Southeast Missourian Archives

April 3, 2013April 3, 2013

Cape Girardeau Sand Company

While cruising around looking for flood photos, I stopped at the Cape Girardeau Sand Company for a couple of shots. David Hente had a good piece on the sand company in the August 30, 1992, Missourian. At that time, Cape Sand had been in business 75 years and was the largest company of its type between Cape and Chester, Ill. (In another month, the river was higher.)

Family-owned business

The company was created in 1919 when Peter Deimund and his son, Linder, launched the business with a capital investment of $5,510. When the story was written, it was still a family business. Members include Linder P. Deimund, Jr., who helped construct a sand conveyor system with his father and who does all the maintenance work; Richard Deimund, the pilot of the sand dredge Miss Catherine; Jerry Beckett, deckhand on the Miss Catherine; Jeff Deimund, clamshell shovel operator; Gary Hester, front-end loader operator in the sand yard, and office manager Sonny Deimund.

Business started at the foot of Themis

The company’s first site was at the foot of Themis Street, then it moved north to Broadway. In 1924, the Deimund family bought riverfront property in the 300 block of North Main Street. This is where I took this photo around 1964. It was supposed to be an arty silhoutte. It ended up neither arty nor a good record shot.

The building in the background with the white on it has a hanging sign that says “North American Van Lines.” Across the front of the building is lettering that says something “& Storage.” I’m going to guess that was Nichols Transfer and Storage listed at 447 North Main Street in the 1969 City Directory. The sand company moved to its final location in the 1300 block of Water Street in 1963.

Red Star and Cape Sand Co

This aerial showing the Cape Girardeau Sand Company and what is left of the Red Star District was taken April 17, 2011. The concrete pad at the left of the photo is what we used to call Honker’s Boat Dock. To the left of Sloan Creek is the area that is being cleared for the Isle Casino Cape Girardeau. The light-colored building at the top center is the Show-Me Center.

Housekeeping note

The program that sent out email notifications when I posted new material quit working. Son Matt installed a new one that we hope will work more reliably. We’ll find out soon if everyone’s email address transferred over. If you haven’t signed up for a free subscription, put your email address in the box at the top right of the page and press Subscribe Now. You’ll get an email confirming that you are you. Click on it and you are in business. You may unsubscribe at any time (but we’ll hate to see you go.)

March 29, 2013February 17, 2016

4 Shots of One-Shot Frony

I’m sure G.D. Fronabarger – better known to everyone in Southeast Missouri as One-Shot Frony – must have thought, “That kid’s crazy wasting four shots on a Kiwanis Club presentation.” (I took four, but only three were different enough to show here.)

Frony, who was the Missourian’s photographer from 1929 to 1986, was best known for lining up a group of people, then growling around his ever-present cigar, “Don’t blink. I’m taking one picture.” True to his word, he’d press the shutter release, then walk away.

The negative sleeve is slugged Kiwanis Club – Frony 07-20-1967. That’s in one of those months that is a black hole in the Google Archives, so I don’t know what’s happening in the photo.

Gary Rust was there

Gary Rust, who would become a newspaper magnate a few years down the road, was one of the three men being recognized with Frony. He’s on the left in the photo at the top of the page and on the right in this photo. I don’t know who the man in the middle was. Note Frony’s cigar. I don’t know if he ever smoked it or if he just chewed it to death. I tried to blow up the name tag on the man at the lectern, but “Wayne” was all I could make out.

Fred Lynch keeps him alive

Fred Lynch, who has been a photographer at The Missourian since 1975, keeps Frony’s photos alive in his blog, f/8 and Be There. Some of his early work goes well beyond straight newspaper photography and approaches art as much as anything can that is destined to have a life of 24 hours.

By the time I got to know Frony, he was burned out from shooting 59 years worth of those Kiwanis Club meetings and the same annual events that had come around 59 times. I wrote about Frony in 2009 and published my favorite picture of him.

In it, I talked about how surprised I was to hear Frony defend a controversial spot news photo I had taken and how our relationship changed after that. We were never close, but I had the feeling that Frony finally conceded that “this kid might just make it as a news photographer.”

March 22, 2013

Al Knowles: Mississippi Traveler

Al Knowles was another of those folks who put into Cape Girardeau on their float down the Mississippi River.

I KNOW I wrote a story about him and I’m pretty sure this is the photo that ran on the front page of The Missourian. I can’t find the clip, though, and this is one of the Google black holes. Even my Shy Reader friend, who can find ANYTHING came up blank.

Are these the fuel docks?

I don’t recall anywhere along the riverfront having rubber tire bumpers, so I bet Al pulled into the fuel docks to the north end of Cape. The little object at the top left might have been the sand facility. Ideas?

A laundromat stop

There’s a pretty good chance I gave him a ride to a place where he could clean his clothes. I can’t think of any place right on the river where he could have done a wash.

People you meet along the way

I don’t know who these two men are, but it looks like they’ve earned an entry in Al’s journal.

As a cub reporter who got stuck with the Huck Finn beat, I met lots of interesting people. Now that I think about it, here are several I’ve written about.

November 5, 2012

Cape Mattress and Triplets

It’s amazing how things in Cape are intertwined. Mother and I were driving down the de-fanged Snake Hill when I spotted a building at 1100 West Cape Rock Drive that brought back memories. It’s a nondescript building. I’ve never been in it, never took a photo of it that I know of, never so much as turned around in the parking lot. (You can click on the photos to make them larger.)

Located just west of Juden Creek

Still, I remember the building, located just before you cross the bridge eastbound over Juden Creek, as somehow always being there, a landmark of sorts. It’s pink these days, but it once was white.

Alice’s Wicker Wonderland today

Alice’s Wicker Wonderland is there today, but it was Cape Mattress in my youth. When I did a search for it, lots of standing ads in The Missourian’s Locals and Personals columns popped up from around 1944 through 1960. They generally said something like “Buy Mattresses direct from factory and save. Cape Mattress Cape Rock Drive. Phone 1486.”

The Beard Triplets

Now we’ll get to the intertwining part.

The Missourian’s front page on April 17, 1951, trumpeted the birth of triplets to Mr. and Mrs. Walter Beard of near Scopus. [Google Archives doesn’t have a link directly to the story. Scroll to the left and you’ll find it.] The family already had six children living in their four-room house. They were the first triplets born at Southeast Hospital.

Within days, the community rallied around the family, providing them with necessities, a year’s supply of milk and an additional room for their home. A May 18, 1951, story said Cape Mattress had supplied a mattress for a bed for one of the Beard Triplets.

Follow-up at 15

On April 16, 1966, I did a follow-up story on the Triplets when they were going to turn 15. It was written in a breezy and somewhat impertinent style that Editor JBlue didn’t really like. He didn’t chew me out, but he went over the story after it ran to point out the places he thought were inappropriate in a straight newspaper story. I recall I took that approach because the kids didn’t really have a lot to say and I had to stretch it. [That issue of the paper was microfilmed sideways, so I can’t give you a direct link.]

The triplets’ mother, Audrey Beard, died Oct. 6, 2006, at the age of 94. Walter Beard died March 27, 1977. Gilbert Beard, Gladys Glover and Gloria Hoxworth – the triplets – were listed as survivors in the obituary.

So, that’s how a random drive past a vaguely remembered building can twist back to a story that sorta, kinda ties in.