Scenics Archives

April 13, 2012

Second Glance Stuff

From time to time, I meander through old photos to see if something catches my eye that I might have missed. I was telling a friend the other day that there’s almost always a reason WHY you shot a picture, you just may not realize it the first time you look at it, particularly if you have a particular story in mind. (Click on any photo to make it larger.)

The first couple of these shots fit into the “What am I seeing in that window?” category. The shot above was on the north side of Broadway just east of Annie Laurie’s Antiques. The dummies, if that’s what they are, just popped out at me as I was walking down the street. When I looked at the frame later, I liked the cool cast the bluish colors give the overall image, then there’s that incongruous splatter of fluorescent orange around what appears to be a gas line.

Another dummy in the window

This is the building at the southwest corner of Main Street and Broadway that housed the St. Charles Drug Store after the St. Charles Hotel was torn down. It had once been used by the Singer Company. You can see the Singer sign if you look closely at the photos of the teen dance held in the First National Bank parking lot. Some of Main Street Midnight Madness pictures may have been taken inside the drug store.

Stag Beer

No telling how many times this Stag beer sign has been painted over. It’s on the side of a building being restored on the southwest corner of Independence and Frederick.

Building on Water Street

I thought it was curious how the stacked pallets mimic the windows in this Water Street building, down to the colors.

March 17, 2012March 17, 2012

Downtown Cape Panorama

This panorama photo is made up of six aerial photos taken April 17, 2010. It ranges from William Street on the left to north of Broadway on the right. The western boundary is just beyond Fountain St. The gray parking lot at the top left is Cape’s City Hall on Independence

Most panoramas are taken from one spot and the camera swiveled on a tripod. In this case, the “tripod” was Ernie Chiles’ plane flying along at about 100 mph. Because the angle was constantly changing, there is some freaky distortions of the buildings on the edges of the photo, particularly St. Vincent’s Cathedral on the left. Still, it’s a neat effect. I made it larger than usual, so you may have to scroll around to see it all.

Broadway Theater was a panorama

When I shot the interior of the Broadway theater, I stitched together six photos to show the whole room. It’s a way to cover a wide area if you don’t have a super wideangle lens.

The super-secret assignment

I haven’t fooled around much with panoramas because they were a real pain back in the days of film and paper prints. One day The Big Boss called me in and said he needed some aerial photography done for a super secret project for someone he wouldn’t name. I wasn’t supposed to discuss the assignment. Some days you ask questions. Some days you salute and say, “Yes Sir.” This was the latter.

In 2012, you’d call up Google Earth and have what you wanted in minutes, but this was in the days when the Google Earth guys were still wearing diapers, so that wasn’t an option.

The chopper ride was the fun part

So, I chartered a helicopter, took the door off, put on a safety harness, stood on the skid and leaned out into space so I could shoot straight down as much as possible. It was cool. Because the boss wanted a couple block area covered and in close detail, we flew multiple grids and I banged off a couple hundred frames. That was the easy and fun part.

When I got into the darkroom, though, I realized that I wasn’t as smart as Photoshop is today. No matter how straight to the ground I had tried to hold the camera, there was always a slight angle that kept the prints from lining up.

The next day, I spread out enough prints on The Big Boss’s floor to just above cover the whole shebang. I explained the technical problem, then I handed him two sheets of aerial photos of the area from the county’s tax assessor. He said I wouldn’t need to muck with making the prints; the county photos would do fine. (He was pleased enough with my ingenious solution that he didn’t think to ask why I hadn’t done that in the first place.)

So, what was the whole super secret deal about? I have no idea to this day. From time to time I’d drive through the neighborhood to see if any changes were taking place, but nothing ever sprouted up. I don’t know if the project was scuttled or what happened. At least I got a neat chopper ride out of it.

Other downtown shots

Downtown Cape Girardeau from the air and ground (includes other links)

Common Pleas Courthouse from the air

St. Vincent’s Cathedral and downtown

March 9, 2012August 24, 2015

101 North Main Street

I was walking east on Themis toward the Common Pleas Courthouse trying to spot the old Teen Age Club that got to bouncing so hard one night that the city inspector shut it down because he was afraid the floor might collapse. On the opposite of the street was a nondescript red brick building that had a plaque on it. (Click on any photo to make it larger.)

The Rotary Club plaque read, “Telephone Service. In 1877 the first long distance telephone line in Missouri was completed December 18, 1877, between Cape Girardeau and Jackson. In 1896 here in a 10′ x 12′ second floor room the city’s first telephone exchange was established by A.R. Ponder, L.J. Albert, J.F. Brooks and M.A. Dennison doing business as the Cape Girardeau Telephone Company.”

As a former telecommunications manager, I was vaguely intrigued.

I flashed back to when I was offered the telecom job just before I left on vacation to head back to Cape in the early ’90s. I knew absolutely nothing about phone stuff, but I remember thinking as I was going through little villages like Old Appleton, “Wow, if I take this job I’ll have a bigger phone system than this town.”

That call to Jackson

I put the story on the back burner for a slow day. When Friend Shari Stiver and I took a stroll down Main Street one day when we were both in town, she said she’d like to swing by to look at the old telephone exchange, which had also been the Sturdivant Bank, the oldest bank in Southeast Missouri.

“The call may have originated in Cape,” she said, “but do you have any idea where it terminated in Jackson?”

Somehow or another, knowing Shari, I was pretty sure I was going to find out.

“The first call rang in my great-grandfather’s kitchen,” she elaborated. “He was the J.F. Brooks mentioned on the plaque. He was the engineer who laid out the railroad for Louis Houck. Houck wanted to be able to get hold of him, so he had him pull a phone line between Cape and Jackson.”

Major Brooks “advanced” down to Advance

“Are we talking about the Major James Francis Brooks who Houck told to ‘advance’ down the line another mile to a stand of mulberry trees where land for a train depot could be bought for $10 an acre instead of $30 an acre in Lakeville?”

That “advance” turned out to become Advance, Missouri, Mother’s hometown.”

Yep, it was the same guy. Major Brooks’ engineering ended up resulting in the establishment of many of the small towns like Sturdivant, Brownwood, Blomeyer and Delta.

Brooks came west on a spotted pony

Shari added that her great-grandmother, “Bookie” (Florence Adele Turnbaugh Brooks) played telephone operator after the initial excitement of the first couple of calls died down. Maj. Brooks got his engineering degree at Vineyard College in Kansas City after he rode his spotted pony west with a wagon train to get there.

The Turnbaughs were Southerners who owned slaves, which Shari suspects caused some heated discussions over a bottle of whiskey on the front porch of the Turnbaugh house in Jackson.

Brooks created SEMO terraces

The excellent history, A Missouri Railroad Pioneer: The Life of Louis Houck (Missouri Biography Series), describes how Houck was concerned with preserving the pastoral beauty of Normal School (which became SEMO) and reducing water runoff so he hired Maj. Brooks to landscape the terraces on the east side of Academic Hall that are still visible today.

The book said that part of the project was to build a two-foot sandstone retaining wall along Normal Avenue, “although admittedly this last project was more to stop wayward farm animals from straying onto the grounds.”

101 North Main condemned

The landmark building has been condemned by the city. You can read the details of the wrangling in this Missourian story by Melissa Miller.

Cable reinforces wall

As much as I love old buildings, I can see what the concern is. When you look through the gallery of photos taken over a three-year period, you can see that the upper level has deteriorated to the point that a covered walkway had to be constructed to protect passersby from falling wayward bricks.

A double cable around the top of the building keeps the walls from sagging outward. I don’t know that I can argue with a Missourian commenter who wrote, “Look how the front is shifting out. If it falls about all the plywood awning will do is separate the bodies better from the rubble.”

Sign says Cape Wiggery

I’m not sure what the last business was to be in the building. The sign still says Cape Wiggery Shop. The 1969 City Directory said Kay’s was in there.

Interior has been cleaned out

The inside, at least from looking through the window, looks pretty clean.

It’ll be missed

I’ve made some iconic pictures of the building over the years, so I’ll miss it if it’s pulled down. It would be nice to think it could be saved, but it sure has the sniff of a parking lot about it, based on what I’ve seen and the news stories.

101 North Main photo gallery

Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to move through the gallery. (Thanks to Shari for the Jackson house picture and for sharing the story of her great-grandfather.)

March 5, 2012

On a Roll of Film

I got a lot of mileage out of a roll of film. The photos of the Notre Dame vs Central High School basketball game took up about half of it.

This photo, shot on the same roll, ran on the front page of The Missourian February 1, 1967, over the caption, “Pattern in the Sky: Workmen and structural features form an interesting and eye-catching picture in silhouette as the men go about their tasks in the construction of the addition to Kent Library on the State College campus. Open weather during winter months has enabled construction to move along at a rapid pace. McCarthy Construction Co. of St. Louis is prime contractor for the job. Contracts total $2,659,079, with additional funds available for equipping and furnishing the addition. The original Kent Library, named for Miss Sadie T. Kent, longtime librarian at the college, was constructed in 1939.”

This is what we used to call “wild art” or CLO for Cutlines Only. It was a news-oriented feature photo that ran without a story. I probably shot it on the way to or on the way back from a class. Click on any photo to make it larger.

Kent Library construction workers

Truth be told, the silhouette was a little too cluttered to be a good photo. I think I shot it as a silhouette because I wasn’t sure the photos I took of workmen on the building could hold enough detail against the bright sky. As it turns out, I like a couple of these better than the silhouette.

I like the way he’s gripping his hammer, the couple of small rips in his shirt and the wrinkles in his face that show years of working out in the sun.

From an editor’s perspective, though, it doesn’t tell the story in one shot. It would only work if you ran multiple photos as a mini picture story. That, of course, was the method behind my madness. I was paid by the picture, so it was in my best interest to try to sell a combo package of pictures and hold back the all-in-one shot as a fall-back.

These guys built this country

None of these guys ever got rich, but the monuments they built will live long after they are gone.

Pre-OSHA days

OSHA folks would get cranky these days over rebar without safety caps, scaffolding without guardrails and workers without hard hats and other safety equipment. That’s not to say those aren’t good things. Those pesky regulations were enacted to make a dangerous job just a little bit safer. Construction work exacts enough of a toll on its human engines without adding in accidents.

Other Kent Library pictures

What in the world is happening?

OK, not every photo works. I have no idea who these folks are, what they were doing or why I pushed the button. I didn’t have time to focus and I only got one frame off. They’re not paying any attention to me, so whatever they’re reacting to is down the street.

It has the feel of Water Street about it, maybe down around the Sportsmans Club.

Another single shot mystery

Here’s another single frame. A young woman reaches past her compact to dig for money to buy something. I don’t know she is, where she was or why she caught my eye enough for one frame, but not to follow up with more pictures.

So, that’s a lot of mileage out of one roll: a basketball game, a construction site, some wild and crazy guys on the street and a woman shopping. Toss in a car wreck, a service club meeting and a school feature and it would have been a regular old day as a newspaper photographer in a small town.