Cape Girardeau History and Photos

July 12, 2013July 12, 2013

1-2-3 JUMP!

Here are five young women Friend Shari and I met at the Old Appleton bridge. They said they are all from Cape.

I went to the trouble of getting their last names, but in case anything they did needs plausible deniability, I’ll just go with first names, left to right: Makayla, 16; Nicole, 16; Sara, 17; Sylvia, “almost 18,” and Autumn, 16.

I dubbed Makayla The Smart One because she didn’t engage in any of the Tomfoolery of her friends. She hinted that she might do so when there would be no photographic evidence around, but I don’t know if she did. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

The Wild Child

“Almost 18” Sylvia was quickly named The Wild Child. When I first met her, I asked what the girls planned to do. “You’re not going to do anything crazy like jumping off the bridge are you?”

“Do you want me to?” she asked.

“No, no, no,” I replied. “I wouldn’t ask you to do anything like that. People drown here all the time.”

The next thing I heard was “SPLASH!”

The floodgates opened

After Syliva’s head popped out of the water attached to the rest of her body and she pronounced the water deep enough that she hadn’t even touched bottom, the rest of the girls, minus The Smart One, lined up. There was some discussion about jumping on “Three!”

The message was garbled

Sara, The Countess, jumped ON three.

Countess Sara was all alone

I thought maybe the other girls wanted TWO water safety checks before they launched, because Sara was on her own.

The first shall be last

The Wild Child must have heard that “the first shall be last,” because she was the last of the quartet to hit the water this time.

Getting it together

The girls lined up for another go. I heard them working out the details. “This time I count 1-2-3, THEN we all jump.” The timing was a little better this round.

Time to dry out

Shari and I left the crew hanging out and drying out. I took a careful count to make sure we were leaving behind the same number of girls we saw when we arrived at the bridge. If anything happened after that, I’d go looking for The Wild Child.

Former Wild Child Shari was content with wading in ankle-deep water below the dam. Wife Lila, in a text message, commented, “I jumped off that bridge once. Glad there are no pictures.”

July 11, 2013February 26, 2021

Alan, Lisa and Reality

I was supposed to meet Friend Shari and her mother, LaFern for an afternoon ramble. The left rear tire was a little low, so I went down the hill to Plaza to have them check it out. I rolled forward slowly and nothing appeared to be sticking in it, and it would taken them an hour to get around to me, so I had them air it up and I went to pick up my passengers.

We were going to be driving around on some remote roads, so I stopped at an auto parts store and picked up a portable tire inflator “just in case.” My two passengers pronounced it “cute” and thought it would make a good Christmas stocking stuffer. (If you get one, credit – or blame – me.)

We paused at the Thebes Mississippi River overlook and admired Alan and / or Lisa’s pronouncement of devotion. You can decry graffiti on public property, but it had to have taken a long time to etch out “Alan Hearts Lisa Always” in the seat. It was at least 3/8″ deep and filled in with black.

There is always a cynic around

In different handwriting and with an indelible marker, the inevitable gonna-rain-on-your-parade cynic scrawled, “This Week!” above the “always.”

Debris from flood

We looked at debris, including a green buoy, deposited by the recent flood.

What are these?

On the way to the car, we tried to identify these purple things. We weren’t sure if they were berries or grapes. They were intermingled with mulberries and poison ivy. Maybe somebody can tell us what we were looking at.

This is bad news

When we got to the parking area, I noticed the tire was down about a third. I said we’d better go back to have it checked out. Just before we got to the bridge, I could tell the tire was almost flat by the way the rear end was acting squirrelly. Yep, it was nearly flat. I pulled out the “cute” inflator and let it pump away. The box said it should inflate a tire in five minutes, but that might be one that’s not leaking air. When it hit 32 psi and wouldn’t go any higher, we took off.

By the time I got to Plaza at William and Kingshighway, it was flat again.

The nice man who looked at it said I was lucky to have made it in at all. It had a big split on the inside of the tire. “And, by the way, did you know you had two wrong-sized tires on the rear of the car?”

Nope. But it turned out to have been two tires I had to buy at Sam’s in the middle of Nowhere, GA, when I had a blowout on a day when temperatures were just short of that of the surface of the sun. Since the second tire was getting close to the wear bars, I had them replace both of them. That should keep me safe from hydroplaning if I have to make a mad dash through a tropical storm or hurricane.

Did I mention I had calendars and books for sale? I ask because Wife Lila called yesterday to say that our 20-plus-year-old washer died on the same day she had her power steering dohickey replaced.

I felt like I had been swatted by the guy who added a dose of reality to Alan and Lisa’s message.

July 10, 2013May 14, 2021

The Simple Things

I shot this magnolia blossom at an undisclosed location that did not appear to have surveillance cameras around. Right after I photographed it, it inexplicably fell off the tree at my feet. I thought it might be possible to resuscitate it, so I took it home to Mother just like I would any other stray. (You can click on the photos to make them larger.)

Slightly wilted

By the time I got home, the bloom had slightly wilted, but it perked right up as soon as she put it in water. The whole kitchen was filled with a sweet fragrance. When I went to bed, I noticed that the bloom had closed up. The next morning, it was wide open again.

I happened to overhear Mother talking on the phone to one of her friends about how nice it was to be able to get pleasure from something as simple as a flower blossom on the kitchen table. It made me feel good. It’s amazing how much you can learn from your mother.

When I went to bed last night, I didn’t turn on the kitchen light, but I could see that what I think is called the anthers – the yellow part – had fallen off inside the bloom.

Magnolia blossom turned brown

When we got up this morning, the blossom had turned a beautiful shade of brown. The petals were still soft, but they had changed color. The undersides of the leaves had turned brown, too.

In some ways, I find this more interesting than the white flower. There are more subtle shades in it.

The one that didn’t fall off the tree

This one, by the way, didn’t fall off the tree. Maybe another day.

July 9, 2013

‘BINGO!’ ‘Oh, BLEEP!’

Someone asked a foreign visitor what he had done the night before. “I played BINGO OH BLEEP,” he replied.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a game where a man reads off a bunch of letters and number until one person yells, “BINGO!” and everybody else shouts, “Oh, BLEEP!”

That’s what I was thinking about when we cut through Fairmont cemetery after cruising through New Lorimier. As soon as we crested the hill, we couldn’t believe how many cars were parked at Bingo World. The lot perimeter was parked two deep and the street in front had cars parked for at least a block in each direction. More cars were pulling in all the time.

In 2010, the Bingo folks were concerned that the new Isle Cape Girardeau Casino would siphon off their business. Looks to me they’re holding their own.

How’s the casino doing?

We decided to swing by the Casino to see what its parking lot looked like. The Missourian had a June 12, 2013, story that said that attendance had dropped off sharply – 42% – in May from a peak of 123,000 in March. Not only was attendance down, but the average stay per patron was shorter.

The parking lot in front of the main entrance sure had a lot of empty spots.

Look to the left

They have huge parking lot, so maybe I didn’t capture the part where the cars parked. Here’s a view to the north lot area. Not exactly packed.

Look to the right

How about to the right? There were a few more cars on the south side. And, to be fair, I counted about 13 cars to the right of the frame in another photo.

Still, I have to ask myself, how many of those belong to employees? I would bet it takes a whole lot more people to staff a casino than a bingo hall.

I wonder if we can get the shoe factory back?