Ken Steinhoff Archives

November 26, 2013

Truck on I-55

I’ve passed this high-flying 18-wheeler a bunch of times over the years, but this is the first time I’ve bothered to pull off the road to snap a picture of it. It’s on the east side of I-55 near Sikeston. And, yes, it’s the real deal, not a billboard or a model.

I was prepared with an excuse if a cop pulled up to tell me that stopping on the Interstate isn’t allowed: “But officer, my Check Engine light came on and I wanted to make sure everything was OK.”

Of course, when your van has 181,000 miles on it, the Check Engine light is ALWAYS on. I get out, raise the hood, check to see if the engine is still there and then keep driving down the road. If the light ever DOES go out, I’ll assume that the bulb burned out, not that the problem mysteriously healed itself.

The Kid has theories

(That might be the reason Kid Matt concocted this Shameless Plug page. He doesn’t want to have to drive to some Podunk town to pick me up when the van dies.)

(He has a second theory, too: he says everybody is too busy heading out for Turkey Day, preparing for Turkey Day or recovering from Turkey Day that they aren’t going to be reading the blog this week. That’s why you’re going to get some light-weight content while I’m on MY way back to Florida.)

Oh, by the way, I covered the Sikeston Rodeo. Jim Nabors performed there in 1965. Here are more photos of the 1965 Rodeo.

On the road

Speaking of travel, I left Cape Monday morning for Athens, Ohio. I was worried about the weather because of all the freezing rain, ice pellet, snow and sleet warnings along the route. On top of that, there was a forecast for four inches of snow in Athens on Tuesday.

To get home I was going to have to go over some pretty tall stacks of rocks where Florida Friend Jan saw her first snow in January. I may end up staying an extra day in Athens if West Virginia gets any serious snow.

As it turned out, I must have been racing the frozen precip all day. I could see I was on the eastern edge for at least 40% of Monday. The snow pellets sounded like my car was being peppered with BBs; the snow, fairly heavy from time to time, was pretty. It swirled around in the wake of traffic, but it never stuck.

Here was the obligatory Good-Bye selfie. It only took 19 frames to get one even close to having both of us in it.

November 22, 2013

Thankful? Support Ken Steinhoff and Cape Central

Howdy, all. Special guest post today by me, Matthew Steinhoff.

If you like Ken Steinhoff, the CapeCentralHigh web site and want to support them both, please click the above magical button and go about your regular, online holiday shopping business.

How Does This Amazon Thing Work?

When you click the button, Dad gets a 6% referral fee from Amazon based on your purchases made in the few hours after the click. Spend $100, Dad gets $6. Amazon doesn’t mark up your bill. The products aren’t more expensive using the link. I really like Amazon because it typically has the lowest prices; if your bill is more than $35, shipping is free and, in most states, there is no sales tax.

(Of note, if you have a local business you want to support, please do so. My cousin owns a really great antique shop in downtown Cape and I’d much rather you do your shopping at Annie Laurie’s than Amazon. But, if you’re anything like most of America, you’re probably going to do $400 worth of online shopping anyway. When you do that shopping, I’d love for you to click the above link and shop Amazon.)

Why You Should Click

Mostly, this blog is a giant money pit. Which, more or less, is fine because Dad is retired and would drive Mom absolutely nuts if he didn’t have some venture to keep him busy. Plus, this blog entertains far more people than if he took up golf and chased a little ball into the gator-infested ponds of Palm Beach County.

That said, creating the content is very time consuming and pretty darn costly. Dad has spent at least a third of the year outside the state of Florida and has driven several thousand miles. There are the raw materials (cameras, disk space, computers), services (online backups, mobile data plans, travel expenses and web hosting (bandwidth, power, storage). And then there’s the pie. Pie doesn’t grow on trees.

How You Can Support the Site

1. Purchase a 2014 Cape calendar. Get more than a year’s worth of Cape Girardeau photos! Simple and easy.

2. Buy from Amazon. Dad gets about six-percent of your total. We have no way to knowing it was you who bought the 11-pound jar of Nutella.

3. Click the yellow ‘Donate‘ button in the upper left-hand corner of the web site. This is my least favorite option because it doesn’t get you anything but a warm feeling deep in your soul. At least with the first two items you get a little something for yourself.

What You Should Buy From Amazon

1. Gift Cards Trust me: this is what your kids and grand kids want. Probably your spouse, too. Gift cards are tacky, require little thought and lack creativity. Still, they are easy to buy, easy to mail and are always welcome. You didn’t really want to spend the next few weeks knitting that sweater anyway, right?

2. Digital SLR-Style Cameras Everyone has an iPhone they take a bazillion pictures a day. But those photos aren’t real photos. If you or someone you love is ready to take a step up from a smart phone, a dSLR is the way to go. Dad shoots with a Nikon D7000 but the camera I’m lusting after is a throw-back to simpler days. The Nikon Df has all the new whiz-bang digital guts but the look and feel of Nikon cameras from the late-1970s and early 1980s. Everyone who absolutely loved the Nikon FA, FE or FM is going nuts trying to get the Nikon Df.

3. Apple iPad If you don’t already have an iPad, get one. So sweet! Once you have one, you’ll never be without one again. Worried about not being able to figure it out? No problem! Gran is 92 and uses hers every day. Got questions, call Gran. Need an endorsement? Call Gran. Still don’t have a smart phone? You don’t need one. Get an iPad instead. That way you still have a small cell phone you can take everywhere but still have all the smart phone features in the easily-readable format of an iPad.

Black Friday ~ Cyber Monday ~ Overspend Wednesday

Don’t worry. This is just the annual fund drive. We’ll sprinkle in a few Amazon links (Haunted Cape Girardeau: Where the River Turns a Thousand Chilling Tales) on our way up to Christmas then I’ll take my hand out of your pocket for another year.

Thank You, Readers!

Finally, a word of thanks from me to all you… Thank you for reading. Thank you for contributing. Thank you for sharing your stories and memories. And thank you for giving Dad an outlet to tell old stories and a reason to make up new ones. As long as you’re a willing audience, I don’t have to see Dad in golf pants.

Cheers,
Matt

[Editor’s note]

You can tell when your kids are getting worried that your outgo is getting bigger than your income. Sons Matt and Adam are so sure there won’t be anything left that they’ve stopped jockeying for top spot in the will.

Here’s a bunch of suggestions I made last year. If you click on the links there, you may find that newer versions of the product have come out. At least the links aren’t broken.

October 25, 2013

What’s the White Stuff?

When I heard someone say, “It’s snowing outside,” I thought they might have meant that some tiny frozen pellets might be falling from the sky Thursday afternoon. No, this was the Real Deal looking down Court Street in Athens, Ohio.

Jessica captures flakes

Curator Jessica was wearing dark clothes that snagged a few of the fluffy flakes. You’ll see more of her over the next 10 days or so. For some reason, she doesn’t believe everything I’ve written about Cape, so she wants to see it for herself.

I’ve already warned her not to stare at Mother’s arm. I am not prone to exaggerate. (I can do it standing up, too.)

A view up Court Street

Jessica and Friend Carol don’t waste any time when they hear the lunch bell ring. They didn’t even look back to see if I had slipped and broken a shank or something.

Didn’t accumulate

The snow turned the ground white in a few places, but it didn’t last long. October is too early for much of a snow in Athens. It was all gone by the time we finished lunch.

Tom Hodson and Carol

After lunch, it was off to the WOUB studios for a radio show with our former OU Post buddy, Tom Hodson. He’s the director and general manager of WOUB Public Media and an excellent interviewer. The show will air online Sunday. When I get a link, I’ll post it. You are not obligated to listen.

Rapt attention or pizza?

After our dog and pony show co-sponsored by the Ohio University History Association and the Athens County Historical Society and Museum, we were mobbed by students with questions about what it was like in college when women’s curfews were enforced to the second.

It was either that, or they were attracted to the pizza a student brought in.

October 17, 2013

Gone Girl Filming

Based on what I’ve seen in The Missourian and Facebook, Cape has gone gaga over the Gone Girl movie being filmed there. There were daily postings of the Common Pleas Courthouse terraces being covered with mock snow, the production’s caterers, actors exercising in local gyms, etc., etc., etc.

I was going to do all I could to avoid covering any aspect of it, but I happened to spot a gaggle of what looked like TV satellite trucks in a parking lot on Independence just west of West End Blvd. on my way to the grocery store. Wednesday afternoon, I figured I’d take a run by there to see if anyone was around.

I drove past signs saying “Transportation Parking Only” and “Absolutely No Public Parking.” I mean, my VAN is transportation, right? And if I don’t shut my motor off, I’m not parking, right? Besides, there was nobody around to be offended and parking abounded.

Something is strange here

The truck in the front says KOMO 4 Seattle News. That’s a long way from home. Google confirms that a KOMO 4 exists in Seattle, though.

Miles of wire

This shot picks up pallets of wire and more news vans. There’s a problem with KBDP: Google can’t find it. The same was true in another photo. WMNB 5 Live, with California tags, comes back as a Russian media group. KPLR 11 Fox 2 looks fake, too. There are Fox 2 stations in St. Louis and Detroit, but neither have the callsign KPLR. I’m going to assume these are prop vehicles.

Seeing all that wire reminded me of a time when I shot production stills for a video company doing a series of commercials. The effects those guys could do with simple lighting was amazing. I never looked at a movie the same way again.

Celebrity stakeouts

I worked for a city editor once who was starstruck. At even a whiff of celebrity, he’d have one of us staking out a house for days.

I hated that kind of thing, so I’d knock on the door and say, “I’m Ken Steinhoff from The Post. I’d really like to have five minutes with Joe Star to take a nice portrait to get the city editor off my back. If he really doesn’t want his picture taken, I’ll respect his privacy and not lurk around peering through hedges. I’ll be the guy sitting in the shade reading a book. If he doesn’t want to be seen, have him go out the back.”

I did manage to shoot some nice portraits of celebs over the years, but not by skulking in the bushes.

So, if I run into a movie shoot, I’ll take a few frames, but I’m not going looking for the action.