Cape Girardeau History and Photos

November 6, 2015

Rose Mary Seyer 1925 – 2015

Wife Lila posted a sad note to Facebook on October 31: Early this afternoon, a lovely, sweet woman, my Aunt Rose Mary, slipped the bonds of earth into eternal rest.

She and I were close, and I never missed an opportunity to see her and my uncle whenever I was in town. She was kind, gentle and soft spoken. She always had a cup of green tea for me when I visited. We talked about family, of course, but we also talked about quilting and canning… two things she and I both did, until she couldn’t in the last few years.

Funny thing… when I was a child, my mother, Rose Mary’s older sister, would call me ‘Rose Mary’ about half the time, when she was sorting out children’s names as mothers tend to do. I didn’t mind. I will miss her terribly. Going back home won’t ever be the same. .

This photo of Rose Mary and Ray Seyer was taken in 2010 when I recorded Ray talking about growing up in Swampeast Missouri, his World War II navy experiences, ghosts and his feeling that Rush Limbaugh, even as a teenager, was a “horse’s patootie.”

Rose Mary’s obituary

Rose Mary Seyer, 89, of Cape Girardeau died Saturday, Oct. 31, 2015, at Ratliff Care Center.She was born Dec. 9, 1925, in Cape Girardeau to John Jacob and Christine Rosolia Diebold Hoffman.

She and Raymond C. Seyer were married Feb. 26, 1946, at St. Mary Church in Cape Girardeau. Rose Mary was a graduate of St. Mary High School. She was a member of St. Mary Cathedral and St. Mary Ladies Sodality.

Survivors include her husband, Raymond C. Seyer of Cape Girardeau; children, Michael (Brenda) Seyer and Dan (Mary) Seyer of Cape Girardeau, Diane (Ray) Staebel of Liberty Hill, Texas, Janette (Stephen) Bennett of Alexandria, Kentucky, Joyce (Dave) Bruenderman of Cape Girardeau, Linda (Bob) Garner of Jackson, Ralph (Debbie) Seyer of Kirkland, Washington, and Steve Seyer of St. Clair, Missouri; 27 grandchildren; and 42 great-grandchildren.

She was preceded in death by her parents; infant son, Timothy G. Seyer; brothers, Adrian, Jerome, Norman and Charles Hoffman; sisters, Thelma Hoffman and Lucille Perry; and grandchild, Wendy Seyer.

Saying goodbye

St. Mary Cathedral was full of friends and family for Rose Mary’s funeral mass on November 3. The funeral procession on the way to St. Mary Cemetery stretched for blocks.

“Family treasure”

Lila posted to Facebook, “Spent the evening with people who mean the world to me…. my Seyer cousins. My life with them began when I moved to Missouri in 1957. We all are in town together because of the passing of their mother, my aunt Rose Mary. They give a whole new meaning to the term ‘family treasure’. I love these people.”

Photo gallery of Rose Mary’s family

You can tell from the photos on the family refrigerator in the first photo that family was important to Ray and Rose Mary. Here’s a photo gallery of the family gathering Thursday night at Linda and Bob Garner’s home. Good times were remembered and thank-you notes were written. Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the gallery.

November 2, 2015

Bad Halloween Car Karma?

Hey, I did my part. I bought a giant bag of candy. There was a plastic jack o’lantern on the planter by the front door. The porch light and pole light were on. I waited patiently for little ghosts and goblins to show up.

Nary a tap, ring, honk, hoot or holler all Halloween night. I was forced to diminish the bag of candy to assuage my disappointment.

Sunday night, needing to go to the store to restock the pantry. I crawled into the car and turned the key. The silence was deafening. It was as quiet as the doorbell on Halloween.

There was a guy dumping glass in a recycle dumpster at the fire station across the street. Somebody who recycles would surely be willing to give me a jump, right?

He agreed to help, but then he remembered that his battery lives under his rear seat. I’d never heard of that since VW days, but I wasn’t going to argue with him.

Neighbor tried to help

The neighbor down the hill from me was home, so he hooked his truck up to my battery. No joy. We changed the grip on the terminals several times, touched the ends of the cables together (which created an impressive arc), revved up his engine, scratched our heads, then gave up.

The headlights still burned brightly and the power doors and other toys all worked fine. That made it unlikely that my new battery was dead. Someone on the internet suggested disconnecting one of the battery leads for ten minutes, then hooking it up again as a way of rebooting the computer. While it was off, I used a terminal cleaner wire brush to make sure the terminal was clean. No go.

It was time to use my Hondacare extended warranty. Within an amazingly short time, a young man from Sperling’s Garage and Wrecker Service showed up. After doing all the things I had done, he tried tapping on the starter to get its attention. Still silence except for one tiny “click” from the starter when the key was turned.

He said it needed to be towed to the Mother Ship, Cape Honda. I told him to close out the ticket and that I’d arrange to have it towed in the morning rather than having it sit on their lot overnight.

Everybody was super nice

After trying to start it Monday morning, I gave up and called Hondacare again. Another nice guy from Sperling’s showed up. After hearing everything we had tried, he said it was time to play Hook the Honda. There was a problem, though. The van was parked ass-end out, and it needed to be grabbed from the front. Wrecker One called Wrecker Two for assistance.

[An aside. One late night, I heard over the police radio, “Athens 1 to Headquarters.” “Headquarters, go ahead Athens 1.” “Headquarters, call me a wrecker.” “Headquarters to Athens 1, you’re a wrecker.”]

Before long, the two guys had me hooked up and headed to Honda. A couple hours later, the service department called to say my van’s starter was Dead on Arrival, and a transplant would have to come in from St. Louis on Tuesday. It should be ready by the end of the day. The good news was that I qualified for a loaner car and the warranty would cover the repair (roughly $358 to $657 based on Internet estimates).

I forgot to mention one other Only in Missouri thing: the neighbor from down the hill came up while the wrecker guys were working and offered me the use of her car for the day if I needed it. I’ve NEVER had that happen in Florida.

Computer had sympathy pains for the van

Oh, yeah, if that wasn’t enough. The first thing I saw Monday morning was a cry for help from my computer: one of my hard drives had gone critical and needed replacing. If you don’t hear from me, then the replacement didn’t go as smoothly as I had hoped.

What do I do to chase this mechanical rain cloud away? Do I have to post a cute cat picture to reverse the bad car karma?

November 2, 2015

Turtles: A Shell of a Story

These guys must have come out of the bowels of the attic or they might have been set aside for making rattles. All I know is that there was usually a turtle or two around through most of my childhood.

When I started school, Dad and Mother sold the trailer we used to follow Dad from job site to job site and rented a house at 2531 Bloomfield Road. (It’s not there anymore). The house was surrounded by fields and had a swing-up garage door that never closed too tightly, hence the house frequently hosted mice and bugs. Traps kept the former at bay, and we let a couple of turtles roam the basement for the latter.

When we moved in, there was a washing machine in the basement. Not too much later, the landlord confiscated the washer and left behind an old fashioned ringer washer for Mother. “I cried so much that your dad went out and bought me a new washing machine,” she said a few months back.

The water from a shower Dad rigged up and the wash water drained into a floor drain, something that worked adequately until one day when it started backing up. Finally, the landlord had to call a plumber. He wasn’t happy to find out that the clog was caused by an errant turtle who had fallen into the uncovered hole. After that, a No Turtle Rule was instituted.

Then, there was Sam and Ella

No pet store or county fair would have been complete without a chance to buy or win one of these small turtles. We didn’t think about the dangers of salmonella back then.

I even had a painted turtle that came from either our Florida trip or the fair.

Bring on the wild art

I always hated it when an editor would say, “Bring me back some wild art.” That meant is was a slow news day and they needed a feature photo that could run CLO (Cutlines Only). I was lousy at shooting those kinds of pictures.

If I had to, though, I’d throw good taste, scruples and pride aside and bring back a cringe-worthy photo like this.

October 31, 2015

Remember Student Standby?

I ran across an old TWA ticket stub from March 19, 1967. I was flying from St. Louis to Cleveland on what the airlines called “Youth Fare,” but most of us dubbed “student standby.”

St. Louis to Cleveland for $16.54

I was able to fly from Missouri to Ohio for $16.54. I was racking my brain trying to figure out why I was going to Cleveland, then I figured out what was going on.

In March of 1967, I flew to Cleveland and probably got a ride down to Athens with one of Jim Stone’s friends so I could visit him at Ohio University to check out the school. It was a good thing I did. I had applied to OU, but I hadn’t gotten a rejection letter or an acceptance letter. Jim suggested we go by the admissions office to see what was going on.

“Your grades aren’t high enough to meet our standards,” I was told.

“Not good enough?” I countered. “I have a 3.85 average on a scale of 4.0. How smart do I have to be to get into this place?”

She pulled out my file, shuffled through the paperwork, then said, “Somebody made a mistake. You’re in.”

You were good unless you got bumped

The airlines were clear that your seat was safe only so long as the seat wasn’t sold to a full-fare passenger. Planes flew with lots of empty seats in those days (which is why they calculated that a half was better than a nothing), so the odds were pretty good that you were OK.

I never got bumped, but I saw others having to leave the plane. That always made me nervous because I had seen enough of those crash stories where some kid was interviewed, “Yes, I was going to be on that flight, but, at the last second, I was bumped. If that hadn’t happened, I’d have been on that smashed tin can still smoking in a cornfield in Iowa.”

I was doubly nervous when I finally became a paying customer that bumped the last standby. That was REALLY tempting fate.

When did it end?

I tried to find a little of the history of student standby, but didn’t run across much. The Daily Pennsylvanian had a story in 1968 that said that several airlines were phasing out the half-price standby fare, going for one charging two-thirds of the tourist class price. The trade-off was that it would be considered a reserved seat not subject to bumping.

TWA, interestingly enough, was NOT one of the airlines eliminating standby at that time.

In addition to bringing in revenue from what would otherwise be empty seats, the youth fares hooked a whole generation on flying, and airline execs were quoted as saying they hoped to build brand loyalty for future sales. “With a student fare, the student’s taste is catered to a particular airline. When he is 22, he is more likely to use that airline.”