Photos around Cape Archives

April 13, 2016November 17, 2021

Girl Scout Camp Latonka

I’ve been scanning a lot of Boy Scout stuff recently. Dad, my brothers and I were members of the Anpetu-We lodge of the Order of the Arrow, the Boy Scout National Honor Society. I liked the Order better than the Boy Scouts because we were older boys, selected by our troops, and dedicated to service. We spent weekends building things and doing repairs at Camp Lewallen, for example; things that we could point to years later and say, “I built that.”

While doing a search, I ran across a note on Facebook saying that “as the Brotherhood of Cheerful Service, we have an opportunity to assist the local Girl Scouts at Camp Latonka again this year.” I hadn’t been on a work day since probably 1967, and I had never been to the Girl Scout camp located on Lake Wappapello in Wayne County. This was going to be a chance to kill two birds with one stone.

The worker bees

When I got to the camp, I saw several trucks and cars around the dining hall, but there was no sound of saws, hammers or other activity, so I just roamed around shooting mug shots of the facilities.

I finally ran into the group taking a lunch break before heading down to tear rotted boards off cabins, do some painting and general clean up. I shot this group photo of the Order of the Arrow members and The Friends of Camp Latonka in front of a stack of rotten wood that would be burned in a bonfire later.

A beautiful site

Without going into a lot of detail, some of which can be found here, a merger found the Girl Scouts with two camps in Wayne county. The Missouri Heartland board decided to retain Camp Cherokee Ridge at Patterson, and “divest” lands not needed, like Camp Latonka.

If I was cynical, I would say that the Latonka site, with waterfront access to Lake Wappapello and great overlooks of the lake, would be prime pickings for developers, with the proceeds going to support other Heartland activities. Fortunately, there was enough of an outcry that the camp has been given a new lease on life. It still depends heavily on donations and volunteer labor to keep going.

Camp mugshots

Pictures of people can be divided into portraits, which attempt to capture a person’s personality, and mugshots, which are merely records of facial features. Since I had never been to the camp before, I knew nothing of the “soul” of the place. What you see are merely mugshots that I hope will stir some memories for some of the hundreds of girls who have passed through the camp. Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move around.

April 9, 2016

The Hole Gym

I heard that the old Central High School gymnasium was as dead as the War of 1812, but I wanted to see it myself. When I pulled up, I saw that the demolition area was surrounded by a fence.

I looked around to see if there was anyone I could ask to let me onto the site, but there was nobody around. Then, it dawned on me: if there is nobody around to GIVE me permission, then there’s also nobody around to tell me “No.” There were no “Posted” signs, so I walked along the fence until I came to the end of it where it was about three feet shy of touching the building. Noting that the space was large enough even for me, and seeing the dirt trampled down, I calculated that I wasn’t going to be the first person to use that entrance.

Not much to say about it

I mentioned in my last gym post that I didn’t have particularly good memories about physical education and the gym. I usually pick up a brick as a keepsake when I shoot an old building being torn down, but there wasn’t that much I wanted to remember about the place, so I passed.

Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the gallery. One thing that DID catch my eye in the debris: there was a lone black toilet seat in one spot, and a white one several yards away. I wonder why the restrooms would have different color seats?

April 5, 2016

New Life for Lorimier Apartments

A reader sent me good news the other day: the old Lorimier Apartments across from Indian Park at Lorimier and William are being worked on.

When I photographed them in July of last year, I figured they would keep deteriorating until they fell in.

Laura Simon wandered around

There was nobody around to ask permission to go onto the property when I drove by, but Missourian photographer Laura Simon spent some time documenting the place if you want to wander over to see her gallery.

Bridget Brown reported that Jason Coalter and Dustin Richardson of Centurion Development are doing the renovations. What’s interesting is that Bridget wrote the apartments were built in 1925, but I found Missourian stories mentioning the place as far back as June 7, 1919.

March 30, 2016

Cuba? No, Cairo. The Illinois One

My tummy was growling for the catfish dinner at Shemwell’s Barbecue in Cairo, and it was a race between which was going to come first: closing time at the restaurant or sunset. Maybe it was all the Cuba coverage with photos of vintage cars on the street that made me unusually car-aware, but suddenly I had to go around the block to take a second look at this guy parked next to a long-closed gas station.

It would have been nice to show more of the car, but there was a John boat parked alongside it that blocked most of it. Click on the photos to make them larger.

What is it?

When it comes to cars, I have a tenuous grip on my man card. Other guys could sit around for hours talking about their car’s innards: stuff about cubic inches, horsepower, turbo this and glass-packed that.

I only needed to know two things: (A) Will it get me there? and, (B) Will it get me back?

(A), in fact, was the more important to a news photographer. If I accomplished (A) and got the photo, then there was always somebody who would retrieve me (or, at least, retrieve the film).

What are we looking at?

I’m sure somebody will tell me more than I ever wanted to know about this vehicle.

Digging deep into my automotive knowledge, I’m pretty sure it ain’t gonna get me there.

A bonus point for anyone who can look at the gas station and tell what brand they sold.