Photos around Cape Archives

January 13, 2010January 14, 2010

Dr. Herbert Is the Reason I Can’t Eat Popsicles

Ken Steinhoff in front of Dr. Charles T. Herbert’s office

A little white building that struck fear in my heart

Dr. Charles T. Herbert had an office in a small, white brick building at 824 Good Hope St., directly across from St. Francis Hospital. That was the place where my parents took me for all my vaccinations, school exams, Boy Scout camp physicals and for coughs and sniffles.

I was prone to sore throats, so I’d get hauled off to see Dr. Herbert and his nurse, Miss Mohr, several times a year. [Note: I originally spelled the name Moore, but consensus seems to be building that the correct spelling is Mohr. I’ll make the change, but I’m wishy-washy enough to change it back if the tide turns.]

I’d sit on this table that was covered with something like waxed paper and wait my fate. Eventually, he’d bustle into the room with the scary reflector thing on his head and reach for the tongue depressor.

Open W-I-D-E, here comes the depressor

That tongue depressor was made out of an unsanded 2×4. After about a half an hour of peering this way and that way, making “Uh huh and Hmmmm” sounds, he’d reach into a glass container that looked like a malt glass and extract a 12-foot-long cotton swab that he’d dip into Mercurochrome.

Putting all his weight on the tongue depressor which has been sandpapering my tongue, he’d jam that swab so far down your throat that I thought my toenails would be coated red. Then, he’d work it around like he was churning butter.

To this day, I can’t eat a Popsicle or anything else on a wooden stick. Some folks cringe when they hear fingernails on a chalk board. I don’t know if a tongue can cringe, but that’s what happens when mine is confronted with a wooden stick of any kind. Shivers are going up and down my spine right now just thinking about it.

Out of the Past

There was a note in The Southeast Missourian’s Out of the Past Column on Sept. 3, 2009, that mentioned the office:

25 years ago: Sept. 3, 1984

Dr. John M. Freeze, Cape Girardeau dentist, has purchased one-half of a building at 2857 Independence St., from Dr. Charles T. Herbert, whose offices occupy the other half; Freeze is relocating his office to the new space.

My mother thought that Dr. Herbert moved to Florida after he retired.

Dr. Herbert’s office in 2001

So, what’s the story about Mercurochrome?

It dawned on me that I can’t remember the last time I saw a bottle of Mercurochrome. It used to be a staple in Boy Scout first aid kits for cuts and scrapes. My grandson, Malcolm, is a walking petri dish and a spreader of Plague, but I haven’t heard his parents mention him getting his throat swabbed.

Someone else had asked that very question, “What happened to Mercurochrome?”

You’re dating yourself, pops. Few under age 30 have ever heard of this stuff. In 1998, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration declared that Mercurochrome, generically known as merbromin, was “not generally recognized as safe and effective” as an over-the-counter antiseptic and forbade its sale across state lines. A few traditionalists complained: Whaddya mean, not generally recognized as safe? Moms have been daubing it on their kids’ owies since the Harding administration! But the more reasonable reaction was: It’s about time.

For many years the FDA, faced with the task of regulating thousands of pharmaceuticals and food additives, many of which long predated federal oversight, has maintained the so-called GRAS (generally recognized etc) list, originally compiled as a way of grandfathering in products like Mercurochrome that had been around for ages and hadn’t hurt or killed a noticeable number of people. Recognizing that from a scientific standpoint such a standard left a lot to be desired, the FDA has been whittling away at the unexamined products on the GRAS list over time. Mercurochrome and other drugs containing mercury came up for scrutiny as part of a general review of over-the-counter antiseptics that began in 1978, and for good reason–mercury in large enough doses is a poison that harms the brain, the kidneys, and developing fetuses. While no one’s offered evidence of mass Mercurochrome poisoning, the medical literature contains scattered reports of mercury toxicity due to use of the antiseptic, and these days the burden of proof is on drug manufacturers to show that their products’ benefits outweigh the risks.

I sure wish the FDA had come to that conclusion about 55 years ago and saved me from a lifetime of Popsicle deprivation.

January 12, 2010January 12, 2010

633 Broadway Falls to Wreckers

633 – 635 – 637 Broadway at the corner of Sprigg

The Southeast Missourian had a story and photo of the demolition of a building at 633 Broadway on Tuesday’s web page. The property has been part of an ongoing controversy for some time. Rather than steal their content, I would encourage you to read it there.

While I was in Cape this fall, I walked Main Street, Water Street and Broadway shooting store fronts to try to compare them with the historical pictures from the 60s. Here are some pictures of the three buildings that made up 633, 635 and 637 Broadway on the southeast corner of Sprigg and Broadway.

The section of the building that was torn down for safety reasons was the part with three windows on the left side.

I always hate to see parts of Cape’s past disappear, but I remember thinking that the building was in sad shape.

Here is a gallery of photos of 633 – 635 and 637 Broadway

Select any image to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to move through the gallery.

January 10, 2010October 27, 2024

It’s Cold, Snow Foolin’

I can see from the weather reports that Cape is colder than West Palm Beach, but we still had ice on our bird bath this morning. The difference is that you folks EXPECT cold weather. It comes to kind of a shock to us South Floridians. Our last ice-on-the-bird-bath experience was last February and our last snow (although some folks claim it snowed or sleeted here yesterday) was 1977.

Here are some pictures from the late 60s of an ice storm that blew through Cape County.

Houck Railroad Cut between Cape and Jackson

This is the old Houck Railroad cut on Old Jackson Road between Cape and Jackson before my dad had a contract to widen the road.

Dad’s construction company won the job to blast the rock of the cut so the road could be made wider. One day he came home in a crankier than usual mood.

It seems that someone miscalculated the load of explosives for one of the blasts and a huge boulder went flying though the roof of a nearby house. Nobody was hurt, but it became a piece of family lore forever after. You can’t go past that spot without someone commenting about “the day that….”

Here’s a more recent picture of the cut and an account of a bike ride through it, including a trip over a bridge I’d rather forget.

Cape LaCroix Creek Bridge

This looks like the new Cape LaCroix Creek bridge on Route W – Old Jackson Road – shortly after it was built. The view is to the southeast.

If I’m correct, the road running along the bottom of the treeline was a shortcut that followed the creek and bypassed the normal intersection of Old Jackson Road and Boutin Dr. and came out near the Heartland Care Rehab Center. The road has been abandoned for years.

I am told that there was an abandoned old house on that road, just after you crossed a steel bridge, that had a short lane that provided an observation platform for young folks who wanted to watch satellites pass overhead. Google Earth shows that the bridge might still be there, but there are trees hiding where the house used to be, so I couldn’t tell if it had finally fallen in.

Here’s a gallery of other ice photos

Click on any image to enlarge it, then click on the left or right side of the picture to move through the gallery.

January 7, 2010September 23, 2011

The Principal Was Not Amused

I don’t know if I was driving by the school or if someone tipped me off, but I took a picture of the American Flag flying upside down over the Nell Holcomb School on Sept. 7, 1967. The flag in that position is an international signal for distress.

International Distress Signal

The Southeast Missourian ran the picture with some kind of cute cutline.

The ink on the paper must have still been wet when the principal called to ream me out for embarrassing him and his school. You can’t really SEE purple veins sticking out on someone’s forehead over the telephone, but I had a clear sense that they were.

After letting him vent for awhile, I gave him the only answer I could come up with: “I’M not the one who raised the flag.”

That reminds me of an important lesson that proved more valuable than anything I was ever taught in school.

How to deal with irate callers

I was dealing with an irate caller at The Jackson Pioneer one afternoon, being as nice and polite as only a well-brought-up high school kid can be.

When I got off the phone, the editor, with a bemused look on his face, said, “Kid (they always called me Kid), let me show you how to deal with that kind of call.”

He picked up the telephone receiver and said into it, “Yes, mam, that was clearly the most egregious act of nincompoopery that has been committed since the cooling of the earth’s crust. If it was within my power, I would have that incompetent jerk flogged, if not shot, as an example to the rest of the profession.”

Hang up

‘Now,” he continued, “here’s the trick. Right in the middle of your diatribe, hang up. Right in the middle of the sentence. Nobody would ever think you’d hang up on yourself; they’re going to assume it was a telephone glitch. If you’re lucky, you’ve managed to work them out of their mad and you’ll never hear from them again. To be on the safe side, though, NOW would be a good time to walk across the street for a cup of coffee. Let one of your coworkers be the one to catch the call if she’s still got bile to spill.”

The only thing they remembered

After I moved out of the newsroom and into telecommunications, I’d tell that story when I was training call center personnel. I never actually heard a customer service agent do that, but I know that it was usually the only thing they’d mention from their training when I’d run into them in the hallway years later.