Cape Girardeau History and Photos

December 17, 2014

Sides-Miller Men’s Store

Here’s another General Sign Co. sign from Terry’s Hopkins‘ dad’s box of photos. This one is for Sides-Miller Men’s Store at 625 Broadway. It must have been around Christmas time because of the reindeer decoration behind it.

Random news stories

December 6, 1948 – $4000 Loot in Men’s Store Theft – More than $4000 in cash and merchandise was taken from Sides-Miller Men’s Store, 625 Broadway, Saturday night or early Sunday morning by thieves who cut the three-eighths inch iron bars on a rear window and hauled away a 250-pound safe and armloads of men’s wearing apparel, police said today.
July 21, 1949 – Dog Saved Burglary of Store – Sides-Miller men’s store, 625 Broadway, from which burglars stole $4000 in cash and clothing last December 5, was booked a second time by St. Louis thugs last week but a barking dog and heavy iron bars changed the plans, Cape Girardeau police learned Wednesday through written confessions by two St. Louis suspects.
May 13, 1979 – New Sides-Miller – Bulletin-Journal: Sides-Miller Men’s Store, established on Broadway since 1947, has had a change of ownership effective May 1. Larry W. Barnes, a former Girardeau [resident], is the new owner. He and his wife Judi purchased the corporation from Eugene Sides. The name and location of the store will remain the same.
June 10, 1984 – Sides-Miller to close Cape store – Sides-Miller Men’s Store, after 37 years in business is closing out its stock of merchandise, reports Larry Barnes, owner. He said the store, located at 3 West Park Village, will dispose at a special sale all it merchandise during the next 60 days and will not reopen. He stressed that no merchandise in addition to the current inventory will be brought in for the sale. Barnes said his plans for the future are as yet uncertain.
August 17, 2004 – Eugene Sides – Eugene Sides, 91, of Cape Girardeau died Saturday, Aug. 14, 2004, at the Lutheran Home. He was born Jan. 4, 1913, at Indian Creek, Mo., son of Pearl and Jeffie Abernathy Sides. He and Lucille M. Herbst were married July 8, 1940, in Cape Girardeau. She died Aug. 12, 1994. Mr. Sides owned and operated Sides-Miller Men’s Store on Broadway from 1947 to 1980. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and the Korean Conflict. When he returned from Korea, he helped organize Little League baseball in 1952. He was a graduate of Southeast Missouri State University, and a member of Abe Stuber Boys. He was a member of Centenary United Methodist Church, past president of Centenary Men’s Club, and was president of Downtown Rotary Club in 1960. Survivors include a son, Ronald E. Sides of Springfield, Ill.; two daughters, Linda S. Craig and Brenda Sides Emerson of St. Louis; a brother, J.O. Sides of Cape Girardeau; a sister, Hazel Schloss of Jackson; and two granddaughters, Alison Sides and Nina Emerson.

December 16, 2014

Silver Bridge Collapse

Chuck Beckley, who was a high school kid working as a lab tech at The Athens Messenger 47 years ago, posted a photo to Facebook of a roadside marker that read:

Silver Bridge Collapse

Constructed in 1928, connected Point Pleasant and Kanauga, OH. Name credited to aluminum colored paint used. First eye-bar suspension bridge of its type in US. Rush hour collapse on 15 December 1967 resulted in 31 vehicles falling into the river, killing 46 and injuring 9. Failed eye-bar joint and weld identified as cause. Resulted in passage of national bridge inspection standards in 1968.

The model above is one that was exhibited at a fair I covered in Point Pleasant, West Virginia.

Who covered it?

Churck asked Bob Rogers, “Did I pick up film from the bus station for you and Jon [Webb], or Ken for this?”

It wasn’t me. I didn’t start working for The Messenger until the summer of 1968. On that particular day, I was on a train about half-way to Cincinnati headed back to Cape for Christmas break. At one of the stops, a passenger got on and started spreading the word about a big bridge collapse in Point Pleasant. He didn’t have a whole lot of details, and I was anxious to get home to see family and Girlfriend Lila, so I didn’t give it much thought.

I spent a lot of time later covering the building of the new Silver Memorial Bridge. Here are the piers of the old bridge. If the railroad bridge in the background is indicative of how well bridges were maintained in those days, it’s no wonder the bridge went down.

Over in less than a minute

Even though I didn’t cover the actual tragedy, I’m haunted by the gouges and scars on this pier. In other photos on that roll, you can still see cables and wires dangling down into the water.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology website explained it in chilling detail:

On December 15, 1967 at about 5PM the traffic signal at one end of the Silver Bridge turned red. The rush hour traffic, together with the Christmas shopping traffic, completely occupied the main span of the bridge connecting Point Pleasant, West Virginia with Kanauga, Ohio. Suddenly a loud cracking sound was heard and one of the main towers began to twist and fall.

In less than a minute, all three spans of the bridge collapsed into the icy Ohio River, carrying with them all the cars, trucks, and people. Forty-six died.

[The failure of an eyebar set the chain of events in motion] Once this eyebar failed, the pin fell out, unpinning this part of the suspension chain. The adjacent tower was subjected to an asymmetrical loading that caused it to rotate and allow the western span to twist in a northerly direction. This span crashed down on the western shore, folding over on top of the falling cars and trucks. Loaded by the whole weight of the center span, which had now become unsupported on its western end, the east tower fell westward into the river along with the center span. Finally, the west tower collapsed toward Pt. Pleasant and into the Ohio River, completing the destruction of the Silver Bridge.

Two bodies were never recovered.

Silver Memorial Bridge

I took this photo of the new Silver Memorial Bridge on December 6, 1969. The replacement bridge opened on December 15, 1969, exactly two years after the collapse.

When I went through that area last summer, I looked for any remnants of the old Silver Bridge. Either I was in the wrong place or every trace of it has been removed. I still think about what it must have been like to have been stuck in that traffic jam nearly half a century ago.

James Baughn’s Bridgehunter website has more information on the bridge and its collapse.

December 14, 2014

Florida Gas Below $2.50

I was all excited in Cape when gas dropped to $3.03 in September.

I’m not sure what it was when Sons Matt and Adam pulled up at this gas station when we were on vacation in the Southwest in the summer of 1990. It’s probably good I didn’t need to put Dino Supreme in my Dodge Caravan.

This afternoon, Wife Lila and I passed a gas station in Palm Beach County where the gas was less than $2.50. That’s pretty good for us; our taxes usually make it about a dime a gallon higher here than it is in Okeechobee County, northwest of us. (I always buy a lottery ticket when I gas up at a station there. You know how it seems like it’s always some out-of-the-way place in a little town that gets a winner. I keep hoping.)

Gas station stories over the years

December 13, 2014

Benjamin F. Hunter Cabin

If you look off to your right on the way down the lane to the Old McKendree Chapel, you’ll see an old log cabin if the weeds aren’t too high.

Sarah Stephens, wrote her thesis on Benjamin F. Hunter Log Cabin: A Social History Plan in fulfillment of the requirements for the B.S. degree in Historic Preservation in 2008. She did a great job of telling the history of the cabin, which was built outside Sikeston in the mid-1800s, taken apart in the early 1980s, then reconstructed on this site.

Rather than rehash the excellent job she did telling the history of the structure, the family who donated it, the conflicts that tore Southeast Missouri apart during the Civil War and the cabin’s eventual move, I encourage you to follow the link above. There’s something for just about anyone who is interested in the history of this region.

Think the Civil War was tough?

What I found as interesting as the historical notes surrounding the physical structure was the academic in-fighting that went on in determining where it was going to go. The first site was ruled out because it was going to become the Show-Me Center. The next site was ruled out when “the biology department threw a fit because that land was to be a bird sanctuary.”

” Next, they went to the college farm, marked off a site just East of Old McKendree Chapel and set the stakes and flags. Someone else got upset, so they couldn’t have it there. It ended up that they could have the corner of the present site of the house.”

What’s happening now?

I usually make it out to Old McKendree Chapel at least once every visit, and I’ve noted that there hasn’t been a lot of activity at the log cabin in recent years. It looked like the place was being treated with benign neglect.

Ms. Stephens confirms that: “Interest in developing a living history farm and interest in the cabin dwindled as time went on and the work required to maintain the vision became over whelming.

In 1992 the driving force behind the effort, Dr. Arthur Mattingly, retired. Little work was done with the cabin after Mattingly left. Dr. Bonnie Stepenoff continued work on the cabin in the mid 1990s, including repairs on the roof, chinking and daubing the walls, placing a gate around the property, reglazing the windows, and conducting additional student research.

With the closing of the University Farm and the creation of a technology park in conjunction with the extension of East Main Street and a new entrance to Interstate 55 concern over the future of the cabin surfaced again. The Historic Preservation program along with the University Foundation have begun working to give the log cabin another chance. Finances remain the main issue with working with the house.

The future of the B.F. Hunter log cabin is uncertain, but with renewed interest and funding available the log cabin may be able to serve as a learning tool for preservation students and maybe one day for the community. The one lesson the B.F. Hunter log cabin has taught the University is the need to have long term goals which can be a reality.

Editor’s note: I don’t think Southeast Missouri State College has learned that lesson yet. The institution seems to be better at destroying historic landmarks than preserving them.