There’s quite a difference in the way the Benjamin F. Hunter Cabin looked February 9, 2016, and the way it looked when I photographed it in August 2014. Click on the photos to make them large enough to see how much the building has deteriorated in less than two years.
The structure, which was built outside Sikeston in the 1880s and taken apart in the 1980s, was a preservation project undertaken by Southeast Missouri State University in the 1990s. It quickly became a house without a home, with the university proposing, then discarding a number of possible locations.
Gravity will take its toll
The story I did in 2014 said Dr. Bonnie Stepenoffcontinued work on the cabin in the mid 1990s, including repairs on the roof, chinking and daubing the walls, placing a gate around the property, reglazing the windows, and conducting additional student research.
From the amount of light streaming through the gaps between the logs, I would say most of that chinking has fallen out. The roof has holes in it, and you can see some of the logs have fallen out just between 2014 and this week. Unless something is done fairly soon, gravity is going to take over and all that will be left will be a stack of rotting logs.
Of course, that’s the university’s approach to preservation: neglect a property until you can say that fixing it will cost more than tearing it down.
Don’t let those warm days fool you. Winter still has a few tricks up her sleeve. I went to bed uncharacteristically early Monday night because I didn’t want to start a fire to take the chill off the basement where I work. I woke up around 3 in the morning craving a snack and saw that it was spitting snow. When I went to bed around 4, it was coming down pretty hard and blowing across the street.
This was the view outside my car windshield this morning. (Florida Friends, you can click on the photos to make them larger. They will NOT radiate cold through your computer monitor, so it’s OK.)
A look to my left
My jacket and stocking cap were in the back seat, though, so I punched the button that should have opened the sliding side door. No luck. I guess enough ice had formed to make the door think there was some kind of obstruction and it wouldn’t play nicely until the van warmed up a bit.
I let the motor run for a few minutes to let it and my heated seat chase the cold away. My side windows were fairly clean.
And, a look to the right
The yellow 1977 Datsun pickup truck is still in the driveway. We sold it to a young couple who are going to fix it and drive it around Cape, but they are busy closing on a new house. I told them they could leave it here until they had a driveway of their own to park it in.
It’s funny how many people use that as a landmark when giving directions.
I see the forecast for Wednesday night calls for a 22% chance of snow. I hope it gets cold enough to freeze the ground. I need to order another load of firewood.
I now know why I’m a pack rat. Mother’s attic was a time capsule, and Dad’s filing cabinets are a treasure trove of business minutia. I’ve found things going back to 1946. The one summer I worked for him, he set me to scooping up every nail, screw and bolt on the floor of the various shops, and then had me carefully put each one in its proper bin.
I thought he was just giving me busy work to do between unloading lumber and concrete forms coming back from jobs, but, no, I see that his year end inventories were down to the nut, bolt and screw level. Not by box, but by item.
Jim Kirkwood got an “economy heater”
Dad and his partners would usually trade pickup trucks every three years to get the most trade-in value out of them.
The invoice above shows that Jim Kirkwood got a new 1964 Chevrolet 1/2-ton pickup for a grand total of $2,240.70. (Click on it to make it easier to read.)
Extras included a wheel carrier for $15.10; an economy heater for $53.80; a manual radio for $47.90, and two-speed windshield wipers for $16.15.
1967’s model was spiffier
Kirkwood’s 1967 truck had a few more extras. Maybe Steinhoff, Kirkwood and Joiner had had a good year. The overall cost was $2,754.20, but his old truck was worth$1,423.20 in trade.
Here were his options:
Heater – $68.35
Radio – $58.65
Wheel carrier – $14.00
Gauges – 10.80
Heavy-duty springs – $6.50
Powerglide – $199.10
Deluxe rear window – $43.05
2-tone paint – $16.15 (White/Red)
Custom molding – $43.05
M/S tires (rear) – 6.80
My oil changing experience
Dad was due for a new truck the summer I worked for him. He’d only had it a few weeks when he pulled it into the shop and told me to change the oil.
Now, I had never changed the oil in anything before, but how hard could it be? You unscrew a plug, let all the goop drain out, you put the plug back and you pour in new goop, right?
That’s exactly what I did. I was surprised that it took less oil than I expected, but a check of the dip stick showed the crankcase was full.
(That’s Brother Mark crawling over one of Dad’s trucks. He was partial to green and white, but I think a blue one slipped in from time to time.)
“Something’s wrong with the transmission”
Dad was working a job out in the Missouri Ozarks, so he didn’t get back until late the next afternoon.
“There’s something wrong with the transmission. It kept popping out of gear all the time. I hope I didn’t get a lemon,” he said over dinner.
The next day he discovered that there was zip, zero, zilch transmission fluid in the vehicle.
I got the drain plug part right, I just didn’t know that belly of the beast had TWO drain plugs – one for oil and the other for transmission fluid.
I give Dad credit. He didn’t chew me out. The truck and I both survived the experience.
I’ve been dragging my feet putting this post up, because I’m not exactly sure why I didn’t feel more emotion at my visit to the Central High School Gymnasium Saturday, the last public viewing before it’s torn down sometime during this month and March.
Here, by the way is a panorama shot from the top of the south bleachers looking to the north. Click on it to make it larger.
Maybe I didn’t connect because all of the spirit signs, the Tiger logos, the baseball brag board and the Alma Mater had all been removed from the walls. My knees didn’t like the bleachers that we were made to run up and down in P.E.
It was the noise that was missing
It was too quiet. There were no basketballs bouncing off the shiny floor. No coaches blowing their whistles and bellowing at lackadaisical students like me. There was no hollering nor the SPLAT! of one of those red rubber dodgeballs leaving an equally red mark on some slow-to-move freshman.
No fond memories
I can’t think of any fond memories I had about that room. I hated physical education class with a purple passion. I had neither the skills nor the desire to play sports.
I attended tens of dances and proms, but, with few exceptions, my job was to wait until this queen or that queen was crowned, then head home to process my film for The Missourian, The Tiger or The Girardot.
First high school girlfriend Shari found out I wasn’t fibbing when I told her I didn’t know how to dance, and last high school girlfriend Wife Lila will confirm that I never got any better.
I thought the showers were bigger
When I journeyed to the locker room and showers, I was astounded at how small the shower room was. It’s hard to believe that you could cram a dozen or more guys in there at one time, even considering that I was half the size I am today.
I stand by a description I wrote in 2013: “We guys were herded into gang showers where earsplitting hoots and hollers echoed off the tile walls like a bad prison movie. At least once during this session (which I tried to complete as quickly as possible), there would be something that sounded like a space shuttle lifting off, followed by a sulfurous cloud of methane gas that rolled off the tiles in a green cloud, prompting another Neanderthal to try to best the earlier contribution.”
If the dodgeballs went “SPLAT!” the snapping of wet towels sounded like a wild bunch of cowboys trying to get the herd moving by cracking their bullwhips.
Bleacher and floor signup sheet
There was a signup sheet near the entrance where people could leave their names if they were interested in getting pieces of the bleachers or floor when the building is being torn down. I talked with Coach Terry Kitchen Monday to get details, but he said the administration hadn’t made a decision yet on what will happen with the salvage. He asked me to check back later this week to see what was going to happen. When I hear, I’ll post an update.
I have to admit I wouldn’t mind having a chunk of bleacher.
A moment with Terry Crass
On my way out, I stopped to chat with a man wearing an orange shirt. It turned out to be Terry Crass, probably one of the nicest guys who ever walked the halls of Central High School. As team manager of just about every sport except Chess, he kept players patched up, and he’s doing much the same work today at the Veterans Home.
After a few minutes of chit-chat, Terry said, “On the afternoon JFK got killed, I was in Mr. Ford’s algebra class. The weather was bad. It was a lousy-looking day. Mr. Wilferth came on the PA and said the president had been shot. We didn’t know anything.
“The bell rings and I hit out to the study hall. Nobody was saying anything. Everybody was crying. There was a big black and white TV in there. That’s when Walter Cronkite looked up at the clock over his shoulder and said, “From Dallas, Texas, the FLASH, apparently official, President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time, 2 o’clock Eastern Standard Time, some 38 minutes ago.” [I inserted the actual quote, but Terry pretty much nailed it from memory.]
I had a flashback
I flashed back to another TV on that day. One that was sitting in the gym with shocked students staring at it. “All you could hear was breathing,” I told The Missourian when I rushed my photo to the paper to make my first EXTRA edition.
Suddenly, I must have swallowed a marble because I couldn’t say anything, and there was a lot of dust in the air that caused my eyes to water.
I guess I DID leave a little piece of myself in that old gym.
Last Day photo gallery
Here are some random photos of folks saying goodbye to the old building. Click on any picture to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move around.
There’s quite a difference in the way the Benjamin F. Hunter Cabin looked February 9, 2016, and the way it looked when I photographed it in August 2014. Click on the photos to make them large enough to see how much the building has deteriorated in less than two years.
I did a post December 13, 2014, that explored some of the history of the reconstructed log cabin on the road to Old McKendree Chapel.
The structure, which was built outside Sikeston in the 1880s and taken apart in the 1980s, was a preservation project undertaken by Southeast Missouri State University in the 1990s. It quickly became a house without a home, with the university proposing, then discarding a number of possible locations.
The story I did in 2014 said Dr. Bonnie Stepenoff continued work on the cabin in the mid 1990s, including repairs on the roof, chinking and daubing the walls, placing a gate around the property, reglazing the windows, and conducting additional student research.
