Cape Girardeau History and Photos

November 1, 2014

Happy Hallowthanksmas

Mother, Curator Jessica and I had a productive day roaming around southern Illinois and Southeast Missouri. With the late afternoon sun taking a dive to nap time, we decided to head home from Cairo by way of Charleston so my Ohio curator friend could see some of the buildings there.

This would be a good time for me to knock off Boomland, I told my passengers. I’d never been there, but it seems like it would be the kind of place a lot of my readers would enjoy.

We missed the Charleston store, but the signs said we would find another one at the Benton exit. I had to explain to Jessica about the Benton Hills.

Halloween and Thanksgiving

What I took to be a Halloween pumpkin and some corn, which might symbolize, Thanksgiving were by the front door.

Christmas trees on Halloween night?

In at least two display windows were Christmas trees. Christmas trees!!!

On HALLOWEEN night.

I don’t want to say this is rushing the season, but I was always taught that it was good etiquette to wait until the corpse got cold before asking the widow to dance.

P.S. I didn’t coin the phrase “Happy Hallowthanksmas;” someone else did, and Wife Lila passed it on to me.

P.P.S. Boomland is a fireworks joint at heart, so I won’t blame them for rushing the 4th of July.

October 31, 2014

African Methodist Church Cemetery

When I did a post about the huge quarry just south and west of Old Appleton in July, Dennis Mize and Tom Mueller mentioned that there was a small African American cemetery located near the quarry.

On the way south from dropping Wife Lila at the airport in St. Louis, I decided to check it out.

They were right

Dennis and Tom were right. Just west of Hwy 61 on KK was the African American Church Cemetery marked by a sign that listed some of the names and family histories of those interred there.

Alexander Hull died in 1898

Alexander Hull was born in 1892, and died in 1898, before his 5th birthday. His stone was one of the easiest to read. It looked like it had been reattached to its base recently

Graves at quarry edge

When I strolled down the hill into a wooded area, the quarry popped into view. This grave was almost at the edge of a dead (pun not intended) drop-off. I could only wonder how many bones had been crushed along with the limestone over the years.

A huge hole

I’m going to guess the stone walls rising above the water are at least 75 to 100 feet tall. Apple Creek runs between the quarry and the farmland in the background. It must have been a challenge to keep ahead of the water when it was an active quarry.

Didn’t feel like exploring

I didn’t spend much time walking around that area of the graveyard. The ground sloped down toward the quarry and some of the overburden didn’t look stable. I had no desire to end up as a splash or worse.

Nature’s color palette

The late-afternoon sun and fall leaves made it a place of quiet beauty. A quick Google search didn’t turn up much information about the cemetery or the church it served.

Blasting area

I’m sure the cemetery is a lot more peaceful since it’s neighbor, the old Appleton Quarry, has ceased blasting.

Quarry from the air

This aerial photo taken in 2011 clearly shows how the quarry left a little plug of land where the cemetery is located. It’s much like how the cement plant quarry has mined around the Natatorium.

Click on the photos to make them larger.

October 30, 2014

Leaf Pictures in Jackson Park

Monday was a blustery day triggered by a cold front moving toward Cape. There was a bunch of yard tasks to accomplish that took most of the day, so I didn’t have much time to shoot. I was really hoping to put together a video of trees bending down, branches whipping and leaves falling like snow.

I took a few seconds of video of some of the trees in the yard, then loaded Mother into the car and headed over to Jackson’s City Park. It has lots of trees, plus Hubble Creek meanders through the middle of it, offering the possibility of colorful leaves floating on moving water..

By the time we got to the park, though, the wind had died down, the sky had gotten overcast and I was afraid we had lost the good light.

Off in the distance there was hope. I saw some small kids running and frolicking.

Is this a photo shoot?

When I got closer, I noticed there was a woman with a professional-grade camera who was directing the kids and setting up shots. I’m always careful not to butt into somebody else’s shoot as a matter of professional courtesy.

I asked Krista Taylor if she was working, and she said, “Not today. I’m just taking family photos.”

With that concern out of the way, I could fire away without my conscience hurting. I tried to stay out of her frame, all the same.

I have one of these at home

Since I have a grandson back in Florida about Mason’s age, I enjoyed watching him charge through drifts of leaves that were almost as high as he was tall. From time to time, he’d stop to make sure he knew how to get back to the rest of the kids.

Chiggers on my mind

You know how you can tell that you are old?

While I was watching Kolton, Alexis and Khole making leaf angels and covering each other in leaves, all I could think of was, “If I did that, I’d wake up in the morning as one huge chigger bite.

I’m sorry I ran out of time and energy before I had a chance to edit the video. I had to drop Wife Lila off in St. Louis on Tuesday, and I’m headed back up to the Gateway City on Thursday to pick up Curator Jessica for a brief MO to OH road trip. Maybe I’ll give it a second look when I get back to whatever my Zip Code is. I filled out a form the other day and couldn’t remember it.

Click on the photos to make them larger, but not so large you can spot the chiggers.

October 29, 2014November 2, 2020

The Lithium Spring

We had to take Wife Lila and her buddy Jane Rudert McMahan to the airport in St. Louis way too early in the morning. Mother and I had lunch at Pappy’s Smokehouse, then paid $2.55 a gallon for gas at Peveley before hopping on Hwy 61 to take the scenic route home.

Just south of St. Mary and just north of Perryville, I saw a sign pointing down M to Lithium. Since our goal is to find a road we had never been on before, we set our sights on Lithium.

Before long, we spotted the city limits sign of a hamlet so small they didn’t even bother to show the population. (The 2010 census reported 89 people, 28 households and 22 families living there, but those figures may have included folks living in rural Perry county outside Lithium proper, an AP account said.) Lithium had a ZIP Code of 63775, but it has since been declared by the United States Postal Service to be “Not Acceptable – Use Perryville.”

This well-kept church didn’t have a name on it, but it is the St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church, organized in 1896.

The Ole Houck

The village has a sizable park which contains this artifact labeled “The Old Houck.” It looks more like a cart you’d find in a mine than a railroad, but I don’t know exactly what it was for.

Fungus? Mushroom? Toadstool?

These brown somethings were dotting the park here and there, particularly where there was a tree stump or other organic matter. I’m assuming it was some kind of fungus.

Lithium Spring

The most interesting thing for me was this white, shake shingled gazebo with a sign “Lithium Spring.” Inside the structure was a pit that contained a pipe with clear water running into a basin from one side and going out a grate on the other. The flow wasn’t as strong as the artesian well outside Marble Hill, but it was steady.

Mother wanted to taste the spring, so I emptied a plastic bottle and handed it over to her. “Tastes like water,” was her verdict.

A contributor to findaspring.com said it is “It is a highly mineralized spring, more like water for healing…Not your everyday drinking water but will definitely start to heal you. I drink it every once in a while, additionally to my regular Spring water from Mountain Valley Spring.”

Lithium had TWO big springs

The State Historical Society of Missouri’s website of Perry County Place Names, 1928 – 1945, has this information about the town and springs:

The town: A small town in the eastern part of Saline Township. It was surveyed and laid out as a town in 1822 by C.F. Laurence. The first settlers were Dr. Henry Clay Tish, R.P. Dobbs, and James G. Christian, who came from Illinois and settled at this place where they found two springs of mineral water known as lithium, because containing one of the lithium salts. The town grew rapidly because of the springs and was incorporated in 1883.
[Note: a reader sayid Henry’s last name was actually “Fish,” not “Tish.”
The springs: Two large springs located in the northern part of the county in the present town of Lithium. One of the springs is owned by the town; the other by Mrs. Richard P. Dobbs, wife of one of the first settlers.