Cape Girardeau History and Photos

April 12, 2012October 19, 2022

Wittenberg Minus One

Kristie Freeman called Wednesday afternoon to say that her stepfather, David Holley, had lost his battle with lung cancer, and to ask if they could use one of my photos in his obit. When I went to see him July 18, 2011, he was actually in better shape than some folks in Altenburg had led me to believe.

Chemo treatment had left Holley gaunt and his beard had picked up some gray, but he was still the same old storyteller with a gentle manner and a twinkle in his eye. “I’m on my third round of chemo,” he said. “I’m hoping I’m in the 60% that makes it, but I haven’t had a whole lot of luck in my life,” he added, matter of factly.

Wittenberg, a once-thriving Mississippi River German settlement community, was down to two buildings – the house Dave and his wife lived in and the former post office. The floods of 1973 and 1993 had pretty much washed the town away.

Wittenberg Bomb Shelter

Back in the 60s, I did a bunch of pictures of the town, including his house, which had been a brewery, and the “Wittenberg Bomb Shelter,” caverns that had been used to cool and store the beer.

Holley and his home

In October 2009, I knocked on the door of the old brewery and a long-haired David Holley came out and graciously gave me a tour of the old caverns.

Part cave, part manmade

Holley said the brewers took advantage of a natural cave in the hillside, then added on to the front of it with bricks and stone.

Caverns are well-preserved

Despite being over a hundred years old and receiving little or no maintenance, the old beer cellars are remarkably well-preserved.

The last train robbery

Holley was a natural storyteller. Without any preamble, he launched into a story about the last train robbery in Missouri that ended in gunfire almost in front of his house in the 20s. I’m glad I was able to capture it on video.

Holley’s stories took very little editing. He had a knack for being able to tell it short and sweet.

Always searching for treasures

He was a storehouse of knowledge. He could talk about train robberies one minute, then point out the scrape marks made by steel-wheeled beer carts in the rocks in his front yard. He enjoyed roaming around the ruins of the German settler community looking for old horseshoes and other memorabilia.

Our last visit

I captured about five minutes of video of Holley talking about recent and past floods and the whirlpool at Tower Rock that could swallow up a 30-foot cottonwood snag. Midway through the account, he tells about how he’d have to put his four-year-old daughter in a boat at midnight to pick up his wife coming home from work when floodwaters had them cut off. She’d start off doing a great job of holding a flashlight so he could pick his way through the trees, but then she’d start shining it around in the air like a coonhunter, he said with a chuckle.

David Holley Obituary

Here is the obituary from McCombs Funeral Home and Cremation Center:

Charles David Holley, 59, of Wittenberg passed away Wednesday, April 11, 2012, at his home.

He was born May 25, 1952, in Memphis, Tenn., son of the late Charles Edward Holley and Ada Ruth (nee Tony) Holley of Memphis, Tn. He and Joanne Byerly were married July 11, 1987.

David worked as a deck hand and laborer until he was no longer able to work due to declining health. He loved the outdoors, especially exploring for Indian artifacts and Harley-Davidson Motorcycles. David enjoyed spending time with his family, friends and always had a story to share or a helping hand for anyone. He also served in the US Marine Corps from 1970-1972.

In addition to his loving wife and mother, survivors include step daughter, Kristie (Dusty) Freeman of Herculaneum, Mo.; daughters Melanie Yount of Imperial, Mo; and Rachel Holley of the home; a brother, Clifford Holley and a sister, Pam Holden both of Memphis, Tenn.; two sisters-in-law, Janet Tyner of Jonesboro, Ark.; Barbara (Fred) Graham of Catron, Mo; two brothers-in-law, Bill (Shirley) Byerly of Fairhope, Al; Rick (Camilla) Byerly of Chaffee, Mo., five grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and many cousins and friends.

He was preceded in death by his father.

April 10, 2012May 7, 2021

Night Baseball and Softball

This roll had an interesting combination of women’s softball and what appears to be Kiwanis baseball. I don’t know when nor where they were taken, so give it your best shot.

Photo gallery of night ball action

Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left of right side of the image to step though the gallery. The film was pretty scratched up, so some of the quality is a bit iffy.

April 9, 2012April 10, 2012

Send in the Clowns

Brother David was a clown as far back as March 1962. This looks like kindergarten or first grade at Trinity Lutheran School. He’s in green, fourth from the left in the front row. Click on the photos to make them larger.

I know what part I’d get

I don’t have access to a playbill, so I don’t know anyone except David. I’m pretty sure I’d have been cast as the south end of the horse the little girl is climbing on.

Fred Lynch’s blog has a shot of me as an angel in the third grade. Then, there was the time John Mueller, Rick Meinz and I were forced to don priestly collars. I think we would have done better as horse hind-ends.

Trauma of school plays

I don’t have many pleasant memories of school plays.

I TOLD my kindergarten teacher that I REALLY had to go to the bathroom before I went on stage, but she said I’d have to wait. Well, there are some things that won’t wait, even if you are going on stage. It was lucky I was wearing dark blue pants.

Friend CT, who who was an editorial writer for an east coast paper messaged me not long ago, “It was you, wasn’t it, who told me 40 years ago that writing editorials is like wetting yourself in a blue serge suit: it gives you a nice warm feeling and nobody seems to notice?”

I swiped that line from someone else, but I’m sure my traumatic moment on stage seared that old saying in my mind.

High school plays

By the time you got to high school, being accepted by acting clubs like Red Dagger or Silver Spear raised the odds that the actors would have a modicum of talent as opposed to elementary school performances where everybody had to play a part. Here are some high school and college plays.

Photo gallery of school play

I don’t have any more information about the play, so it is up to you to ID the players. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to move through the gallery.

April 9, 2012

Pasture on Kingsway Drive

When we moved to 1618 Kingsway Drive, we were outside the city limits. That’s our green house with the white wooden fence around it in the spring of 1962. The back yard dropped down steeply, so Dad trucked in load after load of dirt and built a retaining wall to create two levels. The bottom half we called the “garden” because we it was planted in veggies. Click on the photos to make them larger.

Cows and horses for neighbors

The cool thing for a kid was that our neighbors at the bottom of Kingsway, the Hales, kept horses and cows in the pasture behind us. Mr. Hale gave me the OK to roam around all over his fields and to pitch a tent on the hill opposite our house from time to time.

Hills drained into gully

The surrounding hills all drained into a deep gully that eventually fed into Cape LaCroix Creek (we always called it 3-Mile Creek). I never did too much exploring of the deep gully right behind the house. The walls were steep and covered with brambles. They looked like the kind of place where you’d encounter way more snakes than I cared to see. (That would be one snake, to set the record straight.)

Most of the livestock was pretty gentle, but one of the fields had a bull or two that I tried to avoid. I spent some time up a tree once when one of them took more interest in me than I wanted to take in him.

Don’t look AT the cowpies

The Hale fields were where I learned the technique of picking my way through cowpies. The key is not to look at the steaming pile; to navigate through, you look at where there ISN’T a steaming pile. That technique has helped me avoid flats on my bike: don’t look at the object you’re trying to avoid – look for the open space.

Houses replaced horses

The cows and horses are long gone. Houses have sprouted up where I used to pitch my tent. What’s interesting is that the gully behind our house is still there and running wild. Houses were built on the hill north of it, but the bottom lands have been left pretty much untouched. The way the streets were laid out, I don’t see how that area could ever be developed. Here are aerial photos of the Kingsway / Kurre Lane area from the 1960s.

Some of the houses have taken the time to keep the area behind their homes clean and mowed, but the spot behind us is as unruly as ever and must be a great habitat for wildlife.

That brings up something else. We never saw deer in the fields when I was a kid, but Mother will have one cut across the yard from time to time now that the hills have been developed.