Cape Girardeau History and Photos

January 30, 2014

Rattling the Bones of the Past

When I posted a photo of the science classroom at Central on January 27, I wondered whatever became of the skeleton that hung in a corner of the room. There were some spirited discussions in a couple of Facebook groups about the old guy, but the best info came from an anonymous source. Well, he’s not anonymous to me, but I agreed to keep his identity hidden in case he had any other skeletons rattling around in his past. We’ll just call him The Gravedigger.

This is a REAL gravedigger

From The Gravedigger: On the QT. he was in bad shape and ended up being thrown out. I rescued him from being put in a dumpster. (It was a human skeleton ) He stayed with me in the school warehouse for a couple of years until I was doing some cleaning out and tried to figure what to do with him. After several calls to other schools and no one wanting a skeleton with a few parts missing, I decided to have a little fun with him. We were having some dirt work done at a friend’s farm by a backhoe operator who was also a friend, so we decided to have some fun with him. The farm is located where the town of Eaglette used to be down near Duck Creek.

“We told the operator to be careful when he was digging because there were several unmarked graves of both townspeople and Native Americans in the area… Any way you see where this went. When we finally caught him and got him calmed down and explained what we had done, he begin to see a little humor in the whole deal. He didn’t see near the humor we did, but he did finish the job for us. He also promised that he could dig a hole deep enough that no one would find us if we ever did that to him again. Any way (Slim) hung out at the farm for a while after that and my buddy that had the farm found a home for in the high school in Zalma. I think he is still there.

[Editor’s note: the guy in the photo is a real gravedigger from Letart Falls, Ohio, not my secret identity Gravedigger.]

I hope I’m retired by then

That brought to mind a story an old deputy told me. I was a couple counties north of Palm Beach county working on a story about a serial killer. They were digging up a farm where the guy was thought to have dismembered his victims, stuffed them in drums and buried them. I was being held at the perimeter by an old deputy, several hundred yards away from the dig where I couldn’t shoot anything because of brush and trees, so it was a wait-and-see situation. With nothing better to do, the deputy and I had plenty of time to trade war stories.

“When I was a rookie, there was on old hermit living out in the groves back there with a pet gorilla. One day, he flagged me down and said his pet was ailing and needed to be put down, but that he didn’t have the heart to do it. I wasn’t crazy about the task, but it seemed the decent thing to do, so I led the animal out in the groves and shot him in the head. Afterward, I dug a shallow grave and figured nobody would ever find him. Well,” he continued, “those groves are gradually being turned into a housing development. I hope I’m retired before some bulldozer operator turns up something that looks like a human skeleton with a bullet hole in the skull.”

[Editor’s Note: the gentleman above isn’t my salty deputy: he’s Ezra McComas, an Ohio woodcarver. I just needed a picture of an old guy to break up all the gray type.]

Is “Slim” in Zalma

After scratching my head for a couple days, I decided the best way to track the story down was to call the Zalma High School. Thanks to the wonders of Google, it didn’t take but a few minutes to track down a phone number. When a man answered, I said, “This is going to be your strange question of the day.” I told him a little background of who I was and what I do, then asked, “So, my question of the day is, ‘Do you have a skeleton hanging around in one of your classrooms?”

The voice at the other end was Principal Gerard Vandeven. “Yes,” he said, “and he has a name. I think it’s Jo-Jo.”

“How is that spelled? ‘Jo-Jo’ or ‘Joe-Joe“?”

He wasn’t sure.

[Editor’s note: That’s not Principal Vandeven. It’s really long-time Central High School Principal Fred Wilferth.]

How long has it been there?

“How long has Jo-Jo been there?”

“I’ve been here 26 years and he’s been here as long as I have. He shows up all over campus. Bones hanging from a metal rod. He’s all there. Sounds like him. I’ll see if the science teacher can send you a photo.”

There may be a problem

I’m having some doubts now. The timeline doesn’t sound right. I reached out for The Gravedigger to dig up more information. I told him that if Mr. Vandeven had been at the school 26 years, that meant the skeleton had to have gotten to the school before about 1987. Did that fit with what he remembered?

Gravedigger: “Ok just talked to my friend and to the best of his knowledge he gave it to Zalma schools. Not sure if there is any other school in Zalma.

“We moved from the old board office in about 1998 ( I think). We moved it when they did the cleaning out. So it has been longer than I remembered. We cleaned out a bunch of stuff. Gave away some to to teachers and staff – whatever they wanted, and the rest was auctioned off or pitched. I took the skeleton to the new office with me and got rid if him shortly after that. Probably 2000. I had to make a couple of phone calls to get the dates right. So probably 13 years ago. I think the high school got a new skeleton before they moved.”

[ Editor’s Note: this is A gravedigger, not The Gravedigger.]

We’ve hit a dead end

Unless a new Gravedigger comes forward, I guess I have hit a dead end with my search for what really happened to Slim. Did he become Jo-Jo at Zalma High School, or is he rattling around somewhere else.?

One last unrelated skeleton story. I rolled on a report of bones being found in a ditch alongside a remote road. The medical examiner and I got there about the same time. He probed in the muck and ooze for some time, then came up and said, “My job gets a lot easier when you find the skeleton is wearing a dog collar around its neck.”

[Editor’s note: This Athens, Ohio, cemetery photo doesn’t have anything to do with the story, but I thought I’d throw it in here anyway.]

January 28, 2014

Pete Seeger 1919 – 2014

I did a post on Pete Seeger titled Pete Seeger & Songs of My Life in 2010. In it, I wrote of the photos I had taken at the White Springs Florida Folk Festival, “He just turned 91, so I’d better have them ready for an obit. I hope it’s later, not sooner, though.” I invite you to revisit those photos.

I woke up this morning at 5:10 to get a drink. As is my habit, I hit the keyboard to wake up the computer see if we were at war with anybody new. The lead headline that come up was that the clock had run out on Pete at age 94.

You can say it is unexpected when someone who is 94 dies of natural causes, but it’s still a shock when a national icon passes.

This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender

It’s funny how two photos that don’t even show Pete are my favorites from that evening in the spring of 1977.

No posse, no entourage

After the performance, Pete stuck around backstage to sign autographs, pose for photos and to talk with his admirers, one and all. Then, when nobody had anything else to say, Pete hoisted up his banjo and guitar and a box and walked out into the night. I thought about that exit when I read what Arlo Guthrie wrote this morning.

He passed away. That doesn’t mean he’s gone

Arlo, the son of Woodie Guthrie, and a long-time friend and fellow performer, posted this this morning.

I let him know I was having trouble writing his obituary (as I’d been asked) but it seemed just so silly and I couldn’t think of anything that didn’t sound trite or plain stupid. “They’ll say something appropriate in the news,” we agreed. We laughed, we talked, and I took my leave about 9:30 last night.

“Arlo” he said, sounding just like the man I’ve known all of my life, “I guess I’ll see ya later.” I’ve always loved the rising and falling inflections in his voice. “Pete,” I said. “I guess we will.”

I turned off the light and closed my eyes and fell asleep until very early this morning, about 3 AM when the texts and phone calls started coming in from friends telling me Pete had passed away.

“Well, of course he passed away!” I’m telling everyone this morning. “But that doesn’t mean he’s gone.”

January 27, 2014

Hanging Around Science Class

I really SHOULD remember the skinny kid in the corner, but I have a lousy memory for names, particularly when the faces are missing. I know I never saw him down in the cafeteria. I guess he spent all his spare time hanging around in the science lab, probably talking to guys like Jim Stone.

This must have been the biology classroom because it doesn’t have the sinks and things that were in the chemistry lab.

Grading chart

The picture is not quite sharp, so I had a hard time making out the grading chart on the blackboard. Here’s what it looked like, as close as I could figure: E – 99 to 100; E-minus – 95 to 97; S-plus – 92 to 94. It was too fuzzy to see the rest, except that I think 70 would get you in the M range and 30 to 31 would win an I-minus. Anything below 26 was an F. Click on the photo to make it larger. Maybe you have better eyes.

I don’t know if Central still uses the E-S-M-I-F grading scale or if they’ve gone to the more common A-B-C-D-E-F grades.

I DO remember well those flying saucer light fixtures, mainly from looking up at them to avoid eye contact with the teacher who was looking for a student to answer a question.

January 26, 2014

Blown Tire Blues

There I was, sleeping the sleep of the just, all snuggled up in my blankets against the unseasonable Florida cold, while Wife Lila was on her way to church. About six minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off (so I could ignore it, being Sunday and retired on top of that), my cell phone rang.

For a guy who used to be a telecommunications manger, I hate phones in general and cell phones in particular. I swear they have a sensor that makes them ring when I’m napping, in the shower or in the one-seat Steinhoff Reading Library. Oh, yes, I can go a week without getting a call, but let me be on my cell and that will compel the house phone to ring, not wanting to be left out of anything.

So, back to this morning: Wife Lila says she’s in a no-parking zone on the northbound lane of Parker Avenue north of Forest Hill with a blow-out.

I assure her I am on my way

While I’m trying to find garments to cover my body, she calls back to tell me that the sidewall is wrecked and that blowing it up is not an option.

“That’s the way blowouts work,” I said. I assure her I am on my way.

I stop long enough to get a manly tire tool and a heavy hammer in case some gorilla with an impact wrench put the tire on the last time.

I head south on Georgia, turn west on Forest Hill (to be passed by a plain black pickup truck with emergency lights running Code 3), go past Garden, Lake, Parker, I-95 and a myriad of other streets until I get to Congress, and drive north looking for Wife Lila’s green Honda Odyssey van. Three blocks north of where she should be, I pull into a parking lot, pick up my cell phone to find out where she is.

Just as I press SEND, I realize I’ve driven to CONGRESS and Forest Hill, about a mile past Parker. I confess to a brain fart and assure her I’m on my way.

I make a U-turn (unlike Ohio, U-turns are permitted unless prohibited), head back east on Forest Hill Blvd. and turn north on Parker, where she is supposed to be. Six blocks later, I pick up my cell phone to ask her where she is.

“Oh, I’m not on Parker, I’m on Lake.” That’s a block east of Parker. I assure her I’m on my way.

Yep. The tire was definitely flat. Something had done a real number on the sidewall.

Here’s where I made a couple of tactical errors

I bounced the doughnut spare on the ground a couple of times and thought it was in pretty good shape. I should have checked it with a tire gauge, then topped it off with the portable tire pump I bought in Cape last summer. This isn’t exactly the model I have, but they are all about the same at this price point.
She asked if she should pull away from the curb a bit more. I told her I thought I had enough clearance to turn the crank. I discovered after I had the jack started that I didn’t, but I didn’t want to take it out and start over. (I’m buying a REAL jack at my first opportunity. I had forgotten how wienie the Honda jacks are.)

It’s a good thing I brought the manly tire iron

Four of the five hub nuts spun off easily. Gorilla guy put on the fifth one. I had to resort to The Big Hammer to break it loose.

Putting the new tire on was no sweat. It looked a little low, so I was going to use the portable compressor to pump it up, but the power cord was too short. (Should have done it when it was off the car.)

Home was only a few blocks away, so she drove it to where I could get at it with my electric compressor. She’ll go over to Southend Service in the morning to get a new tire. Luckily it was one of the older ones.

Wow, I’m tired just talking about tires. At least it wasn’t raining, sleeting or 102 degrees. [Thanks to Wife Lila for documenting the experience.]