Cape Girardeau Downtown and Riverfront Archives

July 6, 2012March 27, 2016

St. Vincent’s Church at Sunset

While we were waiting for the full moon and fireworks, Mother and I cruised the downtown area. The green lights on St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church (always referred to as St. Vincent’s) caught my eye as the sun was going down. Click on the photos to make them larger.

Previous St. Vincent’s stories

July 4, 2012July 4, 2012

Fireworks and Fishing

Fireworks and fishing are a lot alike: just as soon as you pack up your equipment, good stuff starts happening.

Mother and I cruised down to the riverfront just before dusk hoping that we’d see some fireworks. There was a long, slow freight southbound loaded with coal when we got to Water Street. When the train rumbled clear, I spotted Emily Sheets (Class of ’13) and Billy Leighton looking intently along the tracks. (Click on any photo to make it larger.)

“Looking for coins, I bet. I doubt you’re going to find any after a train like that, but if you go to this website (handing her a card) and scroll back a few days, you’ll see what happens when you put a coin on the tracks.”

Emily has good instincts

A woman started to take this picture of this man and little boy. Emily stopped her coin hunt and offered to take a photo of the three of them together. I was impressed. I liked the way she sized up the situation and volunteered her services. I usually make the same offer, but Emily beat me to the punch. (Youngsters have faster reflexes.)

Full Moon

Wife Lila said the moonrise in Florida was perfect: big moon and clear skies. I remarked to a guy standing next to me that it was a little hazy coming up here.

“That’s not haze. That’s a layer of mosquitoes over in Illinos.”

He wasn’t kidding. Moments after the moon came up, we were swarmed by big, slow movers. I had two of them sucking blood out of my left thumb at the same time. That is NOT conducive to making sharp photos at slow shutter speeds. I could deal with their stabbing me, but the flapping of their wings caused my camera to bounce.

Roman candles

I was disappointed that not many folks brought fireworks. This family had no more than two or three Roman candles or what would pass for them.

Mississippi River on fire

The moon was up high enough now to set the Mississippi on fire.

Grand finale

This was as close as we got to a grand finale. Shortly after the sparks died down, the family started packing up. I took that as a cue to collapse the legs of my tripod and do the same. My poor tripod is close to 30 years old and its legs are beginning to collapse about like mine. Just about the the time the shot is all composed, I find that one or more of the legs is gradually slipping down, down, down.

Just as I got to the opening of the floodwall to leave, two young guys with two humongous paper bags walked through it. Like I said, fishing and fireworks: pack up your stuff and things start to happen.

I decided I’d donated enough blood to the mosquitoes. It was time to bail.

P.S. I’m going to try to convince Mother that it’s too dry for her to play with fireworks this summer. She tried to set my feet on fire last year.

June 26, 2012June 27, 2012

Yarn Bomb Day

Bob, Claire and I were walking around on Water and Main Streets when they spotted some knitted / crocheted (don’t ask me) objects on the park bench at the southwest corner of Themis and Main. I looked behind me and saw some sewing patterns in the store window, so I dismissed them as having to do with sewing notions.

There’s an other one

We crossed the street and spotted another one on a support post for the walk-through in front of 101 North Main, which doesn’t look like anything has been done to it since the last time I was in town. Our curiosity was piqued.

Claire and I went in to quiz the shopworkers in the store behind the bench. They disavowed all knowledge and weren’t much help in formulating a cool rumor to spread. They DID think they had seen the colorful “bombs” on Spanish and Broadway.

Bob documents the yarn bombs

We spotted more of the craft objects on a bench on the northeast and southeast corners.

We saw some folks standing in front of the Cup and Cork and started to ask them if THEY knew what this was all about. The new owner of the place, a nice guy named Patrick Abbot, said they were in the middle of dedicating the place, and he’d explain in a couple of minutes. We watched as a guy splashed the doorway with a clear liquid, then sprinkled a little on Abbot and a woman. It was a killer hot day, so I hoped I’d get a spritz, too, but it didn’t happen.

Abbot said that he watched a woman – a “unique individual.” was the way he put it – put the squares on the bench across from him. When she moved to the bench in front of his store, he asked her what she was doing.

International Yarn Bomb Day

“It’s for International Yarn Bomb Day,” she explained.

I did a quick Google News search and could come up with but two stories referencing anything about Yarn Bombing.

The Salisbury Journal (in the United Kingdom) had a story, “Visitors to Salisbury Citycentre this week may notice something a little bit different about the statue of Henry Fawcett in the Market Place. The statue was adorned with knitted decorations by a group calling itself the Ninja Knitters, marking Worldwide Yarn Bomb Day.“
nj.com reported, “FRENCHTOWN — More than two dozen yarn bombers descended on this tiny Delaware River town in Hunterdon County last night, June 8, to tie colorful knitted and crocheted handwork on trees, signs, posts and benches throughout the downtown. Yarn bombing, sometimes called guerrilla knitting, is a type of graffiti or street art that employs colorful displays of yarn or fiber rather than paint.“

A search for “yarn bomb” didn’t turn up any info in The Missourian.

[Note Homeland Security: if your searches turn up repeated mentions of the word “bomb,” be sure to read it in the full context of what has been written. I would hate to have an innocent post blown up out of proportion. (Oops.)]

June 7, 2012

Moon Over Mississippi River

Cops say “You can’t outrun Motorola.” I learned this evening in the ’60s that you can’t outrun the moon, either.

I don’t know exactly where I was when I spotted the full moon coming up over the horizon, but I knew I wanted to get the golden orb pulling itself out of the muck of the Mississippi River. I flogged all the horses under the hood of my ’59 Buick, but the moon kept getting higher and higher and smaller and smaller.

I shot this from Cape Rock. I hope I didn’t interrupt anybody or anything when I went skidding in squealing tires and throwing up a cloud of dust. I was disappointed enough with the result that I didn’t bother to print it.

I have a moon fixation

It surprised me when I did a quick search for moon stories in my two blogs. There’s a batch of them.