Spanish Street Archives

October 19, 2014

Parking Downtown and at Casino

You wouldn’t have had to fight for parking at noon-thirty on Wednesday August 13 when Ernie Chiles and I flew over the Isle Cape Girardeau Casino.

I didn’t look at it under a magnifying glass, but I DID blow it up a bit on the screen to let me count about 244 cars, two buses and what might be an RV in the parking lots. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

Here are some earlier posts about the casino and shoe factory area.

Downtown parking

I looked at a series of frames that showed the downtown shopping area parking lots from the city lot south of Independence to the two lots north of Broadway, plus Water Street and east of Spanish Street. The photos were taken on the same pass, just minutes before the Casino photo. I counted about 210 vehicles ion the downtown shopping district.

[I cheated a bit. Because of the angle, I couldn’t see cars parked on the east side of Main, so I doubled the number of cars parked on the west side, assuming that the same number of parking spaces were occupied on that side.]

(Sorry for the cloud shadows at the top left. I tried get Ernie to lasso them and drag them out of the way, but he said that kind of thing was out of his pay grade.

It would be interesting to know how many of the cars in both locations were owned by employees rather than customers.

Other downtown aerials

September 10, 2014

2014 Cannonball Run

Cape was awash with sound, and I don’t mean my brother’s snoring. (He was on his way back to Oklahoma.) No, we were bracketed by the SEMO District Fair to the west and 110 vintage motorcycles (and the ones who came to see them) on the east.

I had to stop by Annie Laurie’s Antiques to pick up something for Wife Lila. While there, Laurie reminded me of the Cannonball Run that was forming up on Spanish for a parade over to Broadway, then west on to Kingshighway, then over to William Street. I really didn’t plan to shoot anything because I was going to the fair Tuesday night. Still, I couldn’t resist taking a swing downtown.

I saw a gazillion motorcycles – some part of the run, some belonging to spectators – and still wasn’t sure if I was going to stop. I got about three blocks away and decided this was too good to pass up. The motorcycles, some of them dating before the 1930s, started in Daytona Beach in Florida and will wind up in Tacoma, Washington, on Sept. 21.

From 24 states, and 10 countries

I heard smatterings of German, and took a couple of photos for some visitors from South Africa. (They wanted to make sure the bridge was in the background.)

For more information, check out Samantha Rinehart’s story in The Missourian. Here is the official Cannonball Run website.

Cannonball Run photo gallery

Having never been a motorcycle rider, I was as much interested in watching the people as looking at the machines. It was a mostly older crowd who did much photo-taking and chin scratching. The body language was interesting. Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the images.

March 19, 2013March 19, 2013

A & P Food Store

Did you know what the A & P in the A & P Food Store stood for? I didn’t either, but Terri Foley, who did The Missourian’s Lost and Saved column did all the work for me.

Here’s her information:

In 1941, the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. constructed the building at 19 N. Spanish St. in Cape Girardeau to house the A&P Super-Market. Grand opening of the new store was held Oct. 14 of the same year. At that time, the store was the largest A&P store between St. Louis and Memphis, Tenn. With the opening of the new store, the company closed its other operations in town at 28 N. Main St. and 817 Broadway.

C.A. Juden was commissioned to build the new one-story brick building, measuring 70 feet by 150 feet. On the southeast corner was a three-story tower that featured interior lights and a large circular neon sign. Across the upper facade of the building was a 35-foot neon sign. The store featured a large package cheese and dairy department and a 50-foot meat case and counter. The store stocked more than 2,500 varieties of grocery items.

It was the first of the A&P stores in Missouri to have a collected group of fluorescent lights. There were five check-out stands. As cashiers checked out a customer, a receipt was printed with each item purchased and the cost. Customers could pay a penny for shopping bags.

Our family shopped there, but I think we went to Child’s on Broadway more often. I liked that store better because Mother would park me at the comic book rack just as you came in the store. I didn’t care how long she shopped as long as I had comics to read.