Star Service Station Archives

January 2, 2015

Rerun: Service Stations

Service stations played a big part in our young lives. I didn’t rush right out to get my license: I turned 16 on March 24, but didn’t take my test until a hot summer day when, after acing the written test and doing OK on the driving part, I bumped a pylon while parallel parking.

That was usually an automatic failure, but the examiner took one look at the sweat pouring off me, then at the 29-foot-long, 17-foot-wide 1959 Buick LaSabre station wagon with power nothing and said, “Kid, in this car, that’s close enough. You pass.”

Because I was working at The Jackson Pioneer and The Missourian, I was making good money for a high school or college kid, and I didn’t sweat pulling into the pump and saying, “Fill it with high test.”

Pretty amazing in these days of pump-it-yourself that you’d ding the bell pulling into the station and one to three guys would come running out to fill your tank, check your oil, air up your tires and even vacuum the interior, all at no charge.

Click on the links to see more photos and the original stories with a lot more details and comments.

I usually hit the Star Service Station

The Star station at the corner of Broadway and Frederick got most of my business. It was right across the street from Nowell’s Camera Shop, and in the vicinity of where Wife-to-Be Lila worked at the Rialto, with Tony’s Pizza Parlor across from her and The Missourian down a few blocks. That was pretty much my whole life right there.

Thoni’s had the cheapest gas

Thoni’s Oil Company, out on South Kingshighway, almost always had the cheapest gas around – as low as 19.9 cents during one price war – but I bought into the rumors that the gas might be “watered.” It probably wasn’t, but I wasn’t willing to take the chance.

You’d never know there was a station there today.

Back in 1952, the fact that Richard Thoni FLEW into Cape from Nashville for the opening of the gas station and then FLEW back on the same day attracted as much interest in The Missourian as the new business.

Most had mechanics

Most of the stations had one or two bays where they could do minor and major repair work, including putting on tire chains when the roads were bad.

Reader’s Digest was full of stories about scams motorists had to watch out for on the highways. Unscrupulous mechanics would slice hoses while they were pretending to check fluid levels; others would spray oil on hot engine parts so frightening smoke would billow out from under the hood.

There might have been some bad mechanics in Cape, but I think they were essentially honest.

32¢ Gas; 29¢ Smokes

The Bonded Station in Athens was the Ohio equivalent of the Star Station in Cape. It was just down the road from the photo department and the guys who worked there were friendly.

Since we both worked long, late hours, I spent a lot of time in there kibitzing and catching up on local gossip that might turn into a story.

Scott City fire

A fire down at the service station is the big news of the day when you live in a small town. Just about everybody in Scott City must have turned out to inspect, analyze and speculate about what happened.

A reader said she thought it might have been the Saveway Gas Station, but the negative sleeves didn’t say.

Pete Koch’s Sinclair

Pete Koch’s Sinclair station showed up in the background of photos taken when a 700-pound tire broke off a city motorgrader and went rolling down Broadway until it bounced off Mrs. Diane Kincaid’s car.

Lynn Latimore with ’55 Ford Fairlane

Lynn Latimore, who was also photographed at the Star station, is leaning on what readers said was a 1955 Ford Fairlane. He was at a Shell station on North Kingshighway.

Readers filled in lots of detail about the neighborhood where it was taken, Lynn, and cars in general.

First car: 1904; first crash: 1910

I did a piece in 2010 about Cape’s early car history. It was filled with all kinds of interesting (to me) factoids. You can read more by following the link.

First car theft: Oct. 21, 1905. Vince Chapman left the car in front of the Broadway Mercantile Co. “Manufacturers apparently thought there was about as much temptation for the predatory criminal to steal an automobile as to steal a box car or a steamboat and had not provided locks.” There is no indication that the car was recovered. It is estimated that there were perhaps 20 cars in Cape at this time.
Fastest time Cape to Jackson: July 9, 1906, Joe Wilson drove the 10 miles from Cape to Jackson in a record time of 25 minutes, “probably the shortest time in which had ever been transversed up to that time.”
First Tin Lizzie: George McBride brought the first “Henry” into Cape in May of 1909.
First garage: A.J. Vogel opened the first garage on Jan. 10, 1910. It had a show room big enough to hold six cars, a washing and cleaning shop and a repair shop.
First auto license tax: Dec. 6, 1909. $5.
First Missourian auto ad: Oct. 15, 1909. A.J. Vogel, a farm machinery salesman and experienced mechanic placed a 4-inch single column ad: “The Vogel Motor Car Co., 419 Broadway, will be ready for business in 10 days. Come and see us.”
First auto crash: July 21, 1910. Esaw Hendrickson, a Delta farmer, got off a street car betwen the H&H Building and the Idan-Ha Hotel and stepped in front of a car driven by City Councilman Joe T. Wilson. He was knocked down and run over, but his injuries were not serious.
First auto vs bicycle: the day after Mr. Hendrickson’s accident, a car driven by R.B. Oliver, Jr., and a bicycle ridden by Fred Frenzel, a Western Union messenger boy, collided at the corner of Broadway and Spanish. “The boy was not hurt much, but his brand-new wheel was demolished.”
First funeral procession: Oct. 30, 1916, when the body of Charles E. Booth, a Frisco fireman, was laid to rest. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and the Odd Fellows asked Booth’s friends to bring automobiles for the funeral procession.

July 2, 2012

Broadway and Frederick Construction

The Broadway construction project is moving right along. It’s in the 500 and 600 blocks now. Here’s a view looking east.

Bricks and cobbles

I haven’t been lucky enough to have been around when the construction workers have unearthed the old trolley tracks, but I CAN see the bricks and cobblestones that made up the original street.

Looking west down Broadway

The three-story brick building on the left had been a coffee house, but Niece Laurie Everett of Annie Laurie’s Antiques, diagonally across the street, said it is closed now. The old Star service station used to be on the right.

Just beyond the coffee house was my old hangout, Nowell’s Camera Shop. The original cabinets are still visible through the windows. My elbow prints are probably still on some of them from the days when I drooled over new toys.

Old Broadway stories

Here’s a piece that has links to all of the Broadway stories I could remember writing.

Brother Mark took photos of the construction in the 200 block of Broadway.

April 23, 2012

View from Trinity Bell Tower

Just before it was torn down, Brother Mark and I crawled all over the Trinity Lutheran Church documenting it. I posted photos of the bell earlier. Today we’re focusing on the view FROM the bell tower. Those louvered windows had a fairly big space to look through, even if the mesh screening was a bit distracting with some lens choices. Click on the photos to make them larger.

View to the northeast

The building towering over everything else is the KFVS-TV building. To its left you can see the H & H Building and the Marquette Hotel. The bright white object rising above the trees at the top right is the Common Pleas Courthouse. You can barely make out the Walther’s sign on the left side of the frame. It has become the Discovery Playhouse. Across the street was a the building that would later sport a bright blue mural with the words, “Train a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not turn from it.” That building was torn down last winter.

View to the north

Switching to a slightly longer lens let me throw the screening out of focus (mostly), but it didn’t cover as much area. The white building to the right was Brinkopf-Howell Funeral home, now Annie Laurie’s Antiques. Shivelbine’s Music would be the building on the southeast corner of Broadway and Frederick. Star Service Station was on the northwest corner. I’d sure like some of that 36-cent gas today.

View to the west

The tall structure at the top right is the telephone company’s microwave tower. In the days before fiber optic cable, much of the country’s long distance traffic was handled by radio signals beamed from tower to tower. Southeast Missouri State University’s Academic Hall’s dome barely clears the treetops near the top right.

View to the south

This is looking south from the intersection of Themis and Frederick. The small brick building on the southwest corner was known as “The Mouse House.” Cape-Kil is directly south of it.

Trinity Lutheran Church neighborhood in 2011

Here is an aerial photo I shot of the neighborhood April 17, 2011.

April 5, 2012February 20, 2015

Broadway End-to-End

I was trading some messages with Nicolette Brennan from the City of Cape about a picture of Broadway for a project she’s working on. That got me to thinking about how many Broadway stories I’ve done. I’ve documented the street from the river’s edge to the old Colonial Tavern on the west end. Click on the photos to make them larger and click on the links to go to the original story.

So many teens were dancing at the old Teen Age Club at Themis and Spanish that the floor was bouncing and a city inspector shut ’em down. They moved the dance to the bank parking lot at the corner of Main and Broadway.

Crash at the Colonial Tavern

The Colonial Tavern was my dad’s morning coffee stop where everybody would gather to hash over the previous night’s Cardinal game. A sports car picked this night to plow into the building that was at the west end of Broadway.

The park that got away

A three-acre tract of land on the south side of Broadway east of Hwy 61 was donated by the Doggett family with the understanding that the the land would be developed into a park similar to Dennis Scivally Park on Cape Rock Drive.

The family felt that the tract hadn’t been improved in the past 10 years, so they filed a suit to reclaim the land. A granite marker with the name “Doggett Park” next to the Masonic Temple parking lot is all that remains of the park.

Crash at Broadway and Fountain

Sometimes what you think is going to be an inconsequential story resonates with readers. Fred Kaefpfer, who was directing traffic at this crash at the corner of Broadway and Fountain, turned out to be Cape’s singing policeman. It became one of the most-commented stories of the early blog. The Idan-Ha Hotel shows up in the background of the photo.

Idan-Ha Hotel burns

The Idan-Ha Hotel, which had caught fire in 1968, caught fire again in 1989.

Star Service Station – Cigarettes 25 cents a pack

The Star Service station at the corner of Broadway and Frederick gave stamps with your gas. Ninety stamps would get you $1.50 worth of free gas.

Annie Laurie’s used to be Brinkopf-Howell’s

Niece Laurie Everett’s Annie Laurie’s Antiques, across the street from the Star Service Station used to be a funeral home. It’s the top-rated antique shop in Cape County now. Shivelbines Music, across the street, got a new sign in November.

Bob’s Shoe Service

Bob Fuller’s Bob’s Shoe Service was where I stocked up on Red Wing boots, the ideal footwear for a photographer. They’d shine up acceptably for formal wear (at least as formal as I ever got), but you could wade water and walk on fire with no worries.

507-515 Broadway

The 500 block of Broadway has had an interesting past.

Discovery Playhouse – Walthers’s Furniture

I was glad to see some life around the old Walther’s Furniture Store and Funeral Home. The Discovery Playhouse has become popular in a short period of time. Here is was before it opened.

Lutheran Mural Building razed

When I shot the Discovery Playhouse, I had no idea that the landmark building across the street was going to be torn down within a couple of years. It was best known for the huge blue mural on its side.

Rialto Theater roof collapses

A rainstorm caused the roof of the old Rialto Theater to collapse in 2010. This story contains a bunch of links, including one that tells how I met Wife Lila there when she was working as a cashier. This picture is of the 1964 Homecoming Parade.

Broadway Theater is still impressive

I managed to talk my way into the Broadway Theater on a cold December day. It still has the feel of the premier theater of the city.

What’s going to happen to the Esquire?

When I did this story in October 2011, it looked like the Esquire Theater was going to get new life. A new owner had an ambitious plan to renovate it. The latest stories in The Missourian make it sound like the project is unraveling.

Here’s a piece I did about its art deco history. In September 1965, I used infrared flash and film to capture kids watching The Beatles movie Help! It was the first (and only) time I used that technique.

Pladium / D’Ladiums – it’s still the same

I wasn’t a pool player, but those who were spent their time in the Pladium (now D’Ladiums) across from Houck Stadium or the Pla-Mor, next to Wayne’s Grill and the Esquire. The Beav still rules the roost at D’Ladiums.

Vandeven’s Merchantile

Howard’s Athletic Goods and a handful of other businesses have moved into the building at the corner of Broadway and Pacific over the years, but it’ll always be Vandeven’s Merchantile to me.

It dawns on me that I have even more photographs along Broadway – way too many to inflict on you in one shot. I’ll hold off putting up the rest of them until another day. Don’t forget to click on the links to see the original stories.