Southeast Missourian Archives

May 2, 2012October 19, 2016

Broadway and Sprigg

Missourian Librarian Sharon Sanders runs an interesting blog on Thursdays called “From the Morgue.” Back in the less PC Good Old Days, that what we called the repository of yellowing clips carefully snipped out by the custodian of the newspaper’s history. Folks like Sharon and her predecessor, Judy Crow, really DO know where the bodies are buried and can find the skeletons in closets going back generations. You do NOT want to get on the wrong side of the newspaper librarian. They used to possess both sharp tongues and sharp scissors.

I’m not sure what Digital Sharon could do to a reporter who didn’t bring back a much-handled envelope of old clips, but I bet it wouldn’t be pretty. On one of our first meetings, I started to raise my camera to take her picture. I don’t normally take no for an answer – I’ve shot Popes and Presidents, rioters and guys with guns – but I put my camera down when she shook her head. I knew right away that she wasn’t somebody to mess with.

I felt fortunate to escape with my life and a photo of a stack of aging clips.

Broadway and Sprigg

Her blog Thursday said one of her most-requested photos is of the building that used to be at the northeast corner of Broadway and Sprigg Street. It’s a vacant lot next to the Last Call Bar today. She’s done all the historical heavy lifting about that block, so it’s worth heading over there.

I don’t have any photos going back that far, but I do have the area today.

This aerial from November 2010 shows a number of landmarks. The red building is the Last Call she mentions. The white building diagonally across the street is the infamous 633 – 635 – 637 Broadway trio of buildings that have been a source of controversy for a long time. One building was razed and the other two are being renovated. In the center of the picture is Trinity Lutheran Church. The brick building to its left is Shivelbines Music and the white building across the street is Annie Laurie’s Antiques.

Last Call

It’s hard to miss the Last Call if you’re eastbound on Broadway. Its red colors are set off by a blue sky.

Blue-sided building is gone

The blue-sided building with the iconic mural at the top center of the aerial and the ones next to it were torn down at the end of 2011. Walther’s Furniture, across the street, has turned into Discovery Playhouse.

Like a gap in a first-grader’s grin

The northwest corner of Broadway and Sprigg has another empty spot. That’s where the old Chris Cross Cafe used to be. This view is south on Sprigg toward Broadway somewhere around 1966 or 1967. The three-story building on the south side of Broadway was the Cape Hotel. It burned and the spot is occupied by a Subway today.

March 15, 2012

College High Junior-Senior Prom

I hope this will make amends to Miss Peggy Schweain for not showing her face when she was crowned College High School Prom Queen in 1967. We ran this action shot of Miss Carol Keller helping Miss Schweain adjust her crown. To add insult to injury, the caption had her last named spelled both “Schwein and “Schweain.” (The latter is correct.)

Miss Keller is the daughter of Mrs. and Mrs. Layton Keller, and Miss Schweain is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Schweain. Miss Nora Reynolds, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Reynolds, Jr., is at right. Click on the photos to make them larger.

College High Prom Court

Maybe I was trying to squeeze out an extra five bucks from the assignment, hoping the paper would run the action shot, then back it up with a group picture. I guess not. It was getting close to the end of the school year, so it was probably pushed off the page by the glut of school news to get in. (The New York Times motto was “All the news that fit to print.” The Missourian came closer to reflecting economic realities: “All the news that fits we print.”)

The May 13, 1967, Youth Page story said the ceremony was held in the Memorial Hall ballroom. In addition to Misses Keller and Reynolds, her attendants were Miss Judy Masterson, daughter of Mrs. Evelyn Masterson, and Miss Ellen Gockel, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Gus Gockel, Jr.

The queen’s throne was placed on a platform decorated with a purple curtain held back with gold streamers. At the center of the curtain was a crown of purple velvet trimmed with gold tinsel.

Mr. and Mrs. E.J. Gilbert and the parents of the queen candidates were special guests of the juniors and seniors. The class sponsors were Wendall Wyatt and Mrs. Mary E. Magill.

(As an aside, I could have sworn that Carol Keller was a Cape Central High School student. I don’t know what I assumed that.)

March 12, 2012March 12, 2012

Girl Scouts Turn 100 Today

Happy Birthday, Girl Scouts! I understand you hit the Big 100 today. Want to hear something that will rock you back? These Brownies and Girl Scouts, who toured The Southeast Missourian in 1965 or 1966, weren’t too far off from having been around to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the organization. Now they’ll be able to light double the number of candles.

If you were a regular reader of the Saturday Youth Page, the photo above should look familiar to you. One of my jobs was to edit the weekly page, so I took a photo from the tour and made it into one of the standing page sigs. I always liked it because I knew it gave some of the bigots heartburn to see kids of different races “mixing.”

Newspaper tour groups

Cop reporter Dan D. Whittle is doing his best to look important and ignore the group standing around him.

A lot of newsroom folks hated the tour groups, but I enjoyed having them come back to the photo department at The Palm Beach Post.

If I wasn’t busy, I’d take them on a tour of the darkrooms, where the highlight was going through the revolving light trap that would let you go from the lighted hallway to the dark print room without interrupting any work that was going on. You’d revolve a cylinder until an opening showed up, you’d step inside and rotate it until the opening reached the darkroom, then you’d step out. With practice, you could do it without slowing down.

The farmer and the magic room

I’d tell the kids that the experience was a little like the farmer who saw his first elevator when he took his family on a visit to the big city.

He watched mystified as a door would open, people would enter a small room and the door would close. When the door opened again, the room would be empty. This went on for quite some time while he tried to figure out what was happening to the people.

Finally, an elderly woman entered the magic room. The door closed and a few seconds later a beautiful young woman stepped out. There was a brief pause, then the farmer turned and said in a hushed voice, “Son, quick. Go fetch your momma.”

Darkroom tricks

Once they made it through the revolving door, I’d usually have groups of them put their hands on a piece of photographic paper, then I’d turn the overhead room lights on and off to expose it. I’d toss the “blank” paper into the developer and let them see a reverse image of their hands pop up. Even high school kids were impressed, and it made for a nice souvenir to take home.

If we were lucky enough to catch a photographer with prints from an assignment that was going to run the next day, I’d introduce the shooter, have him or her show the kids the pictures, tell them a little about what how they were taken, then tell them to look for the shots in tomorrow’s paper.

I thought it was important for them to realize that real people produced the art that got pitched in a puddle in their front yard. It might encourage them to keep reading the paper. Based on what’s happening to newspapers today, I guess I must not have been too effective.

Earlier Girl Scout stories

Tour group photo gallery

I tried to print as wide a variety of photos from the tour as possible (including the little girl picking her nose. I hope her kids spot it.). Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to move through the gallery. Happy Birthday, Girl Scouts of America.

March 9, 2012March 27, 2016

“Judas Got a Raw Deal”

I mentioned that as The Kid of the staff I was on the Huck Finn Beat because they could send me out without wasting a real reporter and, because I could shoot my own pictures, they didn’t have to roust out One-Shot Frony. The Huck Finn Beat also included the non-river tourists like Ken Saunders, who passed through Cape during my summer internship right after high school. The story is not bylined, but I recognize my style enough to claim it as my own, for better or worse. It ran July 16, 1965. Click on any photo to make it larger.

The gentleman in the long, white robe walking briskly along Highway 61 Wednesday afternoon was not a sun-spawned hallucination. He was Kenneth Saunders, a British citizen who has walked from New York City to Los Angeles, Calif, and, thus far, from Memphis, Tenn., to Cape Girardeau.

Has walked 4,000 miles with message

Tall, sunburned an energetic, Mr. Saunders has trekked about 4,000 miles to challenge himself and other Christians to be honest with themselves. “I started in September, 1964 – “it feels like 1864,” he chuckled.

Mr. Saunders carries a metal cross bearing the words “Church of Judas,” and at the drop of a question will hand out a leaflet telling what the Church of Judas is.

“We feel that Judas got a very raw deal,” Mr. Saunders explained. “He was no worse than the other disciples. By hating him, we have a split-level Christianity. Our church teaches that the love of Judas is a halfway point to the total love Christ taught.”

Asked if he was a pacifist, Mr. Saunders replied, “I am, but I’m a poor one. We’re all pacifists, you know, until a war starts.”

Missouri a “friendly, happy state”

The pilgrim is delighted with Missouri. “This is a friendly, happy state,” he declared. “It has an edge on the other states where friendliness is concerned.”

Mr. Saunders said he has never been harassed and that police and newsmen in the United States are “absolute tops.”

He hopes to complete his walk next month at Davenport, Iowa.