The big news in The Missourian Nov. 20, 1965, was a 700-pound wheel that broke off a city motor grader and went bouncing down the 700 block of Broadway. It smashed a window at Shoppers’ Warehouse Market, Inc., then bounced into in the side of Mrs. Diane Kincaid’s car. No one was injured. Cape Girardeau Patrolman Jeffery L. Steger is investigating.
That’s the most newsworthy photo – and the one that ran in the paper – but some of the other frames I shot that day are interesting from a historical standpoint.
Pete Koch’s Sinclair Station
I tried to read the price on the pumps, but I couldn’t make it out. My guess is that it was about 36 cents a gallon in 1965. The building and pumps have been replaced by a convenience store named Downtown Sinclair.
Downtown Sinclair in 2009
If there are any gas pumps around, I can’t see them in this photo. The Dino the Dinosaur sign has been replaced by one directing you to Centenary Church.
Familiar buildings on Broadway
The phone company building still has its microwave tower used for long distance back in the days before fiber optic cable. With a little imagination, I thought I could read that a Steve McQueen movie was playing at the Esquire, but I couldn’t make out the name of which one.
I can make out signs for Bill’s Pharmacy and Wayne’s Grill, the home of the best filet I’ve ever eaten. It was a Saturday payday ritual to stop off and have one of those bacon-wrapped steaks.
Crash attracted crowd
A crowd gathered, with much looking, speculating and theory-thrashing. In one of the photos in the gallery, someone with a movie camera showed up, probably from KFVS-TV.
Photo Gallery of the Big Tire Crash
Include are all of the shots taken in 1965, plus contemporary photos of the neighborhood in 2009. Click on any image to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to move through the gallery.
Downtown Sinclair is own now by my cousin Keith Huckstep.
Does he still sell any Sinclair products or did he just keep the name?
I doubt that such a crowd would be possible today. I don’t think there are that many people on Broadway at any one time in this era. They’re all out at the mall.
Ken, when you wrote, “went bouncing down Broadway,” I immediately thought to myself, “he really means DOWN Broadway.” I wondered what sort of momentum a big tire could pick up going down that hill. But I guess the street isn’t so steep in the 700 block.
BTW, I’m dusting off cobwebs here, but I don’t think I ever saw gas as expensive as 36 cents a gallon until a few years after 1965. In 1970, when we were first married and heading toward our first teaching jobs, we crossed the Mississippi into Illinois (quite a ways above Cape G). At the first exit I saw gas that was over 40 cents a gallon. Made me want to turn around and go back. But it turned out that was an anomaly.
It’s obvious that you’ve ridden a bike up that stretch of Broadway as it comes up from the river.
You’re right. If the wheel had broken off on that stretch, it wouldn’t have stopped until it hit Illinois.
Michigan prices might have been cheaper than Cape, then. Except when Thoni’s was having a gas war and the prices would dip as low at 19 cents, I recall paying about 36 cents for it.
I about flipped out when I gassed up in LaBelle, FL, in about 1973. Gas there was 45 cents a gallon, more than I had paid anywhere else in the country.
A gas station in West Palm Beach went out of business and posted their gas prices as 99.9 when they locked the doors. We ran a picture of it in the paper as being such an outrageous idea that we thought it
newsworthy.
My brother sent me a photo of some gas price signs he bought in Cape and had framed. They showed ETHYL at 15, 16 and 17 cents (tax included).
I worked as a bus boy and dishwasher at Wayne’s Grill in 1965, and a short time later at Shoppers Big Star as a bag boy and in the produce section. Cool to see those places!
My dad would come to Wayne’s Grill and have their $.90 hamburger steak (a poor man’s fillet: ground beef wrapped in bacon). I think the fillet was $1.90 when I worked there. Wayne cut his own meat and put together those fillets. I never got to do that, but I did grind the meet for the hamburgers. His barbecue sandwiches were pretty good too.
I left the Trinity Lutheran School campus almost every day to eat lunch at Wayne’s grill. For 35 cents, the same as school lunch, I could get a burger and a Coke. 15 cents more would get me fries.
The filet mignon was $1.25, the best steak bargain I’ve ever run across. I think it came with a limp salad and fries. Scrumptious coconut cream pie cost about a quarter.
I’m not sure I ever tried the BBQ. Dorothy – Mrs. Wayne – was always friendly and outgoing. Wayne always seemed a little on the dour side. I don’t know that he said half a dozen words to me the whole time I ate there.
Ken thanks once again for the memories. In the one of your photos “Ochs Florist” is visible. I worked part time for Henry “Hank” Ochs at his green house on Cape Rock Drive my Jr. and Sr. years at CHS (58 – 60). We grew the mums and carnations worn at most CHS dress up events and was sold at his store on Broadway (ran by his wife and daughter). During the holidays, I would drive Ochs’ delivery truck for home deliveries of Easter lilies, potted plants, poinsettias, etc. etc. I was paid the awesome salary of .75 cents and hour for my efforts. A side benefit of working for Ochs was my dates always had greatest flowers.
I just love seeing these pictures and reading all the comments that follow. I worked at the Broadway Theater for $.50 an hour. All the people that worked there where very nice and dressed in nicely pressed clothes. We all got along & I wish I could find some of them agian.
Things have changed so much since we were young, especially the clothing.
I’ve written about the Esquire and the Rialto, but what’s left of the Broadway is so nondescript that you wouldn’t know it was a theater if you didn’t have a long memory.
I’d love to get inside to see there’s anything worth shooting.
He works on cars an inspects cars. He keeps his Drag car there. He does have some old Sinclair Products there that he wont sell
Hey remember the Vandevens Store on the corner?
I not only can remember the store, I posted a bunch of photos of Vandeven’s at this link.
See if you remember it the same way I pictured it.
Too perfect. The women in the photo (Mrs. Kincaid) isperfectly styling for the mid 60s in the mid west.
thanks Ken, great stuff as usual.
It was a C-store from 86 to 88. Then It sat as a storage unit. In 1995 I moved Downtown Sinclair after selling the Main street property to the Boyd Gaming Group. Downtown Sincalir has been a auto repair shop since 1961. 50 years in service.
Was your mother Betty Winfrey of Poplar Bluff, MO? I knew the Winfreys for about 70 years. Is your wife’s name Nancy?