplane” that blew up over Los Gatos canyon while it was flying illegal workers back to Mexico. The news accounts listed the names of the flight crew, but as far as the 27 men and one woman being deported, the “radio says they are just deportees.”

No name but “Wetback”

That song came to my mind when I was hanging around the Collier County Stockade when the Border Patrol was making one of its sweeps. Since they were “detainees” and not inmates, the stockade officials didn’t track their names, just the count.

They were known by no name except “Wetbacks.”

Over the years, I married the photos and song into a slide show I used for dog and pony shows. I’d post it that way, except that it would violate Copyright and YouTube would pull it down. 

Gallery of farm worker photos

Click on the first image, then click on the sides to move through the gallery. The lyrics to the song, Deportees are the title of each picture (at the bottom left).

01-Wetbacks
The crops are all in,
The peaches are rotting;
The oranges are piled in their creosote dumps.
They're flying you back to the Mexican border,
To pay all your money to wade back again.
My father's own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life.
My brothers and sisters come work in the fruit trees,
And they rode the trucks until they took down and died.
Goodbye to my Juan,
Goodbye Rosalita.
Adios mis amigos, Jesus and Maria.
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane.
And, all they will call you will be Deportees.
Some of us are illegal,
And others not wanted.
Our work contract's out, and we have to move on.
600 miles to the Mexico border, they chase us like outlaws, like rustlers and thieves.
We died in your hills;
And we died in your deserts;
We died in your valleys;
We died on your plains;
And we died in your bushes.
We died in your trees,
Both sides of the river, we've died just the same.
Goodbye to my Juan,
Goodbye Rosalita.
Adios mis amigos, Jesus and Maria.
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane.
And all they will call you will be Deportees.
The skyplane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon.
Like a fireball of lightning, it shook all our hills.
It blew all our best friends all scattered like dry leaves. The radio says they are just deportees.
Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves and rot on your topsoil and be known by no name except Deportee?
Goodbye to my Juan.
Goodbye, Rosalita.
Adios mis amigos, Jesus and Maria.
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane.
And all they will call you will be Deportees.

[Editor’s note: some of the photos may not be of the best quality. They are second or third generation copies of second-quality prints left over after I sent the best ones to engraving. Some day I’ll get around to scanning the original negatives, but not this time.]

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