Cape Girardeau Downtown and Riverfront Archives

May 25, 2012

Cobbles on a Rainy Night

The headline tells it all. Taken August 3, 1967. You can click on the photos to make them larger.

On the other side of the tracks

Well, maybe on the other side of the floodwall and in the MIDDLE of the tracks. Night view looking south on October 26, 2009.

The Mississippi River and the railroads shaped Cape Girardeau in the 19th and 20th centuries. Because of the western migration, it’s unlikely that the majority of Cape Girardeans hear the mournful whistles of the towboats and trains passing by and through the city.

If you’re feeling you’ve been left a little short with just these two photos, here’s a sampler from earlier that has a bunch of Cape pictures, including ones of the riverfront and bridge. Here’s a place where you can see photos I’ve linked to Pinterest.

May 20, 2012

Cup ‘N’ Cork

I shot this late in the day when the afternoon sun added warmth to the bricks and ironwork.The Cup ‘N’ Cork is located at 46 North Main Street, at the corner of Main and Themis. You can click on the photos to make them larger.

Cup ‘N’ Cork is THE place to meet

I’ve been in the Cup ‘N’ Cork at least a dozen times, including when I met Pat Sommers and Terry Hopkins there last fall. Way back in the background you can see a fellow wearing black and purple. That’s Gary Rust thinking Big Thoughts or doing whatever newspaper moguls do. In contrast, that’s Terry in the foreground.

It’s getting to be one of THE downtown meeting places. When I’ve asked folks where they want to get together, that’s one of the most-often suggested locations. The food is good, the pie is great and the wait staff and owners are friendly.

I guess I’ll have to stop thinking about eating and talking on my next visit so I can shoot the interior.

April 18, 2012April 16, 2021

Hats Off to Rain Art

The old newsroom at The Palm Beach Post was depressing. The walls at one time had been an institutional puke green, but tar from years of chain-smoking reporters and editors had coated them with a greasy brown film.

The desks, often shared by as many as three reporters would have been rejected by any self-respecting Salvation Army thrift shop. Dictionaries weren’t used to check spelling; they were used to prop up desks with the legs missing. The lighting was spotty and what ceiling tiles weren’t missing had been coated with cigarette tar like the walls, only worse. We could hear little feet scurrying around overhead and, from time to time, a rat would drop through one of the broken ceiling tiles and go scampering across the room, prompting otherwise worldly cop reporters to scream like little girls.

Purple-faced rage

The metal waste cans around the city desk were bent and twisted because the mercurial city editor would launch them through the air like a fieldgoal kicker. At least once a year, he’d lift a typewriter over his head and give it a heave in a purple-faced, vein-bulging rage. Some of the reporters had a pool going to bet how far the splatters would go if and when he turned into a fountain in the middle of the newsroom.

IBM Selectric typewriters had given way to an Atex publishing system with huge dumb terminals that probably exposed users to more radiation than a chest X-ray. These were hated and feared by the diehards who had only reluctantly given up their manual typewriters a couple of short years before.

The only good thing: room had no windows

The only good thing about the newsroom – from a photographer’s perspective – was that it had no windows.

In the good old days of Underwood typewriters that meant that an editor couldn’t look out the window, see it was raining and dispatch a photographer to shoot “rain art.” Modern technology spoiled that.

The company hadn’t thought to buy a building-wide UPS system to protect the Atex system from power flickers that turned the computers into expensive electronic canaries in our coal mine. Every summer afternoon, thunderboomers would build up and lightning would flash. Lights would flicker, the story on the green computer monitors would shrink down to a tiny dot, then wink out, and the room would turn blue with the waves of invective from reporters and editors who hadn’t followed the directive to save often.

THAT’S when the city editor would realize that weather was happening outside, dial Photo and demand rain art.

At least it wasn’t MY hat

I was convinced that the editor didn’t really care if you came back with a picture that could run in the paper. Geez, how much news is it if the reader can look out HIS window and say, “Look, Maude, it’s really comin’ down out there.”

No, the city editor just liked the idea of smirking at a drowned-rat photographer trailing water behind him as he walked though the newsroom on the way back to the darkroom. He REALLY liked it when your shoes squished.

The only consolation I could take was that I probably felt better than the guy who watched his favorite hat blow off his head, go floating down the street and get splashed by a passing car.

March 27, 2012February 25, 2015

Happy Hollow Fires, Rats, Caves and Ghost Whistles

Happy Hollow was one of those places like Smelterville where everyone knew there were problems, but solutions always seemed to escape. When the Lorimier School Parent-Teachers Unit complained in 1952 about open sewage flowing through the hollow near the school, creating a health hazard for the children, one councilman mentioned the possibility of erecting a fence around it.

Mrs. Lloyd Brooks, chairman of the Lorimier committee, countered, “I don’t know of any city that has a hole like that in the middle of town – and then thinks enough of the hole to fence it in.” (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

1966 Happy Hollow fire

The Missourian’s September 16,1966 photo caption said “Happy Hollow burst into a sudden inferno Thursday night, spewing fire and sparks and sending up a choking cloud of smoke to the southeast, limiting visibility and damaging residences. Two firefighters, Victor L. Pierce, left, and Capt. Charles Benton, drenched by water and perspiration, pour a stream of water into the billowing clouds of smoke.”

Fire could smolder through winter

The story continued, “Flames were brought under control Thursday night. However Fire Chief Carl Lewis said a fire of this nature is extremely hard to eliminate. He explained that smoldering is now beneath the surface of the dump and could continue for an extended period, possibly through the winter.”

Smoke nearly choked her

Mrs. F.M. White, who lives near the site of the fire at 512 rear William, said the smoke nearly choked her and her husband to death.

Firemen fought the flames through the night and were continuing the attempt to conquer the smoldering mass today. At one time, there were 11 firemen at the scene. Chief Lewis said the fire was the largest of this nature in more than 20 years.

Similar fire in 1934

The June 16, 1934, Missourian reported, “A fire which converted “Happy Hollow” and its rubbish heaps into a roaring furnace shortly after noon today was brought under control by firemen after a two-hour battle. No damage except to trees was done, as firemen worked in 100-degree temperatures to extinguish the blaze.

“The blaze started about 12:15 o’clock of undetermined origin and smoke and fumes filled the Happy Hollow ravine, which is located east of Frederick Street between Merriwether and William streets. Scores of automobile bodies, tons of paper, old clothes, boxes, barrels and other junk went up in the blaze. The fire department’s big pumper forced water from a hose line attached to a hydrant at William and Frederick streets, and the stench from the smoldering rubbish drove a curious crowd to cover.

“Firemen were aided by volunteers who helped turn the rubbish heaps so that water could penetrate them. The main part of the blaze was confined to a pile of rubbish about 25 feet deep. The place has long been used as a city dumping ground.”

Happy Hollow Cave

The area was full of attractive nuisances. The January 18, 1952, Missourian talked about the Happy Hollow Cave: City Engineer John Walther said today the city would be interested in razing and closing Happy Hollow Cave in exchange for the sandstone blocks of which the cavern is constructed.

The Missouri Pacific Railroad probably owns the cave, which is located in Happy Hollow, south of the railroad’s freight yards on Independence Street. Lorimier School is near the yards. The Lorimier School Parent-Teacher-Unit says the cave attracts children and is an unsuitable place for them to play.

The cave was built nearly 100 years ago as a cooling cellar for the old Hanney Brewery, but was abandoned decades ago. Since then it has become a hangout for vagrants, drunkards and other characters well-known to the police.”

Cavern not easy to raze

May 2, 1952: “A dragline crew today was destroying Happy Hollow Cave, the man-made cavern police called a hangout for vagrants and thieves, and parents called a menace to children.

The first, or east compartment of the cavern was dug up and filled Thursday and today the crew was working on the second compartment, which reaches under the Cape Coal Co. yard. Some difficulty is being encountered. The highest point of the arched ceiling is some 30 feet below the surface of the ground… And the sandstone block ceiling of the cave does not yield easily to the steel teeth of the bucket. Neither do the brick-lined wall of the connecting passageways.

The plan is to remove all the dirt from the top of the vaults, pull out all of the curved ceiling, then fill in the hole, leaving the vertical walls standing.”

Rats! Guess who got THIS assignment

When the job called for writing about the sewage treatment plant, getting up on a cold morning for a quarry rescue or going to the dump to count rats, I was the guy. On one of those Friday night bull sessions over at Arlene Southern’s house, we were griping about our jobs, like workers always do. When the discussion came around to me, I said, “They ought to hire some high school kid to write the obits and briefs and that kind of junk to free us up for the important stories.” When I looked around the table, everybody was grinning at me. That’s when I realized that’s exactly what jBlue had done – I WAS that kid.

The Missourian was pretty strict about not inserting yourself into a story, but I was given some latitude in this unbylined piece on September 26, 1966. The Google copy was pretty blurry, so I couldn’t grab it all.

“Superior brand of chiggers”

“A Missourian reporter spending a couple of hours with a camera at Happy Hollow Saturday afternoon found that the no-dumping signs placed at the former city dump have had very little effect.

He also found that the Happy Hollow is evidently the happy home of uncounted hundreds of rats. The rat in the photo wasn’t alone. By actual count, it had at least five others in the same pile of trash. Farm statistics of rat populations, quoted by the Missouri Extension Office at Jackson, show that for every rat sighted there are 50 others nearby.

The reporter’s notes added, ‘In addition to rats, garbage and mud – which comes from either sewer or seep water – Happy Hollow also breeds a superior brand of chiggers.'”

Happy Hollow is cleaned up

After decades of discussion, most of Happy Hollow has been filled in and cleaned up, at least the area from William Street to River Campus. This view is looking north from William on November 9, 2010.

South Fountain extension

This is South Fountain looking north toward William Street.

Aerial view of the area

This is the aerial I ran yesterday with the Houck Railroad bridges story.

Speaking of which, I posed the question, “I wonder if ghost whistles of Louis Houck’s engines can still be heard in the neighborhood at night. I’m sure reader Keith Robinson will tell us much more about the railroad.”

Keith outdid himself with this one.

Ghost whistles in the night

The area of Happy Hollow might well hear ghost whistles in the night.

Just south of the Morgan Oak viaduct, was the location of the untimely death of my great-great grandfather, Jesse Robinson in 1901 when my great grandfather, Goley Robinson was working for Houck’s Southern Missouri & Arkansas Railroad. The SM&A was the progenitor of all the tracks in downtown Cape and to the south.

According to the Coroner’s Inquest Report, Jesse was apparently run over by an SM&A train backing down the tracks when a double-bit crosscut saw that he was carrying over his shoulder caught the back end of one of the cars. He was 56 years old and my great grandfather was 19. As result, the Robinson family ended up in a house on the Louis Houck estate until the family could get on their feet.

Goley and his younger brother, Ivan, were locomotive firemen on a number of Houck’s railroads until they finally became part of the Frisco and Missouri Pacific. My great grandfather stated that he would sound a wavering whistle every time he passed over the spot where his father died.