Mary Welch Steinhoff Archives

July 19, 2012January 29, 2016

Mother Nature’s a Tease

Mother and I took a swing over to Jackson so I could get my Wib’s BBQ fix. The sky to the west looked dark blue and the radar was painting lots of reds and yellows. As soon as the server had taken our order, there was a brilliant flash outside the window. To be on the safe side, I went out to the car to get the umbrella.

That probably doomed Mother’s corn crop down at Dutchtown. It didn’t rain at Wib’s. This guy’s field doesn’t look all that great, either.

I stood on a high piece of ground in Fruitland trying to get a look at a controversial quarry there. I missed a couple of good lightning bolts (they missed me, too. Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this). No rain.

Egypt Mills Trinity Lutheran Church

After my presentation at the Altenburg Museum Tuesday night, Tom Neumeyer mentioned that he had seen a large Steinhoff headstone at the Trinity Lutheran Church at Egypt Mills.

So, we went out past the KFVS TV tower (once the world’s tallest structure), to check it out. We found several stones and recognized some of the names, but they weren’t part of our immediate clan.

I liked the look of this small outbuilding and took a couple of frames while being teased by rumbles and flashes. (You can click on the photos to make them larger.)

Heat records shattered

Heat records are being shattered as are records for the number of days in a row the temperature has hit 100 or higher. The last time St. Louis was this hot for this long was in 1936, said Jim Keeney, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Central Region Headquarters in Kansas City, Mo. Then, the city recorded 13 days in a row of temperatures 100 degrees Fahrenheit or over. That devastating heat wave of the mid-’30s killed thousands of people and destroyed many crops.

We see clouds build up, hear thunder, see impressive radar returns, then the storms dissipate or split, going around Cape.

Hoping to walk to Tower Rock

The Southeast Missouri Geocaching folks are keeping a close eye on the Mississippi River gauges at Chester and Cape Girardeau. When the Chester gauge reads 0 and / or the Cape gauge reads 7, the water is low enough to walk across to Tower Rock, just south of Wittenberg. The gauges are at 5.39 and 11.23, with a gentle rise predicted.

Brother Mark and I picked our way to it October 12, 2003. He climbed to the top of the rock with his bicycle for reasons only he could explain.

July 18, 2012July 18, 2012

No Tomatoes Were Thrown

Perry County is experiencing a bumper crop of tomatoes this summer, so I was a little uneasy about facing an audience at the Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum in Altenburg. Folks up in the ridges aren’t shy about expressing their opinions, and I was hoping not to come home dripping rotten tomato juice.

The purpose of my visit was to have the audience help narrow down some print selections for an exhibit this fall and for me to gauge response to to my talk about regional photography.

I didn’t do a head count, but museum director Carla Jordan said about 40 people attended, about twice what we had anticipated. It was a good group. I went longer than planned, but I didn’t hear any snoring and I didn’t hear any boards creaking that would have given away anyone who tried to sneak out early.

Brother Mark and his friend Robin Hirsch came down from St. Louis. Robin was kind enough to shoot a couple of these photos.

Last resident of Wittenburg

Joanne Holley, in the front row, left, is the last resident of Wittenberg. Her husband, Dave Holley, storyteller extraordinaire, died April 11, 2012. Two of the videos featured him and one was dedicated to him. Her daughter, Kristie, and her grandson are also in the row.

Talking photo technique

Cape photographer Tom Neumeyer stopped by to talk technique and share shooting war stories. Central High School Class of ’66 classmate Dick McLard reminded me that Thursday is the monthly brunch, but I have other commitments that day. Wife Lila would certainly be there if she was in town.

Carla’s introduction was so flattering that I wondered if she had grabbed my eulogy by mistake. Warren Schmidt was equally kind at the end of the evening. Gerard Fiehler humped stuff out of my car and helped get the speakers working.

Sick cat excuse

Mother is an old hand at the museum, but this was Friend Shari’s mother’s first visit. LaFern Stiver admitted that she didn’t know how she was going to occupy herself in what she thought was going to be a tiny, small-town museum since I had to go a couple hours early to set up. She was pleasantly surprised to see what a great job Carla and her staff do in pulling together the exhibits.

If you’re in LaFern’s bridge club, don’t be surprised to find yourself being hauled up to Altenburg one of these days. (Shari couldn’t make it down from St. Louis. She said something about a sick cat. That sounds vaguely familiar. I think she may have used that same excuse when we were in high school.)

June 29, 2012December 24, 2022

Coins on the Train Track

I’ve always been fascinated by trains. I remember standing at the Advance train depot with my grandparents to watch the steam engines come puffing in with black smoke boiling from the stacks and a deafening blast of steam when it stopped.

Texas singer and songwriter Guy Clark describes how it was to be six years old in 1947, when the whole town turned out to see a “mad dog, runaway, red-silver streamline train” whiz though for the first time. Up until then, “Trains are big and black and smokin’ – steam screamin’ at the wheels, bigger than anything they is, at least that’s the way she feels…When they finally said ‘train time,’ you’d a-thought that Jesus Christ his-self was rolling down the line. Things got real quiet, momma jerked me back, but not before I’d got the chance to lay a nickel on the track.”

Coins on the track

When Bob, Claire, Mother and I visited Wittenberg the other day, a slow freight pulled slowly through the town, then came to a stop. I tuned the scanner in my car to the train frequencies and heard the engineer talking to dispatch about stopping for a signal that shouldn’t have been red. While they were sorting it out, I thought about Clark’s song and dropped a penny, nickel, dime and quarter on the track.

Watch the video to see what happened.

Crawling under trains at 10

I’ve been around trains quite a bit and have a lot of respect for them. When I was about 10, Dad had a road-building job down in the Bootheel and had the gravel for the job delivered by rail. He’d let me crawl under the hopper cars to bang open the door that would spill the rock onto a conveyor belt. He told me to make sure I didn’t come out from under the car until he gave me the all-clear, then he would have a bulldozer push the cars forward until the next one was ready to dump. (Just think how many regulations that would bust today.)

Where did my pennies go?

When we left to go home one Friday, I put a row of pennies on the main line, expecting to find them when we came back on Monday. When I rushed to the tracks to find zip, Dad explained that a fast, heavy train will smash the coins as thin as tin foil, then it’ll weld them onto the passing wheels or onto the track. To get good results, you had to do it on a siding or when the train was just starting out.

Kindergarten ride to Chaffee

I did the obligatory kindergarten ride to Chaffee from Cape; I rode the train from Cape to Chicago for a photo seminar right after high school; a train delivered me to Philmont Scout Ranch when I was 15; I took passenger trains to and from college in Athens, Ohio.

Over the years, I don’t know how many “last rides” I’ve photographed as passenger trains dwindled to a passing few. I rode the Silver Meteor from Florida to Chicago through a 100-year blizzard with drifts so high that they knocked out the headlight on our engine. I rode in the engine of a freight train along the east coast of Florida (where I learned that I couldn’t handle the stress of seeing so many cars drive around closed crossing gates with our engine bearing down on them.

In Gastonia, N.C., I saw a train hit a car that tried to beat it to the crossing. A 16-year-old kid died in my arms.

So, I don’t encourage you to do what I did. Still, like Guy Clark sings in his song, “Oh, but me, I got a nickel smashed flatter than a dime by a mad dog, runaway red-silver streamline train.”

Maybe I’ll leave a coin for Dad

Maybe I’ll leave one of the coins on Dad’s gravestone to show him that I finally pulled it off.

June 25, 2012

Thebes Courthouse Renovation

The Thebes Courthouse is on the list of places that out-of-town guests get to see. I took Spokesrider and his wife there when he rode his bike from Michigan to New Madrid. Today it was Bob and Claire Rogers from Arizona who got the tour. I worked with Bob at The Athens Messenger in the late 60s. You’ll hear more about him as the week goes on and I drag him to all my favorite haunts.

Museum not open

The museum wasn’t open, but we heard noises inside while we were on the balcony overlooking the Mississippi River. Claire peeked through a crack in the door and saw that the main door was open. Never missing a chance to walk through an open door, we did just that. I was surprised to see how well the place had been fixed up. The last time I was inside the building in the 1960s, the place was empty except for a bust of Lincoln in one of the windows.

Bust of Abe Lincoln

I don’t think this was the Lincoln I saw, but he still looks nice in the window’s light. The Thebes Historical Society has been working hard to preserve the old building, and their efforts are showing. We were lucky to get a sneak peek. The organization’s website says the museum will be closed for awhile to replace some windows and do other repairs. You can check it to see when visitors are officially welcome again.

Tag: Mary Welch Steinhoff