Cape Girardeau History and Photos

February 14, 2016February 17, 2016

KFC Closes, Plans to Rebuild

I have to admit that I’m a sucker for Kentucky Fried Chicken’s hot wings, cole slaw and chicken pot pies. That’s why I was disappointed when I drove by the KFC at William and Sheridan and saw the sign that said it was closed.

The Missourian had a story on February 10 that said not only was it closed, it was going to be torn down. The good news for people with my cravings is that it’s going to be rebuilt.

When was it built?

When I read the story, something was missing. If I had turned that copy in, editor jBlue would have kicked it back until I answered the question, “When was it built?”

I found that wasn’t as easy to figure out as I thought it would be. It took a couple hours of rooting around in the Google’s Missourian archives to come up with an answer. (Keep reading.)

The first reference to Kentucky Fried Chicken I could find was a May 23, 1970, story that said Ralph Harris was “remodeling his Kentucky Fried Chicken building at 2100 William Street, adding a center cupola to the roof, this to be painted in the red and white candy stripe effect which characterizes the food chain’s buildings. The new cupola extends 12 feet above the building roof.”

That address, 2100 William, would put in on the north side of the street, across the street from the present building, at 2101 William.

A&W Rootbeer expanding

A news brief right above that one said that Richard Popp is expanding his A&W Rootbeer facility at 335 North Kingshighway “by adding the longest automobile stall canopy in the city. The addition, to the west side of the existing building, is 120 feet long and provides 22 car stalls, the facility providing 32 stalls overall. The new canopy will include under-roof lighting and a system of speakers for customer order placement. Blacktop pavement will be added to areas not already paved.”

A KFC on Broadway?

Adding to my confusion was a June 5, 1971, reference to steel being raised for a building in the 1300 block of Broadway that would house businesses, including a franchised Kentucky Fried Chicken Restaurant. It sounded like it was adjacent to a new Shell station at 1325 Broadway that was going to be managed by Kenneth Wunderlich.

An empire of KFCs

A May 9, 1976, business story by Frony mentioned that Kentucky Fried Chicken’s local franchise operators, Ralph and Lloyd Harris are erecting a new building on Highway 61 in Jackson and plan to open a new facility there early in June. The Harris brothers will now have 11 of the facilities, including two in Cape Girardeau, two in Poplar Bluff, and one in each of the following: Sikeston, Dexter, Malden, Kennett and Hayti. A new one opened Thursday in Cairo, Ill.

I don’t remember this one

Frony’s February 6, 1977, business column talked about a KFC I don’t remember:

The term “restaurant” has its own local momentum. Another new one is to open soon and preliminary construction work has started on another. Frank and Lloyd Harris who, with their Harris Take Home enterprise, operate a number of Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants in the area, are building another, this one at the northwest corner of North Kingshighway and Hopper Road. They recently purchased a portion of the area formerly occupied by the old West Mount Motel, which area fronts 340 feet on Kingshighway and has a depth roughly of 165 feet, from West Cape Development Co., the transaction handled by Cape Reality Co. Workmen are razing a building on the site. Plans are to have the structure ready in early summer.

The new facility will, in addition to the regular service given by other units of its type, feature a smorgasbord. The Harris brothers now operate Kentucky Fried Chicken stores at 2100 William, 1315 Broadway, also in Jackson and other area communities.

Here’s the answer: 1981

I finally found the answer to when the present facility was built in an April 26, 1981, business column.

Construction will begin shortly on a new building on the south side of the 2100 block of William street for Harris Take Homes, Inc., owners and operators of Kentucky Fried Chicken Restaurants in Cape Girardeau and the area. Plans are in contractors’ hands for bidding, and a contract will be awarded in a few days. The local firm, with offices at 1001 North Kingshighway, is owned by Ralph and Lloyd Harris, who opened a restaurant at 2100 William 16 years ago and three years ago built another at Kingshighway and Hopper Road.

The new building, featuring the latest in design by the Kentucky Fried Chicken firm, which franchises its outlets, will be 71 by 26 feet and is located on a lot 140 by 140 feet recently purchased from Texaco, Inc., which had operated a retail gasoline facility there. The building housing the station was razed to make room for the new structure.

This new restaurant, which will have seating for about 85 persons and have a drive-up window, will replace the present one on William. The Harris brothers own the group of buildings of which the restaurant is a part, and the old location will be leased to other interests.

Land behind KFC has been cleared

Google Earth shows four or five buildings that were in the area that has been cleared behind the KFC. The Missourian story said that land will be used as part of the new construction.

We’re looking north from Good Hope towards William. Sheridan is to the right.

February 11, 2016

Time Is Running Out

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 cabin in August 2014

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.

Has been treated with benign neglect

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 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.

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.

February 10, 2016

It’s Still Winter

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.

February 4, 2016February 4, 2016

You Want a Heater in That?

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.