Tag: Scenics

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Fall Day at Houck Stadium

We’ll get the facts out of the way first, then we’ll get on with the story. I don’t know what sporting event was going on at Houck Stadium Saturday afternoon, but you couldn’t have asked for a nicer day to hold it.

Houck Field House, Academic Hall, Kent Library and the high-rise dorms all show up prominently. Parking has replaced some of the homes and businesses along Broadway in front of the Field House. (Click on the photo to make it larger. It has some cool detail.)

I’ll run a photo at the bottom of the page that was shot sometime around 1966 for comparison.

Ernie Chiles was my pilot

I flew my first aerials with Ernie Chiles while I was still in high school, and I’ve written about how one of those flights launched me into photojournalism.

We flew out of the Painton Airport

I asked Ernie if he knew where I could charter a plane to shoot some aerial photos on this trip home. He offered to fly me himself for old times sake. (By the way, we’ve come to an agreement: we refer to each other as “former student” and “former teacher.” Neither of us likes the way “old teacher” and old student” sounds.)

He keeps his plane at the Painton Airport.

If you have to ask where it is, you wouldn’t know where it was if I told you. Its a grass strip, with a short length of paved runway needed to get a crop duster airborne when he’s fully loaded.

It’s flying the way it used to be: park next to your plane, no TSA and no full body scanners. That’s not to say there’s NO security. There were half a dozen guys hanging around who knew who belonged and who didn’t.

Ernie’s seeing eye dog had the cutest parachute

Since he’s advancing in age, I tried as delicately as possible to see if Ernie was up to the task. He said that he’s finally mastered takeoffs; landings are handled by the Law of  Gravity, which hasn’t failed to bring every flight of his to the ground.

He DID suggest that I bring an extra milk bone or two for his seeing eye dog. It sits right behind him in the cockpit and presses down on the appropriate shoulder to indicate a left or right turn. It has the cutest little parachute.

I thought for a second that we had attracted a wingman just before touchdown. Turned out it was just our shadow.

Jet on strafing run

While Ernie was refueling and putting his airplane to bed, I looked up to see a jet making a low-altitude strafing run at a long freight train loaded with Canadian crude oil. It took a moment to realize that it was a radio-controlled model operated by one of Ernie’s buddies. Things are not always as they appear at the Painton Airport.

I really DID shoot some serious photos, but it’s going to take some time to wade through the 563 frames to pull out the best ones. I’ll scatter them out to keep you from overdosing on aerial photos.

Houck Stadium circa 1966

As promised, here’s what the Houck Stadium area looked like around 1966.

I asked Ernie if he knew where I could charter a plane to shoot some aerial photos on this trip home. He offered to fly me himself for old times sake. (By the way, we’ve come to an agreement: we refer to each other as “former student” and “former teacher.” Neither of us likes the way “old teacher” and old student” sounds.)
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Silver Dollar Tavern

The Missourian ran a story this morning about a man who died jumping off the Old Appleton Bridge. A reader asked if that was the same Castor River bridge I showed kids jumping off in another post.

The answer is, “No.” Wrong body of water, wrong bridge. The caller who reported the drowning said the man had jumped off the “red bridge” and had not surfaced. There used to be a water-powered mill just downstream of this bridge. A dam created a deep pool of water that made a good swimming hole.

I’ll write about the Old Appleton bridges later. The bridge on Highway 61 that replaced the “red bridge” was a death trap that The Missourian campaigned hard to get replaced. I spent a lot of time shooting wrecks there.

Silver Dollar Tavern

When we slowed down in Old Appleton this spring, I figured I’d better shoot the landmark Silver Dollar Tavern while it was still – barely – standing. The local gathering place had pool tables, a dance floor and a bar. I’ve read that a lot of Blues music was played there.

I don’t know how old the building is. A Google search of The Missourian’s archives popped up a story from 1948, so it’s at least as old as I am. I’m going to throw in a bunch of stories that ran in the Old Appleton News column over the years. Most of them were written by Rip Schnurbusch.

District News Editor herds stringers

One of my many jobs at The Missourian was District News Editor, riding herd over our country correspondents, or stringers, as they were called. They got the name of “stringers” because they were paid by the column inch and it was easier to measure their copy with a string at the end of the pay period instead of using a ruler and having to do math.

Being a young, serious journalist, I would edit their copy with a meat axe. One day, Editor John Blue called me in and said to cut them some slack. “Not much happens in these little towns, so they make do the best they can. Besides, their little asides are what make their columns fun to read.”

Non-linear journalism

Now that I’ve become a non-linear journalist myself, I can appreciate what jBlue was telling me. I’ve grown to appreciate Rip and Anne Withers from Delta and Anne Lattimore from Charleston in my old age, even though they drove me crazy when I had to read their hen scratch copy. To make it worse, they would send the same stories to three or four papers; you were lucky if you got the TOP copy and not the fourth carbon.

I just discovered a whole manila folder of stringer copy marked “Funny File.” We’ll save it for another time.

This one is too good not to share. It illustrates the news judgment of my stringers: A singing convention was held at the Mt. Calvary Baptist Church in Parma Sunday afternoon with feature singers of the Campbell Trio of Gideon. The convention was interrupted by a fire which destroyed the home of John Barker. [Emphasis mine. Mind you, this wasn’t even the TOP item.]

A Smattering of Old Appleton News

  • June 23, 1948 – Jean Balsmann, proprietor of the Silver Dollar Tavern, has added ice cream to his stock.
  • April 20, 1949 – Barney Balsmann, owner of the Silver Dollar Tavern, and his son, Gene, who operates the tavern, are building an addition to the building which will house several pool tables.

  • May 19, 1948 – A chicken fry was held Tuesday night at Silver Dollar Tavern for young men of the community.
  • F.C. Sewing recently purchased a sow and seven pigs from Barney Balsmann.
  • Oct. 13, 1948 – Miss Verda Weisbrod was honored at a miscellaneous shower last week at the Silver Dollar Tavern given by Mrs. Hugo Triller, Marilyn Weisbod and Betty J. Schnurbusch.
  • A tree felled last weekend by Millard Esters and Edward Jarigan killed a raccoon which had holed up in the tree. The impact of the tree, which was to be used to firewood, killed the animal.
  • May 16, 1962 – The Perry County Saddle Club held its monthly meeting Monday night at the Silver Dollar Tavern with a good attendance. Refreshments were served.
  • March 21, 1963 – Classified ad: SILVER DOLLAR TAVERN: For sale or lease. See or contact Gene Balsman, Perryville, MO.
  • March 31, 1965 – The Silver Dollar Tavern changed hands over the weekend, the new owner being Van Ferral.
  • April 30, 1970 – There is one less pony in town. The Edgar Blechle children lost one of their pet ponies this past week when the animal got loose, ran on the highway, and was hit by a small van truck belonging to the Saveway Oil Co. of Scott City.
  • Mr. and Mrs. B.C. Humphrey moved from the Wally Unterreiner home into the former Schaeffer home over the weekend. Mr. Humphrey is employed at the Farmers Limestone Co. as a heavy equipment operator, and Mrs. Humphrey is a cook at the Silver Dollar Tavern. [I wonder how long they had to live there before their domicile would be called the Humphrey home?]


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1964 SEMO Fair Exposé

The Southeast Missouri District Fair in Cape Girardeau was my first newspaper undercover investigation assignment. Jackson Pioneer Editor Gary Fredericks decided he and I would go to the fair to see if we could uncover and document gambling violations on the fair’s midway. I have no way of knowing whether or not he had any evidence of the gambling or if he just wanted to go to the fair.

[Editor’s note: I THINK Gary was editor. We had so many come and go it was hard to tell who was wearing the Editor hat on any give day. I also can’t remember if his last name had an “S” on the end. We’ll just call him Gary from here on out to be safe.]

Mike’s Krazy Ball – Gary’s Krazy Theories

Gary had a number of theories

  • The midway games were either rigged
  • Or, they weren’t games of skill, which would make them gambling
  • If they were gambling, the cops had been paid off
  • UFOs were real.

Gary was capable of multi-tasking. He was working on that last theory at the same time.

Gary was playing, I was shooting

That’s Editor Gary pitching the Krazy ball trying to win a piece of plush (stuffed toy). I presume the enthusiastic gentleman perched on the stool is Mike. I’m not sure how Gary rated this stand.

Was THIS game rigged?

Soon we meandered over to this game. You might detect some kinda bad vibes coming off the gentleman at the left. I was beginning to get the feeling that he might not like me.

Nice man concerned with my safety

Before long, this nice man came over to talk with me. He was joined by two other burly fellows who wanted to make sure I got back to my car safely at the end of the evening, which, coincidentally, was Right Now. Gary shot this with a camera I slipped him when I thought things might be going south.

I was 5’10 and weighed maybe 105 pounds in those days, so they wouldn’t have had to be too big to meet my definition of “burly.” At any rate, I thought that maybe since they were kind enough to offer me an escort off the grounds that it would have been ungracious to refuse.

I don’t remember what kind of story Gary ended up writing. It may have had something to do with UFOs.

Blue Grass Shows Mighty Midway

When I wasn’t getting kicked out, the SEMO Fair ranked right up there with Christmas, the 4th of July and your birthday for big events. It was such a big deal that the schools let out for Fair Day.

Bottle deposits kept the day going

When you ran out of money, you’d scrounge the grounds looking for soda bottles to turn in for the two-cent deposit to food stands like this one.

Fair used as local fundraiser

Many local service service clubs and schools set up tents and stands to make money. This one has a sign, Delta Senior Stand. Note the electrical wires snaking along the ground.

Power for the grounds was provided by huge generators on the back of 18-wheelers. Huge cables the size of your wrist would feed into junction boxes on the ground, which would, in turn, fed into smaller cables. I always wondered why nobody got electrocuted when it rained. I’ll never forget the sound those generators made. They were noisy all the time, but they would scream when a big ride started up and they had to catch up with the sudden load.

Midway laid out in horseshoe shape

Most midways were laid out in a U shape was designed to draw crowds throughout the entire carnival and maximize spending. Crowds tended to enter the right leg, so the stands on that side were more valuable and were either owned by the promoter or went for big rents.

I wasn’t old enough for The Follies

Game concessions were usually the first joints along the outside of the right leg of the U. Rides would be located down the center column, with the carousel traditionally being the first ride beyond the front gate. After the games, the crowd would find the shows and the penny arcade.

The right hand bend was where the girlie show lived. I never made it into The Follies. I’ll have to let someone else fill me in on what you saw there.

The left leg would contain more shows and games all the way back to the front gate. They had slimmer pickings because a lot of money drained off before it got to them.

Ferris Wheel dominated the skyline

Other rides might be more spectacular, but the “wheel” traditionally signaled the end of the night. Because it was generally the tallest ride and could be seen throughout the whole midway, the carnival would use it to signal that the midway was closed for the night. When it went dark, it was time to go back to the trailers to get ready for the next day.

Carny could be your friend – or not

The greasy, tattooed guy with his cigarettes rolled up in his T-shirt sleeve who took your ticket when you got on a ride could be your friend – or not – depending on how he sized you up. He could give you a great ride or, by cleverly working the clutch, he could shake the change out of your pockets and make you puke on your girlfriend.

While we were scouting bottles for the deposits, we tried to look for loose change under the big rides. The carnies would run us off, though, because they considered that “their” money.

Not a Fair Week without rain

SEMO fairs are either hot and dusty or rainy and muddy. Frequently, they are both. Sometimes they even mix in cold and windy with the rainy.

Crafts and Good food

All of the action didn’t take place on the midway. Cape was an agricultural area, so there were plenty of 4H and livestock exhibits. The Arena building was stuffed with baking contests, quilts and sewing competitions with their blue, red and white ribbons.

In addition to the exhibits, there were scores of booths set up that were the Real World equivalents of the Home Shopping Network. Barkers were hawking every imaginable thing. No kid – and few adults – went home without a shopping bag of handouts and samples.

It was a great place to go when you had run out of money and soda bottles.

Southeast Missouri District Fair Gallery

Here’s a gallery of photos taken at the Southeast Missouri District Fair in the middle and / or late 60s. I don’t know that they were all taken in the same year. The earliest photos would have been of the 1964 fair. Click on any image to make it larger, then click on the left or right wide of the photo to move through the gallery.

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Cape Mississippi River Bridge RIP (Rest in Pieces)

The old Cape Mississippi River Traffic Bridge was an adolescent adrenaline rush, a white-knuckled journey of fear and angst; it was an inconvenience, it was the site of personal and family tragedy. It also opened up Cape Girardeau to Illinois and points east when it became the first bridge across the Mississippi River between St. Louis and Memphis.

It was a part of our lives, indicated by the number and variety of the comments left on yesterday’s post about a crash on the bridge.  The span, which was 4,744 feet, 4 inches long, opened to traffic August 22, 1928. A contractor used explosives to drop the bridge into the Mississippi August 3, 2004.

The approach to nowhere

The steelwork has all been removed, but they were still working on removing the bridge piers when I shot this photo from the Illinois side of the river in October of 2004.

Piers the last to go

The massive piers that held the bridge up were the last parts to be demolished. This photo shows the flood gates that are closed, blocking north and south rail traffic when the river gets high. I prowled around under the bridge here and picked up a few souvenir pieces of steel. The Missourian said 160,000 rivets were used in building the bridge.

Missouri approach turned into scenic viewing area

The decorative archway over the Cape approach to the bridge has been preserved and a portion of the span has been turned into an attractive viewing area. I wish that the whole bridge could have been preserved for bicycles and pedestrians like the Chain of Rocks Bridge north of St. Louis, but the Coast Guard considered having two bridges that close together to be a navigation hazard.

Mississippi River Traffic Bridge Photo Gallery

Here is a collection of photos taken of the bridge’s last days in the fall of 2004. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to move through the gallery.

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