Road Warriorette Shari and I headed up Hwy 61 to check out some antique stores. After finding a couple of likely prospects closed, we started driving roads at random until stumbled across this interesting cemetery at the intersection of Perry county roads 510 and 520. (On Google Maps, it’s at the intersection of Bethany Road and Luther Chapel Road.)
Info from Find A Grave
If I can’t find information anywhere else, I turn to the Find A Grave website. Here’s what it had to say about our graveyard after I plugged in some names from tombstones.
Located between Longtown and Biehle in Perry County. Also called “Hart’s Cemetery” because of it’s proximity to the Hart residence.
Jacob Wills 1843 – 1870
One of the organizers (Elizabeth Ann Welker Knox) of the American Lutheran Congregation at Harts, was said to have been the only living member of the original group to retain any authority over the affairs of the church property. The church itself (in 1937) had not been used as a place of worship for more than a generation and the cemetery had been used as a burial ground only at rare intervals.
The cemetery was often described as being in the “Eddleman Settlement”.
In December of 1984, the old Luther (Hart) Cemetery was accepted by Sargents Chapel Congregation for incorporation with their cemetery association for perpetual care.
Well-maintained
The cemetery was well-maintained, and some of the graves had decorations, so someone still remembers the people who are buried here. As always, you may click on any photo to make it larger.
Road Warriorette Shari came down from St. Louis for a few days to see her mother and to attend a ceremony recognizing her late grandmother’s work on the Capaha Park Rose Garden.
While we were cruising town looking at all the changes, it dawned on me that I had never been in the McDonald’s on Broadway near Central High School. We wondered if McDonald’s was this generation’s version of our Wimpy’s Drive-In with teenage drivers making an endless loop of cars between the long-gone burger joint and Pfisters. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)
Lines, but no looping
There was a steady stream of cars pulling into the parking lot, but they usually just queued up at the drive-in window, picked up their orders and took off. There weren’t any cars full of teenagers checking out each other or sitting and talking. Maybe they were all on social media.
The first Broadway McDonald’s was built in 1967 by Jerry Davis, who owned several landmark Cape eateries. He and flight instructor Kenneth Krongos were killed when the small plane they were in crashed in bad weather in 2003.
My perfect record is intact. I still haven’t been inside the store. That’s not to knock the business; it’s just that there are too many other places I’d rather eat in the area.
I’ve been dragging my feet putting this post up, because I’m not exactly sure why I didn’t feel more emotion at my visit to the Central High School Gymnasium Saturday, the last public viewing before it’s torn down sometime during this month and March.
Here, by the way is a panorama shot from the top of the south bleachers looking to the north. Click on it to make it larger.
Maybe I didn’t connect because all of the spirit signs, the Tiger logos, the baseball brag board and the Alma Mater had all been removed from the walls. My knees didn’t like the bleachers that we were made to run up and down in P.E.
It was the noise that was missing
It was too quiet. There were no basketballs bouncing off the shiny floor. No coaches blowing their whistles and bellowing at lackadaisical students like me. There was no hollering nor the SPLAT! of one of those red rubber dodgeballs leaving an equally red mark on some slow-to-move freshman.
No fond memories
I can’t think of any fond memories I had about that room. I hated physical education class with a purple passion. I had neither the skills nor the desire to play sports.
I attended tens of dances and proms, but, with few exceptions, my job was to wait until this queen or that queen was crowned, then head home to process my film for The Missourian, The Tiger or The Girardot.
First high school girlfriend Shari found out I wasn’t fibbing when I told her I didn’t know how to dance, and last high school girlfriend Wife Lila will confirm that I never got any better.
I thought the showers were bigger
When I journeyed to the locker room and showers, I was astounded at how small the shower room was. It’s hard to believe that you could cram a dozen or more guys in there at one time, even considering that I was half the size I am today.
I stand by a description I wrote in 2013: “We guys were herded into gang showers where earsplitting hoots and hollers echoed off the tile walls like a bad prison movie. At least once during this session (which I tried to complete as quickly as possible), there would be something that sounded like a space shuttle lifting off, followed by a sulfurous cloud of methane gas that rolled off the tiles in a green cloud, prompting another Neanderthal to try to best the earlier contribution.”
If the dodgeballs went “SPLAT!” the snapping of wet towels sounded like a wild bunch of cowboys trying to get the herd moving by cracking their bullwhips.
Bleacher and floor signup sheet
There was a signup sheet near the entrance where people could leave their names if they were interested in getting pieces of the bleachers or floor when the building is being torn down. I talked with Coach Terry Kitchen Monday to get details, but he said the administration hadn’t made a decision yet on what will happen with the salvage. He asked me to check back later this week to see what was going to happen. When I hear, I’ll post an update.
I have to admit I wouldn’t mind having a chunk of bleacher.
A moment with Terry Crass
On my way out, I stopped to chat with a man wearing an orange shirt. It turned out to be Terry Crass, probably one of the nicest guys who ever walked the halls of Central High School. As team manager of just about every sport except Chess, he kept players patched up, and he’s doing much the same work today at the Veterans Home.
After a few minutes of chit-chat, Terry said, “On the afternoon JFK got killed, I was in Mr. Ford’s algebra class. The weather was bad. It was a lousy-looking day. Mr. Wilferth came on the PA and said the president had been shot. We didn’t know anything.
“The bell rings and I hit out to the study hall. Nobody was saying anything. Everybody was crying. There was a big black and white TV in there. That’s when Walter Cronkite looked up at the clock over his shoulder and said, “From Dallas, Texas, the FLASH, apparently official, President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time, 2 o’clock Eastern Standard Time, some 38 minutes ago.” [I inserted the actual quote, but Terry pretty much nailed it from memory.]
I had a flashback
I flashed back to another TV on that day. One that was sitting in the gym with shocked students staring at it. “All you could hear was breathing,” I told The Missourian when I rushed my photo to the paper to make my first EXTRA edition.
Suddenly, I must have swallowed a marble because I couldn’t say anything, and there was a lot of dust in the air that caused my eyes to water.
I guess I DID leave a little piece of myself in that old gym.
Last Day photo gallery
Here are some random photos of folks saying goodbye to the old building. Click on any picture to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move around.
From the Mississippi River overlook, we were lucky enough to catch the MV Donna Griffin coming upstream. We could hear her talking to another boat to arrange a passing, but I think it was well north of us, so we didn’t get to see that. We could hear a train whistle in the distance, but it must have been on the Illinois side, so we missed seeing two major transportation systems at the same time.
Rigging amazes me
It always amazes me how the pilots and captains can maneuver long strings of barges around sharp bends and between bridge piers. I know those straps have to be bigger than they look in this photo, but still, I can’t imagine how much strain is placed on them when the captain needs to move something that’s a thousand-plus feet in front of him.
Here’s a website with some interesting factoids. It says that a standard barge is 195 feet long and 35 feet wide, although some of the newer ones are 290 by 50 feet.
Let’s assume that the ones in the photo are standard length. The string appears to be two wide and six long. That would mean that you have to figure out where to make your turn from nearly 1,200 feet back. Think about THAT the next time you complain about a parallel parking space being a little tight.
You can click on the photo to make it larger, but I didn’t spot anyone on deck checking us out.
Bald Knob Cross
That little white dot on the top of the hill in the distance is the Bald Knob Cross.
Has had three names
The Donna Griffin was built by Nashville Bridge Shipbuilding in 1965. A website, reports that she was named the Julia Woods until May 2006, when she became the Michelle O’Neil. In May 2009, she was renamed the Donna Griffin. I didn’t find anything that explained who the boat was named for nor the significance of changing the names in May.
A shipbuilding site said Nashville Bridge Company was originally a bridge builder, founded in the 1890s. It was converted to shipbuilding in 1915 and, by the 1960s, it was said to be the world’s largest builder of inland barges. George Steinbrenner bought it in 1969 and added a second yard in Ashland City in 1977; he sold the company to Trinity Marine Group in 1995. Trinity closed the Nashville yard in 1996, when the City of Nashville decided that the downtown shipyard property would be more valuable to the community as a stadium.
She is 180.1 feet long, 50.5 feet wide, and the hull depth is 11.5 feet.
The towboat is owned by Ingram Barge of Nashville, the largest carrier on the inland waterway system.
Road Warriorette Shari and I headed up Hwy 61 to check out some antique stores. After finding a couple of likely prospects closed, we started driving roads at random until stumbled across this interesting cemetery at the intersection of Perry county roads 510 and 520. (On Google Maps, it’s at the intersection of Bethany Road and Luther Chapel Road.)
If I can’t find information anywhere else, I turn to the Find A Grave website. Here’s what it had to say about our graveyard after I plugged in some names from tombstones.
One of the organizers (Elizabeth Ann Welker Knox) of the American Lutheran Congregation at Harts, was said to have been the only living member of the original group to retain any authority over the affairs of the church property. The church itself (in 1937) had not been used as a place of worship for more than a generation and the cemetery had been used as a burial ground only at rare intervals.
The cemetery was well-maintained, and some of the graves had decorations, so someone still remembers the people who are buried here. As always, you may click on any photo to make it larger.
