Cape Girardeau History and Photos

I always wondered why the building with 1917 on it was called the “New Rigdon Laundry,” when the building next to it was dated 1931.

There was a logical explanation for it. The original Rigdon Laundry was on South West End Blvd. When it moved to South Sprigg Street in 1917, it became the “New” Rigdon Laundry. (The “Old” Rigdon Laundry was turned into a canning center in 1934.)

The New Rigdon Laundry might have done dry cleaning, but its history was anything BUT dry. If you don’t believe me, skip down to the bottom and read the murder mystery involving one of its drivers.

New Rigdon Laundry has long history

Here are just a few of the stories that appeared in The Missourian over the years:

• July 11, 1916 – J.A. Rigdon says he will start constructing model laundry building on Sprigg St. between Independence and Themis streets sometime in September; Rigdon purchased lot 45 feet by 180 feet on Sprigg St. across from Negro Masonic hall; building he will erect will be about 45 by 120 feet, and wagon sheds, coal houses and storage rooms will be built behind it.
• Dec. 4, 1919 – Coal Shortage Is Being Felt in Cape Girardeau: The city is just beginning to be really effected by the coal situation and to curtail its activities. the Centennary (sic) church which for a while quit having moving picture shows will resume this once more as they have enough wood to run them for quite a while. The New Rigdon Laundry though yesterday that it would be necessary for it to close down, but Al Salzgeber, proprietor of the Idan-Ha Hotel came to the rescue and let it have some coal, enough for two days. Mr. Rigdon then obtained some coal from the West End Fuel Company, enough to run them the rest of the week and about two days of the next.

Edna Hilpert gets toe crushed

• Feb. 8, 1921 – Edna Hilpert had about half an inch of her big toe crushed off when her right foot was caught in a cog of one of the motors.
• Apr. 12, 1924 – New Rigdon Laundry gets new rug cleaning machine, the first of its kind between St. Louis and Memphis. Cleaning the average rug costs less than $3.50.
• June 26, 1926 – Completed installation of The Thermo-Vento Drying Machine. The operation of this modern laundry dryer is a marvel to watch. It handles six full family washes and the clothes literally float in the air as they go through the process of drying. It only takes 15 minutes to dry the batch of six family washes.
• Feb. 9, 1931 – Construction will begin tomorrow on a new laundry plant at 18-22 N. Sprigg St. in Cape Girardeau, to be erected by J.A. Rigdon, owner of the New Rigdon Laundry; the new plant, to be built adjacent to the present plant on the south, will practically double the size of the laundry.

Lions color 5,000 Easter eggs

• Mar. 23, 1932 – The Lions played Easter rabbits…and prepared about 5,000 prettily colored eggs for the Annual Easter Egg Hunt… Starting the job of boiling and coloring eggs about 7:30 Tuesday evening, they worked until 10 o’clock, at which time nearly 14 cases of eggs were finished for the big event. Less than 20 members of the club did the job, owing to the fine engineering ability of Harold Hebbeler and Charles Rigdon. The boiling and coloring was done in the basement of the Rigdon Laundry, which was tendered the club for the work by Mr. Rigdon.
• Feb. 12, 1934 – Purchase of the Cape Laundry Co. equipment and real estate at 45 S. West End Blvd. by the New Rigdon Laundry, 22 N. Sprigg St., is announced by J.A. Rigdon; the deal involved cash and real estate, including five houses, in addition to the equipment and real estate.

New Rigdon Laundry get bigger boiler

• Aug. 16, 1934 – A boiler room extension is being constructed at the New Rigdon Laundry, 22 N. Sprigg St.; the brick addition will be 10 feet wide and 5 feet long, and enlarges the present boiler room so that a larger boiler can be installed.
• Nov. 22, 1932 – New Rigdon Laundry and Dry Cleaning plant, 16-22 North Sprigg St., is model of modern cleaning methods; history of plant can be traced to J.A. Rigdon, who set up laundry business in St. Genevieve in 1898; he purchased Cape Girardeau steam laundry in 1915, which was destroyed by fire a year later. In 1917, he erected New Rigdon Laundry and has since made it a model of efficiency.

Bill Tipton buys Rigdon Laundry

• April 19, 1954 – Sale of equipment of Rigdon Laundry, 23 N. Sprigg, to Tipton’s Whiteline Laundry Inc., is announced jointly by Mr. and Mrs. Thomas O. McGee of Rigdon Laundry and Bill Tipton, president and manager of Whiteline.
• May 6, 1958 – Another familiar sight to local residents — the smoke that has risen for some 40 years from the chimney on the Rigdon Laundry building — is gone; the old, hand-fired coal boiler, which has been in use since around 1917, has been replaced by a modern gas boiler as part of a remodeling program by owner Bill W. Tipton.
• July 28, 1974 – Mr. and Mrs. Bill Tipton, owners and operators of Rigdon’s Laundry, and the dry cleaning and linen services which are a part of the business, have announced purchase of a building at 1415 Independence St…. The firm has been in present location for 20 years. The Tiptons purchased the business in April 1954. It was established by the Rigdon family, later acquired by Mr. and Mrs. Thomas McGee. Mrs. McGee still owns the structure.

Laundry driver found shot dead

Big news in The Missourian Aug. 14, 1926: Evidently shot from ambush, the murdered body of Robert Deevers was found Friday afternoon on Jackson Hill, on the road from Illmo to Commerce. Deevers, a truck driver for the New Rigdon Laundry, was found lying on his back, 20 feet away from his truck, an automatic pistol six feet away from his body. Two bullets, thought to be .32 or .38 caliber, had taken effect, one in his biceps of his left arm and the other in his chest, ranging from his right side down through the lower part of his heart and out of his left side.

Follow this link to read the whole story, including a sidebar about how the victim was quoted as saying, “Well, if a hold-up gets me, he’ll have to be a better man than I am. And, besides, you know I don’t put much stock in most of these robberies. I think they’re just framed up and the fellow who was robbed know just when and where it’s going to happen. Then he gets his share.”

Dead driver bought life insurance policy

A follow-up story Aug. 24, 1926, said that the driver, who had been shot to death by unknown assassins had taken out a $6,000 life insurance policy Aug. 9; he was fatally wounded Aug. 13. Follow this link to read how the authorities thought the insurance policy was an indication that the driver feared what the future might bring and desired to care for his family in the event something happened to him. Sheriff E.A. Dye characterized the case as almost “hopeless” because there were few clews at the scene of the murder.”

Driver not murdered; shot himself

After the sheriff had pretty much given up hope of solving the shooting death, an investigator from the Burns Detective Agency came up with a theory that the driver killed himself “while morose over recent gambling losses and an increasing debt owed the New Rigdon Laundry.”

It’s worth following the link the the Sept. 13, 1926, Missourian to read the whole investigation. The crime scene analysis reads like something you’d see on a TV whodunit these days. The sheriff and the prosecuting attorney closed the probe and ruled the death a suicide.

When I was in town this spring, my brother, Mark, and I met up with Jayne and Judy Schrader. Judy was in my class, and Jayne was Mark’s age. (He said he remembered her as a “good egg.”

[Note: I have a hard enough time remembering who folks are, so you’ll notice that I usually refer to women by their maiden names. Wife Lila’s yearbook is full of scrawled name changes from the days when she tried to keep track, but even she gave up.]

I still have Judy’s Valentine’s Day card

I posted photos of Valentine’s Day cards from Judy and others earlier this year. Judy must have a time capsule like my Mother’s attic, because she brought along our Trinity Lutheran School Kindergarten Graduation picture (with names written on the back) and her 6th Grade School Memories Book.

Judy, Age 11, Grade 6, lists her hobbies as skating and swimming. I don’t know about the swimming part, but she and I spent a lot of Friday nights at Hanover Skating Rink. You couldn’t exactly call us an item, but we DID hold hands when we skated. Of course, we didn’t do any of that mushy kind of close skating. I liked her because she liked to skate fast.

Hanover wasn’t fancy

Hanover wasn’t a fancy rink like MaryAnn’s. The floors were dirty, even on a good night. If it rained, the roof leaked and you had to dodge puddles. If you didn’t have your own shoe skates, you rented heavy metal skates that clipped onto your street shoes. They could unclip just as easily, leaving the skate dangling from your ankle by a leather strap.

Judy’s Favorite Classmates

Judy listed her favorite classmates as Patti Haas, Bonnie Strom and Marilyn Heuttig. She has photos of Bonnie and Marilyn, but Patti must have had an inkling even back that far that she would end up in a witness protection program and made sure she didn’t leave any images behind.

[Note: Patti is alive and well. In fact, she stopped by my mother’s house in March and we spent a couple hours laughing and talking just like we were back in grade school. She no longer wears her hair in pigtails, though. She also told me that the statute of limitations on the Tunnel of Love Valentine she sent me card had long expired.]

Cheerleaders showing just a little too much leg

I don’t ever recall seeing this photo of the Trinity Lutheran School cheerleaders. I suspect it showed too much leg for the principal.

THIS is how Lutheran cheerleaders should look

It’s unseemly to have girls cavorting about. They should be able to just WILL their teams to victory with a subtle hand gesture. This is, you will note, a non-cavorting photo that was suitable to run in the 1961 school yearbook. Each dress contained enough material to construct a six-man tent in case of a Civil Defense emergency.

By 1966 skirts had reached the knee

By the time I shot the cheerleaders in 1966, skirts had moved from mid-calf to just about knee level, but the cheerleaders were still firmly planted on the floor.

I don’t remember much emphasis on athletics at Trinity. We played ball at recess and I know we had school teams, but I don’t recall ever going to any games against other schools.

In the last few years, though, the school has added a state-of-the-art gym to the school. One of these days I’ll run a collection of new and old Trinity Lutheran School pix and you’ll be able to see it.

Kindergarten Graduation

Trinity made a big dead out of Kindergarten and Eighth Grade graduations. Here’s Judy’s photo of our Kindergarten graduation. The well-behaved cherub on the front row, left, is me.

Our names are on the back

If you don’t believe that’s me, check out the IDs written on the back of the print. OK, my name is REALLY Steinhoff, not Stienoff, but that’s close enough.

Missourian photographer Fred Lynch dipped into his stash of Frony photos to come up with pictures from a fashion show sometime in the 1950s or 1960s. The first photo ran June 30; the second showed up July 14.

That jogged my memory. I have couple sleeves of negatives that were slugged TAC Fashion Show 1966.

They are pretty unspectacular, but I thought someone might enjoy seeing them. I won’t even try to ID anyone in the photos. I don’t know where the show was held, either. You’ll have to fill in the blanks.

I have another set of photos marked TAC Fashion Show Prep /3/9/67 that I’ll run down the road.

The difference between boys and girls

These little girls were following and critiquing every outfit as it went by.

1,000-Yard Stare

The guys have that thousand-yard-stare, my-watch-must-have-stopped look.

Photo gallery of Fashion Show

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