Cape Girardeau History and Photos

August 9, 2013August 9, 2013

Deer, Dear, We Had Fun

We were still celebrating the impromptu Mother Birthday Season on Thursday.

I know now why people have kids when they are young and not old. Two-year-old Graham loves going up and down Great-Gran’s basement stairs. Over and over and over again. Babies and toddlers wake up early, loudly and frequently. I’m in the basement, so I catch the THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! of little feet, but mostly miss out on the crying from Graham and Baby Elliot. I’m also far enough away that I don’t hear Matt snoring or Sarah poking him to make him stop snoring.

We Steinhoffs like to eat, so we loaded into two cars and headed up to the Pie Bird Cafe in Fruitland. Good home-cooking at a reasonable price.

After breakfast, Adam, Carly and their two boys headed in one direction and Matt, Sarah, Malcolm, Mother and I headed north into Perry County. Just about the time we got to the Altenburg Museum, the skies opened up, so we spent more time there than anticipated.

Steinhoff name shows up on 1901 plat map

Gerard Fiehler showed us a new acquisition: someone had donated a huge framed Cape County plat map from 1901 or thereabouts. It was full of names you’ve heard: Houck, Juden, Alt, Lorimier…. Then, down near where our property in Dutchtown is today, there is a plot marked W Steinhoff. Mother said the deed listed the property having been in the Steinhoff name long before we bought it, but this proves it.

Malcolm got to pull the rope that rings what used to be the church bell in the original Altenburg church that became a school and is now part of the Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum. We drove down to show Malcolm Tower Rock, but it was raining too hard to get out.

Largest herd of deer I’ve seen

We took Rt CC, which led us over the ridges that I’ve written about before. We popped out near Proctor and Gamble where we spotted the largest herd of deer I’ve seen in SE Missouri. There had to have been at least a dozen of them. Matt stuck his head up through the car’s moon roof to shoot this with my telephoto.

It’s worth clicking on to make larger.

Lost interest quickly

It didn’t take them long to lose interest in us and go bounding away, white tails flashing.

Foggy at the lookout

Malcolm was small the last time he was at the Trail of Tears lookout. The rain had just let up when we got there, but the sky was still gray and hazy. We could barely see across the river.

Are we in the clouds?

As you can see, it was just as foggy behind us. Malcolm wanted to know if we were in the clouds. We said we were, but it’s not like when you are in an airplane.

Both boys wanted to meet different friends and family members, so they took off. I headed out for dinner, then stopped to chat with Altenburg museum director Carla Jordan and her husband, Doc.

Dad would have approved

When I got home, I could hear laughing and carrying on as soon as I pulled in the driveway. Everybody was gathered around the table snacking and drinking wine. It was voted the best part of the Early Birthday Season.

Dad died August 7, 1977. It was a great to hear laughter around the kitchen table on this week. Dad would have approved. In fact, I’m pretty sure he was there sharing the moment with us.

Elvis, who died on August 17, did not make an appearance. We didn’t care.

[Editor’s note and update: I got my Elvis dates mixed up in my original post. We flew out of Memphis the day after Elvis died. I picked up copies of the local papers at the airport, then took them back to show the photo staff how poorly the Memphis media covered the story. After we critiqued their work, I pitched the papers. I don’t like to think how much those papers are worth today.]

August 8, 2013August 8, 2013

Steinhoffs Converge on Cape

Mother’s Birthday Season, which is actually centered on October 17, started early this year by accident. First, Wife Lila, Friend Anne and I showed up in June. Brother David’s family – David, Diane and Amy – showed up later. Son Adam, with Carly, Graham and Elliot, got into town Tuesday. Son Matt, Sarah and Malcolm rolled in on Wednesday.

So far, I’ve moved to three different sleeping locations depending on the combination of people at the house. Once Mother gets shed of all of us, she’s hopping a plane to spend a Labor Day week out in Austin with the Texas branch, fresh transplants from Colorado.

By the time her actual birthday rolls around, she may want an empty house and peace and quiet for a present.

Graham, 2, loved the firetruck at Discovery Playhouse, so we walked across the street from Mother to Fire Station #4 where he could see the Real Deal.

I wanna be a firefighter

The nice guys at the station have been great neighbors for Mother. She’s asked them for help of a non-emergency nature over the years, but she never had to dial 9-1-1 until recently when she was suffering chest pains. It turned out to be nothing, but she won’t wait so long if there is a next time because she was impressed with how professional the crew was. They not only took care of her medical needs, they made sure her doors were locked when they left.

The firefighters opened every compartment to show him what the truck carried, but what Graham really liked was being at the wheel of the fire engine. He spent the afternoon running around the house putting out fires. (I had to play the part of the fire.)

I don’t like THAT!

Graham reconsidered his thoughts of joining the fire service when the fireman demonstrated the big air horns on the rig. Lights, OK. Sirens, OK. Big, loud horns, not so OK. He was ready to crawl down.

Checking out the Shed in a Box

David, Mark and I assembled a Shed in a Box, a 10×10 tarp-like structure mounted over a metal frame. The directions say that 2+ people should be able to put it up in 2 hours. Well, it took combinations of two people 2.5 DAYS to put the thing up.

Graham checked out the shed and Mother’s riding mower in it and pronounced both acceptable.

Pilgrimage to Wib’s BBQ

No Steinhoff visit to Cape would be complete without a trip to Wib’s BBQ in Jackson.Graham opted for a hot dog, fries and chocolate milk.

He takes his chocolate milk seriously.

Elliot’s first trip

Five generations of us have eaten at Wib’s. This was Elliot’s first visit.

Cars and Trucks

Way back when, I created a mix tape of travel and truck drivin’ songs we used to launch every family trip. It’s been digitized and still gets played.

Here’s a video Matt, Sarah and Malcolm shot driving the Tail of the Dragon. I’ll let him describe it:

Wanna know what it is like to road trip with the Steinhoffs?

We’re traveling down US 129, Tail of the Dragon; 318 turns in 11 miles. Sarah has taken enough Dramamine to kill a pony. My car’s “we’re all going to die” traction-control alarm is lighting up the dashboard in a trippy, disco sorta way.

What a better time to fire up Jerry Reed’s ‘East Bound and Down’ from the Smokey and the Bandit soundtrack, right? Gotta balance the iPad on the swearing wheel, queue up the song and see if we can make it to the end of the track before the fully-illuminated shift knob falls off and we end up with 30,000 pounds of mashed bananas on Dead Man’s Curve.

You can click on the photos to make them bigger, but don’t make them too big. Kids are a lot cuter when they’re little.

August 6, 2013

A Day in New Madrid

I shot a march and Mississippi River baptism in New Madrid in the summer of 1967. I spent a week in 2011 trying to identify the people in the photos, to no avail. The few adults that were named are all dead and nobody recognized the young folks.

Altenburg Lutheran Heritage Center intern Jennifer Schwent volunteered that she had worked in a small museum in New Madrid and had some contacts who might be able to help. We journeyed to the Higgerson Landing Gift Shop where site director Riley Bock gave me some leads, but we struck out on names. He WAS able to help identify exactly where on Main Street one of the photos was taken.

Main Street 1967

Here is the group marching down Main Street in 1967.

Main Street 2013

The Claire Hotel Coffee Shop has become The Corsage Shop these days. The white building in the old photo is now the Main Street Market.

Higgerson School

I’ve put this project on the back burner until I get some others finished. Here, by the way, is Jennifer in front of a neat timeline of the Higgerson School she helped put together. It lists key events in the history of the one-room school and has photos of the teachers who taught there.

I like her because she argued successfully that this blog should be accepted as a resource in historical preservation classes at SEMO.

August 6, 2013

A Summer to Remember

Jim Kirkwood and L.V. Steinhoff of Steinhoff, Kirkwood and Joiner decided the summer of 1962 was the perfect time to introduce sons Ken and Jim to the construction business. I was 15, stood about 5’9″ tall and weighed all of about 112 pounds if I had rocks in my pockets. Jim was a year older, taller, but but more gangly.

The purpose of our employment as laborers was ostensibly to let us put some money in the bank. I’m pretty sure the REAL purpose was to encourage us NOT to go into the family business.

We did a lot of busy work, but we earned our $30 or so a week when a job was completed and all the concrete forms came back. Dealing with sheets of 3/4″ 4’x8′ cedar plywood that weighed almost as much as I did was bad enough. Unloading truckloads of the finished forms was worse.

When they came in, we had to use wire brushes to scrape off all the concrete still sticking to the plywood. Then we had to cork any holes in the wood. (That was the easiest and most fun part. I still have a big can of corks in my shed.)

Form oil was nasty stuff

The last step before stacking them was to spray the plywood with form oil that was supposed to keep the concrete from sticking to the wood. It was nasty stuff and it stuck to us better than it stuck to the plywood.

While it was still dripping wet, we had to stack it like in the photo.

In 1962, 2x4s were REALLY 2″ x 4″ and 3/4″ plywood was REALLY 3/4″. Based on that, the forms on the right are stacked almost 9 feet above the gravel floor.

Notice how you can’t see all the way to the other side? That’s because the forms on that side are stacked to the rafters. This was only a part of it, too. The whole lumber shed was about 100 feet long.

I wrote about the night Friend Shari invited me to a pool party at the country club after a day of spraying form oil and wrestling forms.

Newspapering was more appealing

Mission accomplished, Dad. By the next summer, I had landed a cushy newspaper job.

Our buildings are long gone, now part of what used to be called SEMO Stone. The construction company moved down to Dutchtown in the late 60s or early 70s. Dad was in the process of retiring when he died in 1977.

You can click on the photos to make them larger, but I wouldn’t suggest wearing your good clothes if you want to take a closer look at the forms. Oil, you know.