Ken Steinhoff Archives

September 30, 2012September 30, 2012

Cleaning Up the House

Wife Lila and two of her friends are coming back home Saturday night after taking a cruise in Alaska. That means I’m scurrying around like a teenager who threw a keg party while his parents were gone. The place pretty much passes the sniff test (or my sense of smell has gone dead).

This trip left me in unusual circumstances. Normally she takes my level of domestic skills into consideration before she leaves town and makes sure that the laundry is in a U+4 status. (That means four pairs of underwear more than the anticipated days she’ll be on the road).

Abandoned in U-3 status

She had a lot of last-minute tasks to take care of, so she left me in a U-3 status. Faced with either turning the articles of clothing inside out to bridge the gap or going out and buying more, I tackled the washing machine. It didn’t belch suds, my white underwear is the same color as when it went in (I remembered to add the fabric softener, too) and the smoke alarm didn’t go off. An even number of socks came out. That must mean that I either didn’t lose a sock or the sock monster coughed up a spare.

The fridge was pretty barren of leftovers, too. I thawed out a bag of frozen homemade chili for a couple of meals and there was enough cheese and lunch meat around to carry me for a few more. In the end, though, I had to reach for my cookbook: a stack of takeout menus under the kitchen telephone.

Dishes are overrated

Dishes are highly overrated. Food tastes just as good off a paper plate and you don’t have to wash it. OJ tastes a lot better straight from the bottle.

In the end, though, I had to fire up the dishwasher for coffee cups, eating utensils and the like. The experience went much better than the first time I did it when the kids were little. I got everything loaded, put in the detergent and went into the living room where we had the computer set up.

All of a sudden, I heard the kids screaming “Daddy! Daddy!” and turned to see them running from a wall of suds only slightly ahead of a thoroughly traumatized cat. Who KNEW that all soaps weren’t made alike? Well, at least the kitchen cabinets were clean up to about waist level.

It’ll be good to have her back home. I’m just waiting to hear what I did wrong.

[The Missouri Utilities ad came from the 1956 Sesquicentennial book.]

September 19, 2012September 16, 2015

My Exhibit in Altenburg

The kind folks at the Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum were kind enough to send out a bunch of press releases today.

For Immediate Press Release:

The Perry County Lutheran Historical Society’s, Lutheran Heritage Center & Museum is pleased to open a new exhibit: “Ordinary People Doing Ordinary Things: Ken Steinhoff Photojournalist, 1964-Present,” featuring nearly 50 years of photography from: Cape Girardeau County, Perry County, New Madrid, MO; Tower Rock, portraiture, and other rural documentary photography.

Steinhoff’s take on his work is, “I’ve covered popes, presidents, and the Queen of England, but I really like to shoot ordinary people doing ordinary things: the invisible folks whose names only appear in the paper when they are born, when they die, when they get married and when they get a speeding ticket.”

Open Daily Now- through November 2–10:00am-4:00pm-. Free Admission

Lutheran Heritage Center & Museum, 75 Church St., Altenburg, MO 63732

573-824-6070

Sneak Preview

You can see more layouts here.

I’m going to be doing a photo and video presentation at a conference at the museum on October 25, but I’m setting up a “dress rehearsal” a week or so in advance of that. I have way too much material and want to know which babies to throw out of the lifeboat. I’ll post more info when I get to Cape around Oct. 10 or so. I’d love to see some of you up there so you can hear my war stories in person.

September 11, 2012

Brother David’s Birthday

I promised to have more and better photos this year than I did last year on Brother David’s birthday, but I had forgotten how quickly the pages on the calendar turn. This is the best I could do. Maybe next year.

The first shot shows David and Diane with their rental trailer. I’m guessing this is when they moved to Tulsa.

This is why they have girls

This double exposure showing David and Diane with their trailer also exposes Son Matt. I’m not sure, but I think this experience may be why the couple had girl children and their daughter, Kim, has girls.

Lined up at the trailer

Here we all are lined up in front of the travel trailer my folks bought to keep over at Wil-Vera Village on Kentucky Lake. The quarters were a bit tight. Wife Lila (who took the picture) was happy when Dad traded it off for a full-blown mobile home not long after this photo was taken. David and Mark are both sporting full heads of hair. I’m in that awkward transitional comb-over stage before becoming good-looking like Dad.

Love the details

Let’s see, David’s shoe is untied. Mark is tired out from carrying his hammer around looking for something to hit. The tricycle has a load of animal crackers on the rear deck. Note the red reflector tape on the trike. Dad bought it by the mile in widths from one inch to four inches and in white and red. I still have some kicking around. As always, you can click on the photos to make them larger.

So, Happy Birthday, Brother. I hope it’s a good one.

Vice Raids and a Skeptical Editor

I guess it’s safe to tell this story now. On my way back home, I passed through Gastonia, N.C., where I worked in the early 70s. One of my favorite SBI (State Bureau of Investigation) officers, sadly, is no longer with us, I found. To keep him from haunting me, I’ll just refer to him as “Vance.”

Bill, the Gazette cop reporter, and I supplemented our meager newspaper incomes by freelancing stories and photos to crime magazines. Gaston County folks had unique and imaginative ways of eliminating each other. I had lots of tasteless pictures and Bill had a knack for lurid prose, so we could sell something every couple of months to turn fifty or seventy-five bucks each.

“You’re making this stuff up”

One of the editors we dealt with in Chicago called and said, “I think you guys are making this stuff up. I have to pass through there and I want to meet you.”

He happened to pick a day when there was a major bootlegging and gambling raid going on, so we took him with us. My SBI buddy, Vance, said, “We know there is gambling going on in that bar, but they know all of us. We need a stranger to go in and observe the gambling so we can get a warrant. Hey, you, Chicago. Go knock on the door and tell ’em ‘Charlie sent me.’ Look around and come back out.”

He was a frail little thing who was obviously more comfortable editing crime than seeing it, but he went in, saw skullduggery and reported back. They got the warrant and busted the place for gambling and bootlegging. The cops were standing around the card table counting the cash they had seized when one of them asked, “Anybody here got a rubber band to wrap this up?” One of the gamblers reached into his pocket, pulled out a roll of cash bigger than what was on the table, slid a rubber band off it and handed it to the cop.

Later that evening, we were over at Bill’s house rehashing the day’s events when the phone rang. It was Vance looking for me.

“I need a favor”

“I’ve got a favor to ask. It’s totally off the record. Can you help me out?”

“Let’s talk.”

“An old woman who had been confined to a state mental hospital died and her body was shipped down here to a funeral home. The family, who hadn’t seen her in years is insisting that the woman in the casket isn’t ‘Aunt Nellie.’ We KNOW it’s Aunt Nellie because the institution’s records say that Aunt Nellie has a club foot. They want someone to go to the funeral home to take a photo of Aunt Nellie and her foot so they can confirm her identity.”

I went with him to the funeral home, shot the photos and handed him a roll of film. “This never happened,” I told him. (Not that the newspaper would have cared anyway.)

“Can I pay you for your time?”

“Nah, I’d rather have you owe me.”

“Well, we took down all those joints today. I have a trunk full of booze. Want some?

“Nah.”

“How ’bout some pot?”

“That’s OK.” I was afraid to see what else he would offer me.

I just “happened” to have a screwdriver

During the raid, I spotted this cool slot machine being carried out. It had a brass Indian head on it that had been polished shiny by hundreds of hands rubbing it for luck. When the courts were through with the case, all of the gambling equipment was consigned to the local landfill where it was to be destroyed by pulverizing it with a bulldozer.

I saw my slot machine sitting waiting for its turn and just “happened” to have a screwdriver with me. I took the Indian off and sidled up to my buddy Vance. “I’d really like for this to follow me home.”

“Sorry, Ken, I have to swear to the judge that I saw the pieces scattered all over the landfill,” he said, tossing it about 10 feet and turning his back.

The Indian head is in a place of honor on my bookshelf. R.I.P Vance.

Oh, and, by the way, the Chicago editor never questioned any of our stories after that.

P.S. Mother has a slot machine story of her own. (It’s at the bottom of the post.)

Tag: Ken Steinhoff