Cape Girardeau History and Photos

May 18, 2012April 3, 2015

Mother and the Belly Up Bar

Bro Mark sent a cryptic email to the family last night: “Gran can now check another box off her list.” He wouldn’t give me a hint, said she’d have to tell me.

I called Mother, but got a busy signal all morning; after that, the phone went to the answering machine. I figured she must be out skydiving or water skiing on the Mississippi.

She finally called me back to tell me about her excursion last night. She and several of her friends ended up at the Belly Up Bar and Grill in Oran. I can just about picture what that kind of establishment looked like. I usually didn’t frequent places like that until after the shootin’ and cuttin’ was over.

(For the record, that’s the Elk’s Club in Cairo, not the Belly Up Bar and Grill.)

When does the dancin’ start?

When she walked in, she noticed a couple of pool tables. “When do they start dancing on the tables?,” she asked.

“After about two beers,” she was told.

She met lots of friendly and interesting people, including a guy who was drinking a pink-colored beer. She got up enough nerve to ask him what it was. “Beer and tomato juice,” he answered. “I always drink it that way.”

(Note: that’s not the Belly Up Bar and Grill, either. It was taken at D’Ladiums in Cape.

Want to go for a ride?

When they got ready to leave, Mother paused to admire a motorcycle in the parking lot. She told the owner that she didn’t realize they were so big when they blasted past her on the highway.

After chatting a bit, the guy said, “Want to go for a ride?”

“I haven’t been on one since I’m a teenager, but, sure.”

They went blasting around Oran. (It doesn’t take long to lap Oran.) She said she was surprised that it was very comfortable: it was like riding in the back seat of a car.

She’s polling her friends to see if any of them snapped a picture of her before she roared off.

(Nope, not the Belly Up Bar and Grill: motorcycle racing at Arena Park.)

This is a poor substitute

I’ve sent a note to the neighbors telling them not to worry if they look out the window and see this. She’s just reliving her glory days at the Oran Belly Up Bar and Grill.

(You guessed it. This isn’t the Belly Up Bar and Grill. It’s Mother celebrating her 2004 Birthday Season. She turned 90 in 2011.)

Other Mother exploits

Mother says she can’t go to the store these days without someone coming up to her to ask her if she’s the one in the blog. Here are some of her past exploits in case you’ve missed them.

May 17, 2012March 3, 2015

Ties at a Basketball Game?

I couldn’t figure out what my old debate partner Pat Sommers was up to. He was in what appeared to be Houck Field House spiffed up in a coat and tie. Check out his front pocket. He was pulling out all the stops. You CAN click on the photo to make it larger, but I’m not sure how much Pat you really want to see.

Now that I think of it, Pat always dressed out of the ordinary. He wore dark sunglasses to a showing of the Beatles movie Help! At least he behaved more appropriately here than he did in this photo. Here’s what a modern version of Pat looks like.

Christmas Tournament

The next frame showed basketball action between Notre Dame and the Eagles. That led me to believe that it was taken during the Christmas tournament that brought mixes of teams to Houck Field House. Pat wasn’t the only one who dressed up. If you look at the crowd, there’s a pretty good scattering of ties. I wonder if high school kids still dress up for basketball games.

Happy New Year

Helping confirm the time of year was a frame on the roll that had a hand-stenciled Happy New Year sign taped to the Steinhoff living room window.

May 15, 2012May 16, 2012

How to Survive Nuclear Attack

You could find just about anything at the Southeast Missouri District Fair. These women wanted to give you a pamphlet on how to “Survive Nuclear Attack.” If you had more questions, you could fill out a form (using a pencil secured to the table with a string) and drop it in the Question Box. I wonder it they were the ones who turned in the radio active girls.

The boys in the background probably have copies of the of the Cape Girardeau Police Department’s Police Safety Report and have been taught to Duck ‘n” Cover in school. My bet is that they’re more interested in trying to win the free bicycle from the Western Auto booth than in nuclear holocaust. (Click on any photo to make it larger.)

Crafts and produce

Cape was still rural in the mid-60s, so you’d find lots of hand-crafted items and big watermelons.

In addition to commercial exhibits, you could find ones that had hand-lettered signs warning “Alcohol is not a food. Alcohol is not a medicine. The first and major effect is to numb the brain.”

It might have been raining outside, based on the wet hair on a couple of the girls and the wet shirt on the boy in the bike picture.

Trying to get lucky

This appears to be a booth for selling life insurance, so I don’t know what these boys were trying to win with the forms they were filling out. The boy standing on the left has a raft of shamrock necklaces around his neck. Maybe he thinks they’ll bring him luck.

Now I see what they were doing. When I made the frame larger, I could barely see that you could win a bike or a hair dryer. I bet that round thing on the table at the right was the hair dryer. I think I know which one the boys were trying to win.

Food for survival

Cape Girardeau had its share of pretty flower gardens, but a lot of back yards grew enough vegetables to keep the family well-fed.

THAT’S an ear of corn

The fair was where farmers came to hear about the latest and greatest developments to help them produce more with less.

Here are some past fair stories:

May 15, 2012

Academic Hall Construction

Some things, like SEMO’s Academic Hall never seem to change. This is what it looked like April 15, 2011. You can click on the pictures to make them larger.

Academic Hall 1966ish

Cape Girardeau was a black and white town in the middle ’60s.

Speaking of that, I’ve been talking about sending out a book proposal. I was putting the final touches on it Sunday night (Monday morning deadline, but, of course, I wouldn’t procrastinate) when I noticed that none of the books I had seen by this publisher had any color in them. When I shipped off the package, I asked the editor if they were a black and white publisher only. The sad answer was, yes. Because most of their books are old images from dusty archives, they don’t run color.

I thanked them for considering me, then withdrew my proposal. Looks like it’ll be a little longer before you have a chance to hold something in your hands. It’s gonna happen, but not as soon as I had hoped.

2012 Academic Hall renovation

Brother Mark slowed his car down long enough to snap a few frames of repair work being done at Academic Hall.

Academic Hall terraces

You can see the green terraces that Major James Frances Brooks designed for Louis Houck and that showed up in photos of the 1967 graduation ceremonies.

Terraces from Mother’s scrapbook

Here are the terraces from Mother’s scrapbook. The photo was probably taken in the late ’30s or early 1940s. Note the old car in the shadows.