Celebrations & Holidays Archives

November 1, 2011November 2, 2011

Hutson’s Christmas Window

Old Town Cape’s 2011 Christmas window ornament has arrived. This year recognizes a Cape holiday tradition, Hutson’s Fine Furniture Christmas Window display. (Click on the photo to make it larger so you can see more detail.)

Old Town Cape is so old they aren’t set up to handle online ordering, so here’s the Old Town Cape 2011 ornament order form that you can download, print and snail mail to them. (Put a little note on it that you get it here or mention that when you place your order.)

See old ornaments

The form lists all the ornaments still available from previous years. You can see photos of all of the old ornaments in the post I did last year.

If you’re in Cape, you can also get the ornaments at the Old Town Cape Office, Lang Jewelers, Jayson Jewelers, CVB, Zickfield Jewelers, Knaup Floral, C.P. McGinty Jewelers, Bob’s Shoe Service, Shivelbines Music, Pastimes Antiques, Renaissance and Hutson’s Fine Furniture. The cost is $30 with a stand and $25 without. Shipping is $5.30.

October 6, 2011March 20, 2021

Saxon Lutheran Memorial Fall Festival

October 8 is the 31st Annual Saxon Lutheran Memorial Fall Festival on the outskirts of Frohna.

To give you an idea what you might see, I’ll post a collection of photos I’ve taken from the mid-1960s up to the last couple of years. They’ve been taken at different seasons and at different times of day, so even photos of the same building will look different.

Ferry story brought me to Memorial

The Wittenberg Ferry Dedication was coming up, so The Missourian sent me up to Wittenberg and Frohna to shoot things that people might see. I remember thinking that the log cabins (thought to be slave quarters) were interesting, but looked liked they’d fall down if the termites quit holding hands. (By the way, all of the black and white photos date back to 1966.)

Much restoration done in 40-plus years

This photo, taken Nov. 13, 2010, from about the same angle, shows the restoration that has been done to the buildings.

Germans didn’t waste anything

My eye was drawn to the window in this upstairs bedroom when I was there in 1966 – the window panes were glass negatives. Someone thought they might have come from Lueders Studio in Frohna.

Three were in good shape

Three of the six panes had negatives that appeared to be in pretty good shape.

Century-old portrait

Thanks to the miracles of Photoshop, I was able to make positive images of the negatives. Considering that this was taken from a handheld photo of a window frame, filed away for over 40 years, then digitally inverted, it’s pretty darned good. Based on the clothes, I’m going to guess we’re looking at a family portrait that’s nearly 100 years old.

Alas, glass has been replaced

When I met Curator Lynda Lorenz in 2010, the window was one of the first things I asked about. She hadn’t heard the story of the glass negatives and didn’t have any idea what had happened to them.

Don’t look for the Frohna Mill

By the way, if you’ve been to the Memorial before and had used the Frohna Mill as a landmark to know where to turn, you’ll be disappointed. Demolition started in the fall of 2010 and was finished before the end of the year.

Lynda said her husband and other volunteers salvaged as much of the mill as they could before it was hauled off.

Cats and chickens abound

There are cats and chickens everywhere. Lynda said the cat population averages about three to 17 cats, depending on the season, how many sneak into tourists’ cars and how hungry the hawks are.

Check out Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum

While you’re in the neighborhood, you should swing over to Altenburg to check out the Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum. I don’t know if they have their Christmas Tree exhibit up yet this year, but it’s worth seeing.

Saxon Lutheran Memorial photo gallery

Here’s a gallery of photos taken in 1966 (black and white) and recently. Click on any image to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to move through the gallery.

September 23, 2011September 24, 2011

Ohio Halloween Horrors

I saw Halloween decorations and costumes displayed in one of the big box stores tonight. Later, I was moving a bunch of old slides out of Kodak slide trays and putting them into plastic sleeves to save space when I ran across this copy slide of a print. The two events brought a story to mind.

What’s that hanging in the tree?

I was blasting through the rural Southeastern back roads on my way back home right after dusk when, rounding a curve, my headlights picked up something odd on the side of the road. When I got to where the beams lit it up a little better, I slammed on my brakes. It was a body hanging in a tree out in the middle of nowhere.

Murder wasn’t unheard of in that part of the country, but I hadn’t read about any lynchings in our area in decades, so my first thought was a suicide. (All of the murders I had worked were pretty straight-forward; they just got the job done without getting creative.)

I positioned my car to where it lit up the area, then cautiously approached the scene. When I got close enough to get a flashlight on it, it became clear that I had been taken in by a dummy hanging in the tree. I looked around to see if there were any teenagers laughing at the sucker, but there was nobody around.

Only a journalist would have mixed emotions about this: happy because it wasn’t a body; feeling foolish about being suckered in; being disappointed because he didn’t break a story.

The next morning I mentioned my find to some of the guys in the office. “Oh, yeah,” one said. “They’ve got a quaint custom in that area of hanging dummies at Halloween time. If you go back, I bet you find more.”

Indeed, when I went back in the daylight, I found this guy hanging in the middle of downtown Shawnee.

“It’s too grim”

Wife Lila, proofreader when I finish a post before she goes to bed, and general arbitrator of good taste, said, “It’s too grim. I didn’t make any changes, but I didn’t like it.”

So, to lighten the mood, here are some examples of Halloween costumes she inflicted upon the kids over the years.

I’d be lion if I said Matt made a pretty woman

Son Adam, left, went for the full-face mask effect the year Wife Lila did this makeover on Son Matt.

I shouldn’t mock Son Matt too much. Mother managed to make me into such a convincing girl that I won a prize in Mrs. Kelpe’s first grade class because nobody could guess who I was. I was still in costume when we went down to visit my grandmother in Advance. She had a bunch of club women over that afternoon and they were properly impressed with my transformation. Just to set the record straight, I scrawled “I BOY” on a piece of paper and kept showing it to them.

Going to the dogs

Both boys got a crack at the dog costume. This was Matt in 1978.

Matt as firefighter

This might have been the only costume I contributed. Matt swiped my bunker coat, fire helmet and Red Wing boots for this Halloween.

July 4, 2011November 24, 2011

How to Shoot Fireworks

It’s either the 4th of July or Cape is being invaded. The economy might be shaky, but you wouldn’t know it by the amount of money being blasted into the sky all around us.

I spent most of Monday in Cairo with a production company that is doing a documentary on the town. They had seen my photos of Cairo, wanted to use some of them and wanted to interview me roaming around town shooting more pictures. Nice folks. I’ll post some stuff later, but I don’t have time to do it tonight. This is the last Fourth of July photo I’m going to run until next year, I promise.

Photo tips for shooting fireworks

My fancy Nikon strobe needed new batteries and I was too lazy to go in the house to get new ones, so I put the Nikon D40 in full auto mode so it would use its built-in flash for this photo. The little flash did a pretty good job of lighting Mother. The color balance isn’t bad and the short blast of light stopped the action and produced a reasonably sharp photo.

DULL and sharp

And, that’s the problem. It’s DULL and sharp.

The photo at the top of page is technically flawed because I wasn’t using a flash that offered more controls, but it’s a good start. Here’s how I shot it and why.

I turned the dial from Full Auto to a Shutter Priority. I wanted the shutter to stay open for a longer time so it would capture the sparks, flames and streaks made while she was waving the No. 36 Morning Glory around in the air.
I set the shutter for five seconds. That was long enough to record the light trails, but not so long that Mother would go too blurry, so long as I
Allowed the flash to go off as soon as the shutter opened. That provided the light to illuminate her and it “froze” most of her movement. The Morning Glories gave enough light that you can see some slight ghosting around her hands.
I dropped the color saturation just a bit to take some of the redness out. With a little more work in Photoshop, the color balance could have been improved, but it’s been a long day with lots of walking in either rain or a under a hot sun..

She SAID it was an accident

I was standing in the front yard wearing a pair of sandals when Mother gave her Morning Glory a particularly vigorous shake, more like a whip. The flaming, sparking, cracking tip went flying off, aimed directly at my bare toes. Only quick reflexes and dance steps I never did before saved me from having toasty toes and a trip to the emergency room.

She says it was an accident, but I’m wondering if that’s not a subtle hint that it’s time for me to think about heading back to Florida.