Cape Girardeau History and Photos

In all the excitement over Mother’s Birthday Season, I almost missed the first birthday of this website.

The first posting, on Oct. 20, 2009, contained photographs of the Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge to test whether I liked the web template (I didn’t). If the picture is familiar, it’s because it went on to be one of the two header photos.

I envisioned the site as someplace I could “park” photos while I scanned them. I never dreamed that anyone would actually want to see this stuff, let alone read my ramblings. When I saw that random postings were acquiring a following, I started doing nearly daily updates starting at the end of November of last year.

Top Ten List

Here is a list of the ten most read stories, from top down. Click on the link to go to the story.

1. Rush Limbaugh and Koran-burning Preacher Terry Jones were in same class
2. This summer’s CHS Reunion, Day 1
3. The Boat House
4. Bill Jackson’s transition to Jacqie
5. Cape’s New Water Park
6. Radioactive teenage girls
7. The last night of this summer’s CHS Reunion
8. Dancing in the bank parking lot
9. 1966 aerial photos of Southeast Missouri University
10. Tour of the old Central High school

More visitors than Cape residents

I ran a Google Analytics report on our first year. The site has had 35,851 unique visitors. That’s more people than were counted in Cape Girardeau in the 2000 Census (35,349). I’ve written 239 posts in 365 days and you folks have left 2,605 comments. That’s an extraordinary amount of interaction, and I thank you for it.

Visitors have come from all 50 states and a total of 115 countries or territories. They’ve looked at 177,471 pages

192,454 words

I’ve written about 192,454 words, and you readers have left about 134,596 words of comments. If we’d have been that prolific when we were writing term papers, we’d have earned A-grades from Miss Sadler. (Well, she might have marked us down a grade point for spelling and grammar.)

2,269 photos

Let’s face it, it ain’t my writing that makes this site unique, it’s the photos.

The site has published 2,269 photos, some of which I’m proud; others probably should have stayed in that plastic garbage can under my darkroom table.

One of the most satisfying things about this project has been the number of messages I’ve gotten from readers who have seen photos of their parents and have used those to start discussions about their lives. Many of you have seen a side of them you never knew existed.

Lester Harris and Fred Kaempfer are good examples.

At one time, I was afraid of turning into One-Shot Frony. When I look at the body of work he left behind, though, I see why he stayed in Cape.

Where do we go from here?

I thought I’d be able to wrap Cape up in about a year, then I’d move on to my stint in Ohio. Instead, I’m finding that I’ve only scratched the surface. I have some stories and photos in the pipeline that I think will be as good or better than anything you’ve seen so far.

Down in the Cement Plant quarry

Here’s a sample of what’s coming. This is a shot of the huge columns of stone in the Cement Plant quarry caverns before they were blasted out in the mid-to-late 70s.

Is there a book in the future?

I’ve found out that advertising isn’t going to come close to covering the expenses of producing this site. This isn’t the right market for it, I’m a lousy salesman and I’d rather produce stuff for you to read than beg for bucks.

Kid Matt is looking at what it would cost to produce a book of the best work. We’ll let you know what we find out. Anybody interested in something you could hold in your hand, instead of just see on the screen? The last thing in the world I want is a shed full of books nobody wants.

Way back in Boy Scout Troop 8 days, we learned all kinds of useful sayings:

• “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight; red sky at morning, sailor take warning.”
• “Leaflets three, let it be.”
• “Red on yellow, kill a fellow; red on black, friend of Jack”

Do old adages hold true?

Don’t take my word for it. The Library of Congress’s Science Fun Facts has the answer.

Red sky at night, sailors delight.

When we see a red sky at night, this means that the setting sun is sending its light through a high concentration of dust particles. This usually indicates high pressure and stable air coming in from the west. Basically good weather will follow.

Red sky in morning, sailor’s warning.

A red sunrise reflects the dust particles of a system that has just passed from the west. This indicates that a storm system may be moving to the east. If the morning sky is a deep fiery red, it means a high water content in the atmosphere. So, rain is on its way.

[The rearview mirror shot, by the way, was taken by Wife Lila while she was waiting for me to come back to the car from somewhere.]

“Leaflets three, let it be” is good advice

Poison Ivy plants have a classic tripartite structure (i.e., a poison ivy leaf is comprised of three leaflets).

Dad and I were some of the lucky ones apparently immune to Poison Ivy. He would reach up and pull down the vines with his bare hands. I was never brave – nor foolish – enough to do that, but I didn’t go out of my way to avoid the plant. Mother, on the other hand, would break out in a rash if she just looked at the leaves hard.

How about that snake thing?

Wikipedia says that coral snakes are most notable for their red, yellow/white, and black colored banding. (Several nonvenomous species have similar coloration, however, including the Scarlet Kingsnake, the Milk Snake, and the Chionactis occipitalis annulata.)

In some regions, the order of the bands distinguishes between the non-venomous mimics and the venomous coral snakes, inspiring some folk rhymes — “Red on yellow, kill a fellow; red on black, friend of Jack” (for similar looking Milk Snakes).

However, this only reliably applies to coral snakes native to North America.

Coral snakes found in other parts of the world can have distinctly different patterns, have red bands touching black bands, have only pink and blue banding, or have no banding at all.

I never saw a coral snake until I moved to Florida. Had I seen something that COULD have been a coral snake, I wouldn’t have bothered to pull out a color chart. I’d have beat feet.

In less enlightened times, the standard Southeast Missouri response to seeing a serpent was to kill ’em all and let God sort them out.

I was never so happy as when I found out that The Missourian had a no-snakes policy. At The Jackson Pioneer, it was common for Billy Bob to pull up in front of the paper to have someone (usually me) take the obligatory photo of him holding a dead snake at arms-length.

The Moon is “holding water”

Dad used to look up at the sky and say, “The Moon is holding water,” meaning that the crescent Moon looked like a basin that was holding rain.

I could visualize the symbolism, but never knew the full association. The folks over at NASA say different cultures assign different and confusing names to the crescent moon.

Some ancient skywatchers spoke of the crescent Moon when the bottom seems to be lit as the “wet moon”. They thought it looked like a bowl which could fill up with the rain and snow of the winter season. In Hawaiian astrology, Kaelo the Water Bearer rules from January 20 – February 18. According to the Hawaiian Calendar, Kaelo is the “Dripping Wet Moon” month. However, many other cultures have defined the Moon when lit on the bottom as the “dry moon” since in that configuration, the Moon is “holding in the water”.

As winter passes into spring and summer, the crescent shape slowly shifts toward the south and begins to “stand on its end”. To some ancients, this represented the Moon assuming a pouring position in which it will lose its water and result in the great summer rains. The result was the creation of a “dry moon”, one which held no water because it all poured out. On the other hand, other cultures said that such a moon is a wet moon because it allowed the water to pour out!