Cape Girardeau History and Photos

February 2, 2014

There WILL Be a July

I’m sitting here in Florida where the temperature is 77.4 degrees (the heat index drops it to 71 degrees), listening through the wonders of the Internet to police calls 1,100 miles away in Southeast Missouri. It sounds like an afternoon and evening of slip, slip, sliding away. The poor guys running the plows and salt trucks are getting Super Bowl updates on their two-way radios, but I don’t think they are overly happy being out there. The radio traffic overall has dropped off. that’s a good sign that those with sense aren’t venturing onto the roads.

Anyway, here’s a photo that might give you hope that another warm July 21 day will come again just like it did in 1967. Of course, that diver’s granddaughter won’t be able to duplicate that dive because Capaha Park Pool is nothing but a memory now. (Click on the photo to make it larger.)

I must have gotten a special waiver on the rule that “if you climb up the ladder to the high dive, there’s only one way down – off the board.” Maybe it’s because I knew one of the lifeguards.

February 1, 2014

Blechle’s Grocery

This corner, just east of Park Avenue on Broadway, looks quite a bit different today. Turn to Google’s Street View to see a recent photo. On March 11, 1967, the buildings on the right housed Blechle’s Grocery (that’s the way it’s listed in the City Directory. Since it’s adjacent to the SEMO campus, the sign emphasized liquors, though).

The the two buildings on the right have been spiffed up. What used to be the Broadway Coin Wash is now a boutique. What used to be the grocery is an empty storefront in the Google photo.

Things that are gone

There are some things in the picture you won’t see today

The brick building around the curve used to be Werner’s Super Market. The university knocked down the market and most of the houses in the area.
A newspaper rack in front of the grocery.
A sign for a public telephone over the fuzzy guy’s head on the right.

The 1968 City Directory said Ruth Froemsdorf lived at 1231A Broadway, which would have put her above the coin wash. Another section, with more detail confirmed that she she was the third grade teacher at Trinity Lutheran School.

Aerial of the area

This November 2010 aerial shows Broadway from just west of Park Avenue and Capaha Park on the left to Sprigg Street on the right. You can see what it looked like in 1966 here.

Click on the photos to make them larger.

January 31, 2014

Bunny Bread and Smokey Bear

I was mining a few more nuggets from the photos shot by James D. McKeown III and provided by his son, Steven McKeown, this afternoon. The shots of “Stevie” – I assume that’s a early edition of my Reader Steven – in his Bunny Bread shirt reminded me of the piece I had done on what my family called the Used Bread Store.

Kid Matt had one when he was a boy, and he insisted that his Grandmother find one for Grandkid Malcolm (science fair winner, did I mention that?).

Three icons in one photo

“Stevie” has the trifecta of icons in this photo: his Bunny Bread shirt, a Smokey Bear (NOT Smokey the Bear) and a sailor cap. The only thing that would more a product of the era would have been a Davey Crockett coonskin cap.

The end of the picnic

I tried to see what they had, but there’s not enough left to tell. Looks like a few Cokes were consumed. The bottle on the table has an Ann Page logo, but I can’t make out the rest of the label. There aren’t any flies buzzing around, which is unusual for Missouri.

Typical Cape street

I wonder how much bigger the trees in the background have grown?

I’ll dip into the stash a few more times. He has some interesting photos of a bad windstorm that blew through the Independence area of town, damaging some landmark buildings. There are also vintage pictures taken at KFVS and of Scouting activities.

January 31, 2014

Putt-Putt Golf Course

There has been some discussion on Facebook about the Putt-Putt Golf Course that was located on Independence across from Central High School. I was pretty sure I didn’t have any photos of it, but I sort of played hooky tonight, which led to this discovery.

Wife Lila and I got a late afternoon invitation to go to dinner with the boys, wives and kids. It was made more special by Grandson Malcolm announcing he had won first place in his elementary school science fair. He’ll represent his school in the next level of competition soon. He and Dad Matt built a trebuchet in his backyard and calculated the best pivot point to get the greatest throw range. So, if you need to launch a bucket of boiling oil at your neighbor, give third-grader Malcolm a call. (And, he emphasized, do NOT call it a catapult. They are similar, but different siege devices.)

[Editor’s Note: that wasn’t particularly relevant to the story. I just had to find a way to brag on my grandkid.]

Thanks to Steve McKeown

A year or so ago, Reader Steve McKeown sent me a whole flock of photos his dad, James D. McKeown III had taken. I was sifting through them when I saw these Putt-Putt photos. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking at (Steve didn’t provide any background with the photos), when I saw the building in the background. That pretty much convinced that it was on the east side of Sheridan south of Independence. The top photo and some others have railroad tracks in them, making me even more sure of the location.

Yep, Putt-Putt

The clincher was when I spotted the words “I Play Putt-Putt” on a sign behind the woman’s head. You can see the golf club handles behind her and a box containing scorecards, different colored golf balls and a roll of tickets.

Free Parking

One of the selling points of the Putt-Putt was free parking.

Wooden chairs for the weary

In case you got tired walking the course, Putt-Putt provided chairs built for two as a resting spot.

Grand opening in 1961

The only story that popped up in The Missourian was an Out of the Past column on June 12, 2011,that reported, “Grand opening of the new Putt-Putt Golf Course, a standardized miniature entertainment at 1739 Independence St., is set for next weekend; the 18-hole course is managed by Dean Brown and Kenny Hargens.