Cape Girardeau History and Photos

January 18, 2013January 18, 2013

Reminds me of the 1930s

No, despite what some folks think, I wasn’t around then, but, thanks to the photographers from the Farm Security Administration, we know what the country looked like during the Depression and the Dust Bowl days.

I opened an envelope labeled “St Mary,” thinking I would find the church and school located on Sprigg Street. Much to my surprise, I found images of the notorious speed trap located between Perryville and St. Genevieve on Hwy 61. My best guess is that it was taken in 1966, but it looks like something from 30 or 35 years earlier. Click on the picture to make it larger. I can make out the name “Clem’s” on the sign, but the rest isn’t readable. What I find striking in these days of digital photography where you bang off hundreds of photos without thinking is that I thought the subject worthy of only one shot.

I’m going to hold off publishing most of the pictures until I can shoot contemporary photos on my next trip to or from St. Louis at the end of January.

I’ve tried to emulate the FSA photographers

This image jumped out at me, though, as something that could have been taken by one of the 22 FSA photographers working for Roy Styker between 1935 and 1944. I grew up trying to emulate photographers like Gordon Parks, Dorothea Lang, Walker Evans and Arthur Rothstein. If the names don’t mean anything to you, check Google images for some American icons.

In looking for that, I stumbled across a catalog of images available from the Library of Congress. Some of the topic include Wright Brothers Negatives; Popular Graphic Arts, World War I and Spanish American War Posters; 2100 Baseball cards from 1887 to 1914, and Civil War Glass Negatives and Related Prints.

January 17, 2013

Freezing a Floridian

I’m pushing hard to get a bunch of stuff done so I can head back to Cape via Athens, Ohio, this weekend. One of the tasks was to cold-proof my former coworker and bike partner Jan Norris. See, Jan has heard so much about Cape that she volunteered to go along to keep me company. (OK, wormed her way in might be another way to put it.)

This is going to be interesting because Jan is one of those rare birds – a Florida native. You can click any of the photos if you want to see her before her nose freezes off.

Wife Lila, taking pity on her, reached deep into the back of the closet to outfit her for frigid temperatures. “Long underwear? Those are real? People REALLY wear them?” I left the room while Wife Lila explained the rear trap door. I wasn’t sure whether Jan is one of those folks who can learn by explanation or if she needed a practical demonstration, and I sure didn’t want to find out.

You should have seen her try to figure out how earmuffs work.

Here’s how you wear a scarf

Jan was food editor at The Palm Beach Post. There was a time when she and I were exiled into the deepest bowels of the building. Her office was right across from the telecom switchroom where I lived. Our location was sort of like the geographic equivalent of the shortest day of the year: any step you took in any direction put you closer to sunlight.

Newspapers get an incredible amount of swag. Our book reviewer would get close to 5,000 books a year. PR people would send food, wine and other products they hoped would serve as bribes or fodder for product review. Our ethics policy said it had to be turned over to charity. Jan and I co-chaired a twice-a-year book sale and silent auction that raised from $10,000 to $20,000 a year for little-know charities that were below the radar of United Way and the Palm Beach balls.

Working closely together on those projects led me to try to convince Jan that THIS is the proper way to wear a scarf. {Note to Friend Mary: this is the scarf you knitted when I worked at The Jackson Pioneer back in 1964. It’s as good as ever. You did good work.]

Jan and Mother

When a bunch of us rode our bikes from Key Largo to Key West, Jan shared a houseboat room with Mother. Shortly after writing the sad story about my mother’s arm, I was talking with Jan about it. “No, that can’t be true. I spent the night with that woman. She didn’t have anything wrong with her arm.”

“You don’t believe me? Let’s call my brother Mark. He’ll tell you the same story.”

“Let’s call Lila. Lila can’t lie.” She had me there.

I dialed the number and handed Jan the phone. “You won’t believe the crazy story Ken was telling me about his mother….”

“You mean about her arm?” Lila asked.

“I spent the NIGHT with that woman. I never noticed.”

I can’t wait to see Jan giving Mother long, furtive glances the whole time she’s in Cape.

We’re staying at the Meth Motel

My definition of a good trip is when you end up with as many people as you start out with. It’ll be interesting to do a head count at the end of THIS trip. Our first area of conflict may deal with lodging. She was talking about making reservations. I said I don’t do that because I don’t know how far I’m going to drive on any particular day or if I may decide to change routes at the last minute.

She said she likes to stay at a place with chocolates on the pillow. I told her I never look too closely at black objects on my pillows because I’m afraid they may have legs at the places I stay.

I tried to reassure her by telling her the kind folks at the Athens Historical Society had booked us a couple of rooms at The Meth Motel. “That probably means Methodists run it.”

She set the standard for messy

One great thing about Jan was that any time someone poked fun at MY office, where everything was in a carefully crafted state of chaos, I’d say, “Let’s go for a walk.” It was common knowledge that one newsroom staffer’s job description included “distract fire inspector if he starts anywhere near Norris’ office on the annual walk-through.”

In fairness to Jan, not ALL of the clutter belonged to her. I put the Hula Parrot on her desk when I was giving it a tour of the paper.

I’m sure Jan will have a much different perspective on our trip, but history belongs to the survivor who writes it down. I hope we hit at least one day when it’s cold enough to freeze the hair in her nose.

January 17, 2013January 17, 2013

Quarries and Corrections

I did a couple of pieces about what I thought was the Strack Quarry in Fruitland near Saxony Lutheran High School. Several readers gently suggested that I might be wrong about which quarry I had photographed and I had this sinking feeling they might be right.

Laura Simon had an aerial photo in the January 16, 2013, Missourian that confirmed my fears: yep, I had been photographing the Heartland Materials facility, which is immediately south of the high school. I focused on it because it was the closest to the school.

When I was home in October, I made it a point to track down the REAL Strack quarry off Hwy 61 coming into Fruitland. Their permit to mine is back on hold pending an appeal.

Just scratching the surface

So far it looks like Strack has been just scratching the surface by hauling away the overburden and using it for fill along the highway. You can see here how they’ve been scraping away the hillside.

Nobody working the pit

Nobody was working the pit the day I was there. I didn’t see any Keep Out signs, but the heavy gumbo mud that nearly sucked my shoes off provided an effective barrier to getting close.

Setting the record straight

So, much to my embarrassment, these two stories show the Heartland site, not Strack.

January 15, 2013May 13, 2022

Kitty Cat

I don’t remember where he / she came from, and I must have been away at college when he / she fell between the cracks of memory. To make the account easier, I’m going to arbitrarily classify the feline a female. You can click on the photos to make them larger, but try to ignore the dust specks.

We weren’t really cat people

We weren’t really cat people. Dad, in particular, could see a certain utility in a dog, but cats were beneath his radar. Until Kitty Cat came along. To be honest, I’m not even sure that Kitty Cat was her name.

Anyway, shortly after Dad would sit down in his basement recliner to unwind from work and catch a little TV, the kitten would jump up on his lap and it was game on.

Suffered indignities kindly

The cat figured a little indignity was a decent tradeoff for a warm lap.

She knew who was in charge

Funny hat or not, Kitty Cat knew who was driving the bus.

True example of coffee can film

This had to have been one of my famous “coffee can” films, based on the number of dust spots I had to touch up. I must have shot an assignment on the first part of the roll, then banged off these frames and pitched them into the garbage pail under my enlarging table.

I finally decided this shot wasn’t worth spending any more time on. If the white dust specks had been black, I’d have tried to pass them off as fleas.