Mary Welch Steinhoff Archives

June 14, 2014

Family at Kentucky Lake

I was looking for some appropriate Father’s Day photos when I ran across these shots taken at Kentucky Lake. My green Datsun has 1974 Florida tags, so this must have been the summer of 1973. I bought that car in Gastonia, N.C., just a few days before I left for Florida in January of that year. Brother David, whose driver’s license was so fresh the ink hadn’t dried, was drafted to drive it while I piloted a U-Haul holding all our possessions.

The dealership agreed to have someone man the service department on a Saturday to do the initial 600-mile service, so David and I went out to put as many break-in miles as we could. He was a little uncertain about driving a manual transmission, so I told him, “Just get it in high gear and don’t worry about shifting until we need gas.”

Wife Lila buzzed along in her yellow VW Bug herding us like wayward cattle. She did great until we hit West Palm Beach where she turned right off the turnpike instead of left toward civilization. I managed to honk her down before we all ended up as alligator bait.

A trailer for togetherness

The first trailer Dad and Mother had on the lake was tiny. I don’t know how we managed to stuff six of us in there. We must have had to synchronize turning over.

Trying not to smile

Dad had this funny way he’d stick his tongue out when he was trying not to smile. He’s obviously pulling somebody’s leg, probably Wife Lila’s.

He couldn’t hold it forever

Eventually, the smile would bubble over. Mother’s still trying to maintain her composure, though.

A happy couple

We had a lot of happy hours on that lake.

Dad died there of a massive heart attack while he was building a sandbox for Grandson Matthew in 1977. I’m sorry he was taken from us so early, but I’m glad it was there and not in some hospital surrounded by beeping machines.

May 21, 2014

Stopping in Clermont

Clermont, with its Citrus Tower and House of the Presidents, has been a stopping point since our family trip in 1960.

It was only logical that the Road Warriorettes Curator Jessica and Bike Partner Anne make a pit stop there on the final leg of our trip.

Built in 1955

A handwritten note on the elevator wall gave some interesting stats. An elevator ride to the top cost us $6 a head. (If Miz Jessica had slouched a little more so she looked like my granddaughter, we could have gotten her the ride for the $4 kid rate, but she’s too honest. There was no senior discount, because EVERYBODY in Florida is a senior.)

A gazillion citrus trees

When the Steinhoffs stood atop the tower in 1960, a sign proclaimed that we were looking out over a gazillion citrus trees, and the smell of orange blossoms washed over us.

When Post reporter Gayle Pallesen and I went up in the tower in 1990 when we were doing a story on U.S. 27 from Little Havana in Miami to Havana, Florida, in the Panhandle, we looked out over a gazillion dead trees killed by a series of disastrous cold fronts that moved through in the ’80s. The only smell was smoke from burning trees that had been bulldozed and piled up.

The landscape today is covered by gazillions of homes and businesses. There is no smell of orange blossoms.

With binoculars or a telephone lens, we could barely make out a square-shaped building on the horizon that we thought was the VAB at Cape Kennedy.

Mineola has been developed nicely

That’s Lake Mineola to the west. A bike trail starting there ties in with the West Orange Trail that goes all the way to Apopka. The development along the lake has done a nice job of integrating the homes into the surrounding hills and making it a very bike / pedestrian / jogger-friendly area. I’d love to sit on one of their porches looking at the sun set over the lake in the evening.

Click on the photos to make them larger.

A little green left

There’s still a little green left to the south. The highway is U.S. 27, which was once the main path to South Florida from the Midwest before I-95 and the Florida Turnpike were built.

The Penny Drop

I told Curator Jessica that I’d spot her a penny to drop over the edge.

“I can’t do that, it might kill someone,” she protested. [She, obviously, hasn’t read the debunking of the penny-dropped-from-the-Empire-State-Building urban legend.)

She and Anne took turns dropping coins down a conduit that goes all the way to the base of the tower. With their ears to pipes on the side of the box, they could hear it spin and ding all the way down. It doesn’t take much to amuse them.

House of Presidents

Southwest of the tower is a large white building looking a little worse for the wear, which is to be expected, because it was here in 1960.

Its website calls it the The Presidents Hall of Fame, but the sign on the front of the building still says House of Presidents. I recalled the tickets were a bit pricy, so we opted to stay on the outside.

“Like a 70’s porn star”

I photographed Anne with Washington and Lincoln behind the wax museum when we passed through in 2013. Miz Jessica, though, made a beeline for Theodore Roosevelt.

“He looks like a 70’s porn star,” she remarked. I wisely opted not to ask about her expertise in that area. I’m sure her interest was purely academic.

She enjoys making period costumes, so Anne and I were edified about the benefits of crotchless pantaloons and why the cancan was such a scandalous dance. Between Jessica and Anne, who wrote Kiss and Tell: Secrets of Sexual Desire from Women 15 to 97, this Missouri boy got quite an education on our road trip.

May 9, 2014

Early Mother’s Day Gift

One of the last things Brother Mark asked me to do before I left Cape was to check out Mother’s hedge trimmer. He said the last time he used it, it gave him a little buzz, and not the good kind. He thought maybe the power cord should be replaced.

I remembered it well: it was probably about as old as I am. It had a metal case and a 12″ blade. Since our house was built long before three-prong plugs were invented, somebody – probably Dad – had broken off the ground prong so you could plug it into a two-prong outlet.

That meant if the trimmer shorted out, YOU were the effective ground, particularly if you were standing in wet grass.

I quietly slipped out and went to the local emporium of tools and toys and bought her a newer version that has a longer blade, more power and was lighter than her old disaster-waiting-to-happen trimmer.

That’s ENOUGH!

Mother isn’t big on change, so I bought a mushy Mother’s Day card and a cute bow (which, observing the Family Frugality Rule, I affixed in such a manner it could be reused) and left it in her spot on the kitchen table while she was sleeping.

To my surprise, she loved it. Loved it so much that nothing green in the yard is safe.

“That’s ENOUGH!” I said. “You’re not going to have anything left but a stump.”

I turned around and saw her attacking a dandelion that had the audacity to stick its head out of the ground. “Wow,” she said, “I can even use this like a weed eater.”

For the record, I did a finger count when I left town. She had ten digits when I pulled out of the driveway. I hope she doesn’t think she can use the hedge trimmer on finger and toenails.

May 1, 2014May 1, 2014

Working for Extra Credit

When I spoke to Dr. Lily Santoro’s Local Techniques in History Class, I offered to help students find information for the topics they had been assigned on local landmarks. The first step was to compile a list of posts about their subjects.

Jennifer was first out of the box

There’s always one student in the class who starts work right away. Jennifer Baker emailed me early on: “My topic is the Wehking Alumni Building on Broadway. From what I have been able to find, the building was previously occupied by the First Baptist Church. Construction on it began in 1926. So, my project will start with the First Baptist Church and end with the Wehking Alumni Center.”

I had to confess to her that the building had been on my to-do list for a long time, but the only photos I had were ones taken of the 1956 SEMO Homecoming parade by James D. McKeown III and passed on by his son, Steve McKeown.

I did suggest that she check out a story I had read that Louis Houck was so enamored by reproductions of classic sculptures he saw at the St. Louis World’s Fair that he bought them at the end of the fair and donated them to the college. I heard that they were being displayed in her building after being moved out of Academic Hall. I suggested she look for Joel P. Rhodes‘ book, A Missouri Railroad Pioneer: The Life of Louis Houck, to see if I remembered it correctly.

Bingo. “Wow! I just found a copy of this book as an ebook on line. Within minutes, I was able to read this section of Dr. Rhodes’ book on Louis Houck. Thanks again for the help! You are pretty cool!” she gushed.

Thanks to Jennifer, I finally got around to shoot the statues and former church for a future post. (If Jennifer is a REAL digger, she will uncover a story about a bank loan and why the building looks like it does. That’s the only hint I’m going to give because I’m saving it for my future post.)

Fairmount Cemetery

The deadline for the project must be coming quickly because I got a flurry of requests on Wednesday.

Crystal Haugsness wanted an aerial shot of Fairmount Cemetery and a photo of the cemetery with Bingo World in the background.

Beer on the first date at age 13

Lucas Greenwalt was fascinated by Myrtle Schilling Kuehnert, part of my Last Generation project. ” I was wondering, if by chance, you would give me permission to cite one of your works for a poster presentation. It was from a video interview you did where an elderly lady discusses her first date with her husband and they casually grabbed a beer at the age of 13. My project is on the Evangelical United Church of Christ here in cape. As you may know the church has very deep German roots and I feel as though this would be a wonderful reference when giving the history of the building.”

St. James AME Church

Scott Bates drew the St. James AME Church. “I want to know if you would allow me permission to use a photo from your website. The photo that I would like to use is the photo with Mr. Kaplan speaking and Rev. Ward smiling in the back. This was from the NAACP president’s visit to St. James AME Church in 1967.”

Luke Haun wanted Fair photos

Luke wanted six photos: four from the 1964 fair; one inside the Arena Building in 1966, and a color shot that Mother took in 2011. I liked his taste. He picked out some of my favorites.

I wonder if any other students will come skidding in tomorrow? They may be in trouble. I have to wrap up a bunch of loose ends before getting on the road to Ohio at the end of the week, so I may not be around to look up photos.

I hope Dr. Santoro gives me extra credit for my work. I could use some help pulling up my grade point average.