Tag: Aerial photos

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Beep, Beep, Beep Mystery

Night before last I was working in the basement and thought I heard a beeping sound like my car’s panic alarm was honking the horn. Every once in awhile, if I bend over just right, other keys in my pocket will hit the key fob button to set it off. I walked upstairs to give a listen. Nope. Nothing in the immediate area, but I COULD hear a faint beeping. (Click on any photo to make it larger.)

I categorize threats into two categories:

  • Concerns Me
  • Doesn’t Concern Me

This fit into the second category and it wasn’t loud enough to keep me awake, so I ignored it.

Do you hear that beeping?

Brother Mark showed up at the house on mid-morning to celebrate Thanksgiving and asked, “Do you hear that beeping?”

I have to confess that I’m missing chunks of frequencies – mostly those that Wife Lila uses to ask me to do things – but I told him that I could hear it faintly. He went out to blow leaves. When he came back, he said he had tried to track down the sound and it appeared to be bouncing off Randy’s house, but not coming FROM the house.

1600 block of Kingsway

I need to explain how the 1600 block of Kingsway works. We were about the fifth house on the street, and one of the first built in the 1950s. The other homes were decades older.

If you look at the three ranch-style houses on the north side of Kingsway, we’re the one on the right. The Ailors moved into the one next to us, and the Garners were in the third house down the hill The little house below them was owned by an elderly couple, the McCunes. At the bottom left was the Hale farm; they owned the pasture behind our house.

Directly across from us lived the Tinkers. Down the hill from them was a two-story house owned by John and Mary Gray. For some reason, they fixed up a chicken house behind the big house and moved into there, leaving the big house as rental property occupied by folks we never bothered to learn names for. Eventually, the house was bought by Randy, a Cape firefighter. He was there long enough for it to be dubbed “Randy’s house.” He sold it and now it’s destined for demolition.

It’s always going to be Tinkers’

So, even though the Tinkers have been dead for years and Bill and Rhonda Boltens (great neighbors, by the way) have been living there for longer than I can remember, it’s probably always going to be “over at Tinkers” to us.

Anyway, now that you have the layout in your mind -or, are totally confused – let’s get back to the beeping story.

Doesn’t seem to be inside

The noise got louder the closer we got to Randy’s house, but it didn’t appear to be coming FROM the house. You couldn’t hear it from behind the house. It felt like it was bouncing OFF the house.

Let’s check the Garner house

I walked across the street to the old Garner house. I could see a dog inside, so I knocked on the door. A coworker in Florida posted an account last week about how she never opens the door for a stranger. Others chimed in with stories about how they always keep a gun at the door. They obviously spend all their time listening to The All Fear All the Time Network. With that in mind, I wondered if I’d get an answer.

After a couple of raps, and much dog barking, a young woman came to the door. I identified myself and said I was staying with Mother up the street. “I read your column,” she volunteered. That always feels good to hear.

I told her Mark and I were tracking down a mystery. “You mean the beeping? It’s not coming from here. I noticed it when I got home around lunchtime yesterday.” We told her we’d let her know what we found.

Past the old McCune place

We walked down the hill from what had been the McCune property and noticed that a lot of the homeowners in what used to be a pasture I roamed and camped in when I was 10 or 12 had done a lot of nice landscaping. Fortunately, the area behind our house and the next door neighbor has been left to go wild, proving habitat for all kinds of creatures, plus preserving the rural feel we’ve had since before we were in the city limits.

The sound didn’t get stronger, and it still seemed to be directional. If we moved off to the left or right, it got fainter. I thought at one time that the sound was stronger coming from the direction away from the house, but Mark convinced me that I was hearing things.

I felt like I was back taking my draft physical. They put a bunch of guys wearing only our underwear in a small, dark room, put headphones on our heads and handed us a box with a button on it. “When you hear a tone, press the button,” we were ordered by someone who looked at us like we were a lower form of life. I had my finger on the button waiting to hear something. Nothing. We all started looking at each other and shrugging our shoulders. Then, we all started pushing the button at random. Interestingly enough, we all passed.

Is it the fuzzy-tailed rat?

When we got back up the hill, Mark noticed that a tree in front of the house had a squirrel’s nest in it. “Maybe the fuzzy-tailed rat (Mark doesn’t like squirrels ever since they got in his attic) carried something up into his nest.” We wandered around the tree and ruled the fuzzy-tailed rat blameless. Well, at least I did. Mark still thinks one was the second shooter on the Grassy Knoll.

By this time, it was Hungry O’Clock and we had to chow down on some great slow-cooked roast beef and all the fixin’s. We had more desserts than any three people can eat in two weeks (but we’re gonna try). Then, my schedule showed it was time for a 37-minute nap (I had missed my 22-minute 11 o’clock nap, so I was due for an extension).

Smoke alarm theory

Shortly before dark, we piled in the car and cruised up all the streets in a one-mile radius trying to find some house that was in line-of-sight with Randy’s that was making a noise that could be hitting his old house and reflecting off it. Zip. Zero. Nada.

One last theory: Mark did a Google search on beeps and found a reference that “This alarm incorporates the internationally recognized horn signal for evacuation. During alarm mode, the horn produces three short beeps, followed by a two-second pause and then repeats. This pattern is somewhat different than the previous alarm sound, which continually beeped.”

We didn’t think it was a smoke alarm because it sounded like it was a lower frequency than most smoke alarms and it wasn’t sounding “beep pause beep pause beep” in a continuous series . We know power has been off in the house for quite awhile, so it’s possible that an alarm has drained its battery, particularly with temperatures dropping to freezing. If the new standard is for alarms to broadcast three beeps now, maybe that’s it.

If it’s still going off tomorrow, we’ll see if we can get into the house or listen at a window to see if it’s coming from the inside. Otherwise, I’m going to invoke Category Two and ignore it.

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David Renshaw – Demolition Man

David Renshaw and I didn’t exactly get off on the right foot.

I told Mother I wanted to cruise by 501 Broadway to get a shot of an old building that was due to be torn down. I had photos of it, but I wanted one with the fence around it that would say, “Days are numbered.” I left her in the car with the heater running. (As always, click on any image to make it larger.)

Lutheran Church mural

I shot the west side, where the big blue mural is; wandered around to the front; decided I might as well walk down the east side, not because the photos would be all that interesting, but because I wanted some record shots. My eye was drawn to what looked like an enclosed wooden porch on the second floor. In the middle window of the porch was a gold-colored object that looked like it might be a trophy. Curious.

What’s in the window?

While I was looking at it, I noticed a gap in the fence and a black vehicle pulling into the building through the fence. I decided to “follow that car” to see if I could get some interior shots. I didn’t spot anyone right away, but, walking further in, I ran into a young woman. I handed her my card and started to explain what I was doing when a man walked up asking what I wanted.

500 Block of Broadway

I launched into my standard 30-second elevator speech and got to the part where I said, “I used to work for The Missourian.” That was not a good thing to say because David Renshaw was not happy with part of a Missourian story that morning.

Not happy with Missourian story

What had his tail twisted was a line in the Nov. 15, 2010, story that said, “[Tim Morgan, director of the city’s Inspection Services Department] and church leaders did not know the exact day the building would come down. But the church has hired Sabre Excavating of Thebes, Ill., to do the work. David Renshaw, of Sabre, did not return phone calls Monday.”

“How could I return a phone call that I didn’t know I’d gotten,” he said, and walked away. Brandy Williams, the young woman clarified. The reporter had called his home number and left a message there. He didn’t get it until much later.

Translating newspaperspeak

Let me digress here to talk a little about newspaper-speak. In the old days, reporters wrote what information they had and put it into the paper. At some point, people started complaining that, “You didn’t let me tell MY side of the story.” To counter that argument, you started to see some of the following phrases in the paper. How they were interpreted depended a lot on the paper’s policies and local customs.

  •  “Refused to comment” – You asked the subject a question and they refused to answer.
  • “Not authorized to comment on the record” – That meant you got all kinds of juicy info, but you couldn’t attach the person’s name to it.
  • “Didn’t immediately return phone calls” – Now that we’re into 24/7 news cycles, that means, “I was on deadline, called the person, left a message and they didn’t call me back in the five minutes before I had to file this story.”
  • “Didn’t return repeated telephone calls” – Subject has been dodging me.
  • “Didn’t return repeated calls to his office, home and cell” – Reporter is getting cranky
  • “Did not return phone calls” – this was the Renshaw complaint, which I think was valid. The implication was that Renshaw was dodging the call. The reality was that he didn’t KNOW there was a call. That might not have been the reporter’s intent, but that’s the way it was perceived, with reason.

“I’m really not a rude guy”

Renshaw came back a couple of minutes later. “I’m not really a rude guy. This just had me a little upset.”

I told him that I was not responsible for anything that happened at The Missourian after 1967. After that, we got along great.

I was discussing interviewing techniques with someone the other day. I said that I approach an interview the same way that I approach fly fishing: I think there’s a big bass hiding under that sunken log and I’ll make a test cast to test my theory. If I’m lucky, I’ve landed a lunker. More than likely, my question won’t get a nibble, so I’ll cast another one. If I’ve tried two or three casts without a nibble, I’ll switch bait and fling it again.

Piercing blue eyes

Renshaw has these piercing blue eyes and a bemused expression that deliver the message, “That was a really dumb question” without him having to say a word. He’s the big bass under the log who can’t be fooled with artificial lures.

Like he said, he’s not a rude guy, but I get the feeling he doesn’t suffer fools kindly.

One the other hand, I was impressed with how introspective and how insightful he was. He has a real appreciation for the buildings he’s destroying.

“It’s too far gone”

Looking at the tin ceiling on the first floor, with pieces of it falling down and with water dripping from it, I asked if there was any salvage value to it.

“It would mean something to someone,” he said, picking up a rusted and rotten piece from the floor. “But, you can’t save it. It’s too far gone. What are you going to do with it?

“I worked for a demolition contractor in St. Louis for eight years, then I came home. That’s my dad in there knocking stuff down. I just wanted to come home.”

 Are the bricks worth anything?

“I can’t get anyone to come get them. I’ve called and I’ve called and I’ve called. If I clean them and pallet them up, I might get 30 cents up to two bucks a brick, but they’ve got to be the right brick. The guy’s wife has to like it.

“Brick places want you to take some bricks and lay them out to take a pretty picture, flip ’em over and take another picture, flip ’em over and take another picture, flip ’em over and take another picture. That’s six bricks out of how many there are in here?

“We did it on one project and we didn’t make anything – maybe $25 a pallet. I don’t have a place to store it.”

“I cut every section of that bridge”

He looked at my business card that has a photo of the old Mississippi River Bridge on it. “I cut every section of that bridge with a huge pair of metal shears. I did that. I was handing out handfuls of rivets to people for souvenirs. I still have some pieces of the debris.

Then, he told me a touching story. “I remember when I was first getting started out in Operators. I had a bunch of [union] stickers. I was stuck in traffic on the bridge with my son, who was about eight or nine. There wasn’t anything to do, so I gave him some stickers and he started sticking them on the side of the bridge – Ironworkers stickers – just sticking them on the side of the bridge.

“And, when I was cutting that bridge up, when I got to that piece of the bridge, the stickers were still there. I cut it out and kept it. My son’s 21 now.”

Mortar has turned to powder

“I think the best thing you can do to this building is to tear it down. There’s nothing here.”

He pointed out obvious cracks in the walls. There are metal bracing bolts coming through the brick wall the mural is painted on, but there are no plates screwed to them. There are places where the mortar has been patched, but most of the mortar is so powdery that you can dig it out with your fingernail with no effort.

Roof is leaking

When we walked across the roof, I commented that it didn’t look too bad. He said the leaks aren’t obvious. “You saw the water pouring down through the ceiling. The roof is leaking.”

What I thought was a trophy

When I asked if it was safe to go up on the second floor, he said he’d be happy to take me up, “but there’s nothing up there but junk”. He thought I might like to go on the roof, though, to shoot the surrounding neighborhood. He said there’s a third floor to the building, but the access to it is boarded up. He didn’t know what, if anything, was up there.

It WAS junk

When we got to the second floor, he was right. Whoever had lived in the two apartments there had left behind plenty of debris, but most of it wasn’t very interesting: just some old books, a couple of Samsonite suitcases – “We had a Vietnam vet up here the other day; he remembered carrying suitcases that looked like that” – a pair of crutches and some ratty furniture.

“This is going to be gone forever”

Like I wrote yesterday, just I started to walk out of the room, I turned and said, “I guess I should get a picture of the building across the street. It may be the last picture ever taken with this viewpoint.”

That’s when Renshaw said something that struck me enough that it’s worth repeating: “I learned one thing in demolition – and I look at it from a lot of different ways. This is it. You just said it. This is going to be gone forever. Gone. No more. Right now you just experienced the last thing forever.

“There was a four-year-old little boy up here this morning – his dad is in this kind of work – and he was standing here leaning on this windowsill wanting to go back over there [to the Playhouse]. When he’s 20 years old, he won’t even remember this building.”

View from Discovery Playhouse

He thinks the building will start coming down around the first of December. “It should go fast, then the trucks will start rolling in here. That’s when people will really start taking note. They really don’t know something’s going on until that.”

Cape firefighters took advantage of the soon-to-be demolished building to practice some of their skills. Missourian photographer Fred Lynch captured a gallery of photos of their training.

“A Time to Build Up; A Time to Tear Down”

Reader Lyndel Revelle commented yesterday, “It is sad to see them gone forever but then it reminds me of the Byrds song, Turn, Turn ,Turn, (taken from the book of Ecclesiastes) where you find these words, ‘To everything there is a season a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to build up and a time to tear down.’”

501-503 Broadway Photo Gallery

Here’s a gallery of photos I’ve taken of 501-503 Broadway and its neighbors over the past few years. Click on any image to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to move through the gallery.

 

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High Hill Church and Cemetery

Coming back from shooting the Tower Rock Quarry, Friend Shari suggested we go downtown to the Bluegrass festival. Rather than taking my normal route out of Altenburg, I said, “Let’s take the scenic route. That should drop us on 177 and we can go in from the northeast side of Cape.” (You can click on any photo to make it larger, by the way.)

“Let’s take the scenic route” would have been something I would liked to have said when we were dating, except that (a) I didn’t have my license yet and (b) Dad was a pretty good guy, but I’m not sure he, as designated driver, would have gone along with the idea. So, four decades too late, I’m married, in a minivan, in broad daylight, taking the “scenic route.” Somehow it just isn’t quite the same.

We went straight UP

I didn’t realize just HOW scenic it was. Shortly after turning off Hwy CC from C toward the Apple Creek Conservation area, we went straight up. I mean like waiting for the oxygen masks to deploy from the overhead storage compartment straight up. We were headed for the ridges.

See, back in the days before heavy construction equipment was even thought of, road builders didn’t have the ability to cut the tops off hills and fill in the valleys. You rode the ridges, which are generally pretty twisty-turny.

Shades of Wolf Creek Pass

A line from Wolf Creek Pass, a C.W. McCall song about a couple of truckers with a load full of chickens who lost their brakes on the downhill side of the Continental Divide came to mind. “Well, from there on down, it just weren’t real purdy; it was hairpin county and switchback city. One of them looked like a can of worms; another one looked like malaria germs.”

I looked at the GPS and told Shari, “We’re fixin’ to come up on a curve that would let us touch our tail if this thing was just a little longer.” I forgot to mention that Hwy CC turned into CR 535, which is gravel. We hit on uphill stretch that was so steep that we lost traction and I thought we were going to have to back down to the bottom to get a fresh run at it. It WAS scenic, however.

Church at the top of the hill

Finally, we hit the top of a hill where there was clearing. On the top of that clearing was a white frame building that looked like a church or a school house. I tried to make out a name, but couldn’t. It was getting late in the afternoon, so we kept plugging on.

Proctor & Gamble aerial

Eventually, we turned off CR 535 onto CR 525 and I saw on the GPS that we were getting closer and closer to the Mississippi River. Finally it dawned on me that we were coming into Neely’s Landing from the north. CR525 became Hwy J and hooked around the Proctor & Gamble plant. I had photographed it from the air in the spring, but didn’t have a clue how big it was until we kept passing gate after gate. That took us onto 177 like I had predicted. Eventually we made it to Water Street and heard some good music.

Let’s go back to the school

A couple of days later, I said to Mother, “Hop in the car. I’m going to see if you’ve ever been on this road before.” Unlike with Shari, we started on the south end of the road. She knew where Proctor and Gamble was, thought she had been through Neely’s Landing, but didn’t think she’d ever been up in the ridges around Apple Creek Conservation area.

I wanted to take a second gander at this building. It appeared to be in good shape. The paint was peeling off it, but it looked like a bad paint job, not neglect. There’s a chain link fence around the property that’s so new it still has the bar code stickers on it.

Looking through the window

The windows looked like they had been replaced not long ago; the pews, which looked padded, appear to either be new or in extremely good shape. The floor looks solid and the walls have either been stripped of paint or they’ve been recently plastered or drywalled.

No name on the building

There’s a wooden plaque that looks like it might have contained a name at one time, but there’s no visible writing on it today.

Small cemetery behind church

There’s a small, well-kept cemetery behind the building.

The gravestones are relatively new

I didn’t spend much time poking around, but one of the oldest markers I saw was for a World War II PFC named Ralph Craft. He was born (it looked like) Sept. 6, 1925, and died Oct. 17, 1946.

This stone, which looks like it might have been chipped by a mower, only dates back to 1949.

Some markers are from the last decade

A large percentage of the makers are from the late 1990s up to as recently as 2010.

Restroom facilities out back

An outhouse serves as a restroom.

Child’s grave has surprise

I always have a strong emotional response when I see a child’s stone in the cemetery. This one was particularly touching because of the toys on the right side of the stone. I don’t know if they are still there because there’s little traffic in the cemetery or if any visitors who do come this way respect what they stand for.

While photographing this pair of stones – a brother and a sister who died of unrelated causes – I thought something looked odd, but couldn’t quite place what it was. Then it dawned on me: the statue of the dog is holding a lantern. And, the bulb in the lantern was glowing in the late evening light. (You might even be able to see it in the photo if you look closely.) That’s when I noticed it was a solar light.

Blumental graves gave clue

Reader Keith Robinson was in town visiting his dad and stopped by. I was describing my mystery when he suggested we pull up Google Maps to see if we could spot the building. Indeed, it was clearly visible, but unidentified. Up the road a piece, though, was a marker for High Hill School.

I did a search of Missourian archives for High Hill and came up with some obits for several people, including Michelle Blumenthal. They mentioned interment in High Hill Cemetery. A couple of them said the deceased had been members of High Hill Church of God.

Michelle’s brother, Christopher Michael Blumenthal, died at 12 of complications from heart surgery in 2003. Dammit, it’s OLD people who are supposed to die, not kids.

So, it looks like the cemetery is named High Hill and the church might be as well, although I don’t know if it’s still a Church of God congregation. I don’t know if High Hill School still exists, either. Looks like another excuse to take the scenic ridge route.

 

 

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Tower Rock Quarry Exposed

When this aerial photo of Tower Rock was taken April 17, 2011, the river gauge in Cape was at about 43 feet and heading higher. The half-moon bay downstream and to the right of The Rock was a big circular corn field until the Flood of 1993, Gerard Fiehler of the Altenburg Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum said. The flood created a huge scour basin that’s a good 25 or 30 feet deep and several football fields across. Trees that grew along the basin are probably in the Gulf of Mexico today.

Click on any photo to make it larger.

We climbed Tower Rock in 2003

Brother Mark and I climbed to the top of Tower Rock in 2003. When the river stage in Cape is about six or seven feet, it’s possible to walk across to the rocky island. (It’s about 14 feet and falling on Nov. 7, 2011)

BE CAREFUL.  If the water’s more than a few inches deep, it can sweep your feet right our from under you. Missionary Father Marquette, who explored the area by canoe in 1673, said the “savages” believed Tower Rock to be “the demon that devours travelers.”

This view to the south shows the remnants of a quarry that was worked off and on for 135 years until almost all of the rock was exhausted in 1972. At normal river levels, only a little rock, if any sticks out of the water.

Low water uncovers artifacts

Despite the tremendous volume of water that sweeps over the area even in normal times, traces of track and tipple car wheels survive. These wheels could date to the late 1800s, Tower Rock, a book distributed by the Perry County Historical Society, says. The author thinks they may have been buried until the 500-year floor of 1993 uncovered them.

Acme Stone Crusher survives

Tower Rock identifies this rusting metal object as a steam-powered Acme rock crusher. A similar or the same crusher was used across the river in Grand Tower in the mid 1870s.

Steamboat tieup

Not far from the crusher is this dual-ring steamboat tieup. There are several different styles on the jetty, the  oldest dating to the 1830s to 1850s. The quarry was most active from the Civil War through the Great Depression.

Now’s the time to see Tower Rock Quarry

If you’re going to go, go while the weather is nice and the river is low. This opportunity doesn’t come often.

Tower Rock isn’t some place you stop on the way to somewhere else. You have to REALLY want to go there. You start by passing through Altenburg on Missouri Hwy A. (It’s worth stopping at the excellent Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum. In fact, I printed a couple dozen scenic photo books for their gift shop to sell to gauge if there’s a demand for them. They’re going for $14, a steal.)

Might be longest suspension pipeline in world

After going up and down some steep hills, just before you get to what’s left of the German pioneer village Wittenberg (Population: two buildings and three people), you’ll see a small sign off to the right pointing to Perry County 460, a steep and washboarded gravel road. As you drive along that road, you’ll spot what may still be the longest suspension pipeline in the world, that carries gas from Texas to Chicago. Not far from there, the road narrows and you pass through an area of fallen trees. I’ve spotted a momma deer and her two fawns twice on this stretch.

Stop, Look and Listen

Now things get interesting if this is your first trip. You’ll make a sharp 90-degree bend to the left and cross over the BNSF railroad tracks and make an immediate right-hand 90-degree turn paralleling the river. After not seeing any trains at the crossing for years, two have passed on my last two visits: Stop, Look and Listen.

The stretch along the river is narrow and there’s a steep drop-off to the water, but you seldom meet a car. Eventually, you’ll come upon a parking area at the Tower Rock Natural Area, donated by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Bussen to the Missouri Conservation Department.

If there are any persimmons left, give them a try. You won’t find any anywhere else that are sweeter.

Shameless Plug: Buy My Book

{Shameless Plug: don’t forget to stop in at the Altenburg Museum to pick up a copy of my Tower Rock book. The museum folks are nice and they’re going to be setting up their Christmas Tree exhibit in the next week or so. It’s worth seeing.]

UPDATE: The Tower Rock book is now out of print.

 

 

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