Cape Girardeau History and Photos

January 16, 2011January 17, 2011

CHS Maintenance Staff

Central High School maintenance staffers like James Criddle might as well as have been invisible to most of us students. When I went back for a walk through our high school in 2009, I was impressed at how well maintained it was. Every wall and floor shined just like when we were there 45 years ago.

The new generation of maintenance workers must be carrying on the tradition of the ones who were there in 1965: Jack Snider, Harold Brown, Leonard Reed, Richard Ware, Leonard Mayberry, James Criddle and Mrs. James Criddle.

[Editor’s note: Walter Lamkin notes in a comment below that the name of one of the maintenance workers was misspelled: it should be Leonard Reid, not Reed. I copied the names from the 1965 Girardot and checked them against the 1964 Girardot. There was no listing for a Leonard Reed in the 1969 City Directory, but there was a Leonard REID. Mr. Reid lived on Thilenius St., along with Elodie and Larry (a student). Based on that, I’m going to vote with Mr. Lamkin and complain to Girardot Editor-in-Chief Nancy Jenkins.]

January 15, 2011January 14, 2012

NAACP Comes to Cape

It was appropriate to have run across these photos with Martin Luther King Day coming up.

[Editor’s note: I’ve kept with the vernacular used by The Missourian, even though the language feels strange these days.]

Kivie Kaplan, national president of the NAACP, came to speak to the local chapter and the public in the St. James AME Church Aug. 9, 1967.

The Missourian’s story the next day identified the folks in the photo above as the Rev. Ben H. Cleaver, retired minister, left, and the Rev. Wallace Ward, pastor of the St. James AME Church. Behind them are members of the church’s junior choir, Misses Ruth Watson, Janis Jefferson, Olivia Johnson and Diane Mitchell.

[Editor’s note: The Missourian’s cutline has the woman on the left identified as Ruth Watson; Ron Bedell said it should be Ruth Wilson and I’m pretty sure he’s correct. Here’s where you can see a photo of Ruth at last summer’s reunion.]

NAACP “does not condone violence”

Kaplan went out of his way to assure the audience of about 100 that his organization does “not condone violence,” and stresses at all times the “peaceful and legal pursuit” of its objectives. He added that the NAACP has more than 500,000 members and represents 90 per cent of the Negro population.

Police present to “direct traffic”

He said Black Power leaders and others who advocate violence as a means to acquire civil liberties represent “only a fraction of one per cent of the Negro people.”

The city fathers may not have been as sure of that. The story went on to say that “About a dozen policemen were on hand at the church to direct the flow of traffic and presumably to halt any outbreak of disorder. No disturbance was reported, however.”

It was reported that there was applause at least two points and audible “amens” came from the crowd occasionally.

Kaplan was welcomed to the city by Mayor J. Hugh Logan, who expressed his interest in Mr. Kaplan’s address.

Kaplan implies local firms show bias

Cape school integrated early and peacefully. Classmate Gerald Love said at the reunion last summer, “There was no friction with the kids. There might have been some adults with problems, but not the kids.” It’s worth going back to read Gerald Love’s story, though, of his introduction to racism in Cape.

Kaplan said he had been told that of the 400 persons employed by Marquette Cement Mfg. Co., only five are Negroes; out of 240 employees of Missouri Utilities, only four are Negroes. At Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., there is only one Negro out of a total of 200 employees.

Photo gallery of NAACP meeting

Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to move through the gallery.

January 13, 2011

Razing Erlbacher Foundry

Frank Reed is holding some of the wooden patterns that are part of Cape Girardeau today. I photographed him in the old Erlbacher Foundry at 231 North Main in January 1966. Shortly after the photo was taken, the building was leveled for the construction of the new Missouri Employment Security Office.

The round object in the foreground was used to cast the manholes we’ve all driven over.

The machine shop and foundry was built in 1906 by Balthaser “Bill” Erlbacher. Mr. Reed went to work in 1930 and continued to work there until a stroke forced him to retire in 1959.

Million dollars of patterns

“There’s a million dollars of patterns here – that’s what they’d cost to have them made today,” Mr. Reed commented as he walked down shelves of the hand-carved patterns that were used to form precise molds for the iron to be cast into.

I wonder if anyone salvaged any of the more interesting ones or if they were hauled to the dump when the building was torn down. I wonder what they’d be worth at some place like Annie Laurie Antiques?

Pot-belly stove cast in foundry

You can still see the chimney for an old pot-belly stove that was cast in the foundry. “It was a big old thing and it put out lots of heat,” he recalled.

Erlbacher himself cut the massive sycamore beams that held the building up. Mr. Reed characterized his old boss as “just an old German, hard-working man who just never knew when to quit. He was a great old man who had a heart as big as a gallon bucket.”

Biggest shop between St. Louis and Memphis

Mr. Reed said the shop was one of the biggest machine shops between St. Louis and Memphis. “It wasn’t like it is today – now everybody has a welder, but then they’d come from farms and small places for miles around to have work done.

Next time your tires go “thump, thump” over a manhole cover, wonder if it was produced by Balthaser Erlbacher and Frank Reed in the foundry on North Main.

January 13, 2011June 5, 2021

Mosquitoes Put Bite on Cape

I wrote a story for Page One of the July 11, 1967, Missourian that must have contained every bad pun about mosquitoes ever written. If you discount that, though, it wasn’t all that bad. It was good enough that Editor John Blue gave me a byline, something you got about as often as (or in lieu of) a raise.

Are the taxpayers getting stung?

Spraying cost about $80 a day. The city spent $1,400 in 1966 and was projected to spend $2,500 in 1967. Russell Matzen, health officer, said, “I think the spraying is helping out a lot. Believe it or not, there are actually places in town where people can sit outside without swatting.”

The spray from the fogger is harmless, Matzen assured, unless it is breathed for a prolonged time. He warned parents, though, not to allow their children to play or ride bicycles near the foggers because motorists may not see them.

St. Louis mosquitoes REALLY bad

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that city was launching an all-out assault against “perhaps the heaviest plague of mosquitoes in 15 years.” Crews spreading larvacide there were run out by the insects and had to return with fogging equipment “just to even up the fight.”