Remember when you were a kid and lost a tooth? Your tongue kept going into the gap like it couldn’t believe something was missing. I had the same experience when we drove down Aquamsi Street south past the Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge. (Click on any photo to make it larger.)
Something was missing.
Old MO Dry Dock building torn down
I happened to be looking at an earlier post of the Missouri Dry Dock area and saw what it was: the old brick building at the north end of the dry dock was gone. March 22, 2010, was a lot cloudier day than Oct. 20, 2011, when the top photo was taken..
Only a foundation on April 17, 2011
I don’t know exactly when it was torn down, but all that’s left is a foundation north of the large yellow building and south of the bridge in this aerial taken April 17, 2011. The building on the left is SEMO’s River Campus.
So, Ken I have to know how you’re always getting these aerial photos. Are you a pilot in your spare time? 🙂
Miz Toni Mam,
I see I need to clear up a couple of misconceptions.
1. I have no spare time.
2. I’m not a pilot. My old (in more ways than one) high school teacher Ernie Chiles was and is a pilot. So long as I bring along a few milkbones for his seeing-eye dog, I’m welcome to go into the wild blue with him. (His dog has the cutest parachute. I don’t get one, so you see where HIS priorities are.)
His airplane is taking a nap because something that keeps that spinny-around thing in the front spinning is sick, so I won’t have any fresh aerials this trip. I have enough from my last two flights to last quite awhile, though.
I stuck my head into Old Town Cape a couple days ago. It’s not the same without your smiling face.
It is gone! I was in town…but I swear I did not have anything to do with it!
My dad who was a great signpainter for General Sign Company for many years,he always tells the story of painting on the side of the drydock. It seems a large tug was going by and jiggeled stage they were standing while painting. Plop, my dad was in the water and when he surfaced he was going down the river, quickly. Lucky for him a guy wire was hanging of the rear of the Drydock and he grapped it and pulled himself back of the dry dock at the end when you climb out easily.
As my dad tells the story, he dried off, changed clothes and finished the job. This story was collabarated many times over the years by fellow painters so I know this to be a true tale from Cape!
I still miss the old bridge.
Audrey,
If you need an Old Bridge fix, here are some links to stories I’ve done in the past:
A photo of the bridge in an old post card.
Crash on the bridge, a reminder of how narrow it was.
The last days of the old bridge.
The old bridge at night.
There are probably more.
It was terrifying to cross that old bridge. I used to have nightmares about it and the downtown flood wall when I was a kid.
every time i see the new bridge i think i am back in boston, just not cape
Ken, the process of tearing down the old Missouri Dry Dock and Repair machine shop began in March, 2011 and was complete by the time you took the second set of photos in late April. It too, succumbed to the wrecking ball like Morrison Ice and Fuel this year. I am sad that the old machine shop is gone. I have happy memories of entering the shop with my grandfather, Elmer Robinson, and visting with one of the machinists there, Brian Hassel of Paducah, Kentucky. Mr. Hassel introduced our family to trout fishing in Yellowstone National Park.
I haven’t been able to track down the date when that building was built but it was sometime between 1931 and 1940.