Mary Welch Steinhoff Archives

February 15, 2015January 18, 2022

Cairo Custom House

The Missourian has been full of stories of late about proposed courthouse shuffling and new facilities here and there. One consequence may be that the Common Pleas Courthouse may cease to be a courthouse. That raises the question of what will happen to one of the most iconic structures in Cape Girardeau.

Here’s a suggestion: turn it into a museum like the Cairo Custom House Museum in Cairo.

For all the time I’ve spent in Cairo, the last time I was in the old Custon House was when it was being used as a police station at the time of the riots in the late 1960s. I’ll have more about that on a later date.

A serious “Wow!” factor

Mother, Curator Jessica and I really weren’t expecting much when we walked into the museum right before closing time. We weren’t two steps into the building when my friend, the curator for the Athens County Historical Society and Museum, broke the Coveting Commandment into a whole bunch of pieces.

First off, the building itself is a magnificent piece of architecture with features like arched brick ceilings that I’ve never seen before.

Because there are so many rooms, it was possible to create amazing grouping of exhibits. It would be easy to spend days in the place and still not see everything.

By the way, this website points out that the fireplaces like this one weren’t used for heating, but were used for ventilation.

Cairo Custom House Museum gallery

Here’s a taste of what you’ll see in the facility. I’ll talk about the darker history of the building in another post. I’ll also follow up with more photos on my next visit when I have more time. Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the gallery.

February 12, 2015February 12, 2015

Mother’s Back in the Game

Mother’s been complaining that her get-up-and-go has got up and went. She hasn’t had a lot of pep and she’s been getting out of breath. Brother David has been in town from Tulsa doing a bunch of odd jobs, so he went with her to the heart doc to see what was causing it.

Without going into a lot of detail that I don’t really understand, he said she needed to get the top two muscles of her heart jump-started.

David suggested that he could do it in the parking lot if he could figure out where to hook up the red and black clamps, but the medical staff strongly discouraged such activity. “From what we know about her, if you hook them up backwards, she might blow out the battery in your car,” they warned him.

It turned out it only took one shock to get her heart back in rhythm and all synched up. She’s going to need to have the batteries in her pacemaker replaced soon, so she’d better hurry up before they close the Radio Shack in the mall.

“She’s a tough bird”

The doc said her shortness of breath should get much better now. “Overall, she’s a tough bird,” he added.

Boy, don’t WE know that.

On the way home, they stopped at a worried friend’s house to give a health and welfare report. She had been calling the hospital all day for an update. The finally told her at 4 o’clock that Mother had been released. “Was she still alive when she was released?” she asked.

So, Mother is back home in the glow of her iPad catching up on what she missed during the day. You may not be able to reach her by landline because she’s been having phone problems.An ATT tech is supposed to come check it out Thursday.

Thanks to David for being there and for taking this photo.

December 11, 2014

Fire Station No. 4 Missing

When I looked at this old Polaroid photo of Mother, I thought there was something odd about it. Then it dawned on me: it was taken before Fire Station No. 4 was built at the corner of Kingsway Drive and Kurre Lane.

(If you wonder how I knew it was a Polaroid, look at the brown, irregular stain at the bottom right of the photo. This was one of the early generation cameras where you had to peel the photo off the roll, then coat it with a sticky, sharp-smelling chemical which would, invariably, get all over your fingers. The fix or whatever it was never applied evenly, so the picture had streaks, and if you missed a place, you’d get this brown stain.

Neighborhood from the air

Here’s an aerial photo taken at about this same time. I published it and some other pictures back in 2010, and it got lots of comments that are worth reading. There’s a more recent aerial here.

Click on the photos to make them larger.

November 2, 2014

Lights in the Night

Mother, Curator Jessica and I took off for Steele this morning – eight miles from the Arkansas border – to photograph a Bootheel farmer I met at the Altenburg museum last week.

No journey ever takes us from Point A to Point B directly back to Point C, so we wandered around in New Madrid County for a bit, then meandered all over places that I’m not sure even the Lady in the Sky who lives in my GPS has ever heard of.

Let me explain the division of labor here: my job is to drive and keep us from getting killed by wayward 18-wheelers. The job of the Road Warriorette is that of Navigator, responsible for directing the Driver toward food and lodging (and, as we will find later, Natural Breaks).

We left New Madrid with the sun high in the sky and decided to find some roads that skirted the Mississippi River, some of which must have followed the paths of drunken cows. Shortly after I pointed out that we had already been through a particular intersection at least twice, we ended up going down a road aptly bearing a sign, Dead End, that led to a well-kept Sugar Tree Ridge Cemetery.

With the sun going down on one side and the moon coming up on the other, I suggested that Mother might want to start rationing the cookies we had brought along: “This might be a long night.”

A farmers work is never done

We weren’t the only ones picking our way though the dark: we spotted lights on farm equipment dotting the countryside.

We hadn’t seen a car behind us for an hour, but the moment I stopped in the road to take this photo, I heard the whizzz of one passing us. I’m glad he had room to pass: most of the bridges out there were labeled “One-Lane Bridge.” They didn’t bother to note that the road wasn’t much wider than the bridge.

A natural break

With 43 miles to go, my Navigator gently suggested that the trip would be much more pleasant for her if we would stop at the next convenient place for her to take, as they say in the Tour de France, a “natural break.”

While waiting for a chance to get back on I-55, we spotted this one-eyed truck coming toward us. Navigator Jessica asked if I had ever played “padiddle.”

Having led a sheltered life, I had to confess that I had heard the phrase, but didn’t know exactly how to play it or exactly what it was. My navigator demurred providing details.

Basic rules of Padiddle and Pedunk

Google being our friend, I was enlightened by the Urban Dictionary: A game in which you look for cars with headlight or foglight out (padiddle) [also spelled pididdle] or tail light (pedunk) and call it out. When someone correctly calls a padidle or pedunk, all members of the opposite sex present must remove an article of clothing.
Example: Padiddle! You have to take off your shirts.

Our trip from Missouri to Ohio has just become a lot more interesting.

As always, click on the photos to make them larger. Alas, there are no padiddling photos available.