Steinhoff family Archives

December 8, 2010December 24, 2011

St. Mary’s Christmas

Missourian caption Dec. 24, 1967: “The Rev. Bosco Westrich of St. Mary’s Cathedral presides over Friday night’s observance of the Christmas Novena at the church. At the left, an altar boy departs. The Novena is a nine-part series of Christmas services which will conclude on Christmas Eve. The banners on either side of the altar were made by school children of the parish.”

In honor of altar boys everywhere

The vertical shot was the one that ran in the paper, but I thought I should run this second photo that actually shows the altar boy’s face, even if it’s a little fuzzy.

Speaking of fuzzy…

Wife Lila is back in Cape for a week, so I sent her a message, “We got married in St. Mary’s, didn’t we?”

I probably should have looked up the info.

Her response: “I guess 41 years have dimmed the memory. Yes.”

There are some questions better left unasked.

Exterior photos of St. Mary’s

I ran photos of the outside of the St. Mary’s Cathedral and School back in August if you’d like to see what it looks like today. There’s been quite a bit of construction at the school.

November 26, 2010March 9, 2015

New Steinhoff Tradition

I wrote about a utility pole near Perkins that has become a shoe magnet. Mother mentioned that she’d like to add a shoe to it. In fact, she mentioned it several times, just in case I didn’t get the hint the first time.

The Tulsa Clan consisting of Brother David, Sis-in-Law Diane and Niece Amy came to Cape to meet up with Brother Mark at Mother’s for Turkey Day.

I had to leave town, but Mark said he’d establish the New Steinhoff Family Tradition of adding shoes to the utility pole (dubbed tree, because it sounds better).

They ended up at the Perkins Shoe Tree

You can tell from this photo that there is some measure of confusion. Bro David is thinking, “Perkins? THIS is Perkins? I thought we were going to a pancake house.”

Amy, a veteran Black Friday shopper is looking around for a mall. “This isn’t a Shoe Tree like they have in Dallas next to Neiman-Marcus.”

Mark prepping the shoes

They should have had a clue that something unusual was going to happen when Mark told them to bring old shoes and then started drilling holes in them.

Red Door Antiques added shoe

Mark, an antique hunter, stopped in at Red Door Antiques in Delta along the way. While chatting with owner Ellie Cook, he let slip the Steinhoff Family mission.

Ellie said she had heard of the Perkins Shoe Tree (pole), but had never seen it. She contributed a shoe to the project.

Madeline DeJournett, chronicler of all that passes as news in Advance and its environs, said she was going to show up shoe in hand to meet the group, but begged off at the last minute because of family obligations.

Mark said he would leave an empty screw in the pole waiting for her. Do NOT read this as him saying that Madeline has a screw loose.

Collection of shoes

Note the red washers in six of the seven shoes. Mark thought it would be nice if it would be possible to identify the family shoes and which year they were put up.

Red is 2010.

I’m not sure if that is to reflect the Red State shift in the 2010 elections or if red was the paint that was handy.

The shoe without a red washer is Ellie Cook’s.

Legend identifies shoes

Mark decided that there should be a color-coded legend to go with the red washers. Cape represents Mother; St. Louis is Mark; Tulsa was David, Diane and Amy. Madeline isn’t family, but she’s from Advance, so he was going to make her an honorary Steinhoff for the occasion. (Then she didn’t show. Real family trumps honorary family any day.)

Memorial shoes

Here’s a look at some of the shoes and the legend. We sure hope nobody from Perkins takes offense at us interlopers taking up space on their pole. If it turns out that it’s illegal to tack shoes on utility poles, I want to point out that I was in Florida while all of this was going on.

The culprits

Here are the shoe tackers at the scene: Amy, Mother, Diane and David. Mark, who wanted to avoid being documented at the scene, didn’t take into account his shadow at the bottom of the photo.

Wife Lila is headed back for a visit in December. Mother mentioned that she was going to swing back to check on the shoes on her way to Advance before Christmas, so I bet she could be persuaded to show Lila where to tack a spare shoe.

Thanks to Mark and Amy for the photos

August 2, 2010September 18, 2021

Lila Perry Survives Triathlon

We Steinhoffs are an athletic bunch. Son Matt (left) is a cyclist. Lila Perry Steinhoff, CHS Class of 1966, has been a swimmer since she was a tadpole. She still swims one to two miles a couple of times a week or more. Adam (right) is a triathlete, who does cycling, running and swimming. I ride a bike and jump to conclusions for exercise.

Adam asked Matt and his mother if they’d like to do a family Olympic distance relay at the 19th Annual Huntington’s Disease Triathlon in Miami on August 1, 2010. Each would do a leg of their specialty: Matt would ride his bike 40 kilometers, Lila would swim 1.5K and Adam would run 10K.

I would photograph the event and jump to the conclusion that they were nuts for doing this in August in Florida.

The Triathlon started at Dark O’Clock

These things start long before the rooster even turns over to smack the snooze alarm for the first time. We decided to stay in a Miami hotel to keep from having to get up even before we went to bed to be there in the pre-dawn hours. The hotel was upscale enough that they provided a couple of bottles of water (if you wanted to pay $6.50 a bottle). If we were hungry, room service would be happy to bring up a $4 Three Musketeer bar for a $3 delivery charge, plus a 21% gratuity.

I didn’t hear anyone snoring

Lila complained that she didn’t get any sleep because someone in the room was snoring very loudly. I didn’t hear him, and he didn’t keep ME awake, so I think she was imagining it.

They must be afraid of sharks

One of the first things they had to do was to check in and get race numbers attached to Matt’s bike and for Adam to display while he ran. Because swimming was involved, everyone had to have their race number written on their arms and legs in waterproof marker. When I saw them scrawling a big R on the back of Lila’s leg, I thought, “Man, they must be concerned about sharks out in Virgina Key Bay if they want to be able to tell which were the Left and Right legs of the swimmers.”

I found out later that I was getting my jumping to conclusions exercise. “R” stood for relay, meaning that it was a team, and not an individual entry. (I like my original theory better.)

Lila is NOT under house arrest

Lila is wearing an electronic device around her ankle, but she’s not under house arrest, nor has she been palling around with Lindsay Lohan.

The ankle straps contain timing chips that tell how long each athlete takes to cover a particular leg and how long they take in the “transition area” to switch to the next specialty. Swimmers, for example, have to make it out of the water, find their bicycles, put on cycling shoes and a helmet and hit the bike course.

Lila’s chip said she finished her swim in 47 minutes, 53 seconds. When she got to the bike transition area, she handed off the timing chip to Matt and was done for the day. She was lucky that her timing chip stayed on. Right after one of the elite groups took off, a timing anklet was seen floating about 40 feet offshore. Losing the chip can mean disqualification and having to pay $35 to replace it.

The wonders of digital cameras

When the swimmers went to check out the Swim Start area, it was so dark that about all you could see was the Miami skyline in the distance. I was amazed at how much detail the Nikon D40 will pick up with almost no light.

Lila tests the waters

Lila has had few experiences doing long swims in salt water. When the kids were younger, she was in the water shepherding a bunch of Boy Scouts qualifying for their Mile Swim badge. All of a sudden, this huge, dark object rolled over right in their path. She could just see herself writing a packet of “I regret to inform you that your son was eaten by an alligator while in my charge” letters.

Fortunately, the large object turned out to be a harmless manatee.

You can see that the sun was just beginning to think about waking up when she waded into the 87.9 degree water.

Danger: Spilled Testosterone

Before the races start, there’s a lot of kidding around and socializing. Don’t think for a moment, though, that these folks don’t take the event seriously. There was so much testosterone oozing out that the course was slippery.

Starts are controlled chaos

When the starter says “GO!!!” there’s a mad dash to get into the water and start churning. The guy on the right looks like he’s figured out a way to run on top of the water.

Lila’s a Diesel engine

Lila opted for a more sedate water entry, which put her at the back of the pack. She had no illusions about winning her first triathlon; her goal was to finish, hopefully in under an hour. I had no doubt that she’d make it, but some of the lifeguards may not have been so sure.

“As I passed the guys on the paddle boards, some asked how I was doing? I told them I have a Diesel engine. I’m not fast, but I can go all day. They could see that I wasn’t winded or struggling, so all was good. The only problem I had was that, without my glasses, unlike the bright orange buoys at the beginning of the course, the yellow buoys were hard to see against the green along the shore in the early morning light. As I went around the last two buoys, I had to ask the guys on the paddle boards to point me to the next buoy.'”

How Did Team DedicatedIT do?

You can see the course here.

Adam’s goal was to do his run in an hour. His last best time was 1:30. He was disappointed that his final time was 1:09:46. He said that the heat had pushed his heart rate above what he could sustain.

Matt, who was doing this for the first time, didn’t know what his goal was other than not being last. He completed his 24.8-mile bike ride in 1:26:03, an average of a little over 17 mph. Considering the heat and that the course involved climbing the Key Biscayne Bridge four times, that’s pretty good. Another consideration was that he was riding a bike handed down by his uncle, Mark, instead of the specialty bikes favored by the hard-core racers. Some of those bikes are worth more than Matt’s car.

Lila’s swim time for 1.5K (just a hair under a mile), as mentioned before, was 47:53, beating her goal of an hour.

They WERE a little disappointed to find that their gold medals weren’t REAL gold.

July 25, 2010April 16, 2021

Annie Laurie’s Laurie Ann

Laurie Everett, owner of Annie Laurie’s Antiques is an extraordinary young woman. I’d say that even if she wasn’t my wife’s niece. We’ve known her since she was a hatchling called Laurie Ann, because the Perry Family decided that one name wasn’t enough. (I’m not going to tell you Lila’s middle name.) I wrote about Annie Laurie’s and some other antique shops on my bike blog in 2008.

Laurie’s third from the left

It was family tradition for Lila to shoot what she called The Picture of Florida sons Matt and Adam with of all the Cape nieces and nephews when we came to town. Laurie’s third from the left and Matt and Adam are to the right of her.

Laurie’s dad, John Perry, taught her to be able to handle herself. There’s a photo around somewhere of her and John with their heads buried under the hood of a jeep fixing it. He taught her how to shoot, which led her to qualify as an Expert when she joined the army.

Family has always been important to Laurie. It wasn’t always about hunting, twisting a wrench and getting her hands greasy. She and her dad shared this tender moment one day. (I’ve been told that no feet were harmed in the making of this photograph.)

Military was “a family thing”

She graduated from Cape Central High School in 1996, after attending Alma Schrader Elementary School. She graduated from SEMO, then decided she wanted to join the Army for the educational benefits, the experience and because “it was a family thing.” Her dad had served in Vietnam.

Laurie was a Military Police officer in the Army. She was stationed in Kitzingen, Germany, but she either visited or was deployed in France, Spain, Italy, Czech Republic, Romania, Israel, Bosnia, Croatia, Greece and Switzerland, among others. Her location in Germany put her within about six hours of most of Europe’s major historical landmarks.

While stationed in Germany, she received her Master’s Degree in Human Relations from, get this, the University of Oklahoma, which had an outreach program there.

“I’m going to date that girl”

One of her jobs was processing new troops, explaining the local customs and making them aware of what they needed to know. One soldier, Rocky Everett, commented to his buddy, “I’m going to date that girl one day.”

Rocky and Laurie were married in Cape on a cold October night in 2003. They have one son, Fletcher, AKA Flea.

“I was ready to settle down”

After she got out of the Army, she said, “I was ready to settle down, and this was a good community. I always liked antiques, so I started to work at Annie Laurie’s.”

When the owner, Mary Robertson, decided to sell the business, Rocky and Laurie jumped at the chance to buy the place. “One stipulation I made to Rocky was that if we were going to do this, we were going to live upstairs.” And, they do.

Antique shop had been funeral home

Long-time Cape residents will remember the antique shop as having been the former Brinkopf-Howell Funeral Home. “Do people ever ask you if the place is haunted?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I just tell them that everybody who came here was dead already, so they don’t need to haunt the place.”

Ranked #1 Antique Store in Cape County 3 years running

Annie Laurie’s has been ranked the Number One antique shop in Cape Girardeau County three out of the last three years.

Laurie’s motto, “Expect the Unexpected,” is one of the reasons the shop has been so successful. She’s constantly changing displays (including the mannequin above, which shows up all over the place dressed in outlandish outfits) to make the place interesting.

Annie Laurie’s for period clothing and costumes

Laurie, who is an adjunct professor at SEMO, teaching marketing, works hard to attract college students with her selection of period costumes and funky clothing. Gail, above, made a convincing witch at Halloween.

Need a wig?

Laurie models the wig she wore for Halloween.

Using the Internet for marketing

Unlike many businesses in Cape, Laurie understands that the Internet can bring in new customers. “You’d be surprised how many of our customers find us through Google,” she explained.

Photographer Michelle Huesen is photographing SEMO coed Rachel Hendrickson in an outfit from Annie Laurie’s for use in promotional material. Laurie’s also active in Old Town Cape and the Cape Convention and Visitors Bureau and other organizations.

You can visit Laurie’s web site, Cape Antique Shop, or the shop’s Facebook page.

People feel at home at Annie Laurie’s

“We create an atmosphere where people feel at home. We have coffee and cookies around. We remember our customers’ names and what they like,” she said. She’s started taking digital photos of customers and posting them on her Facebook page.

American Gothic style

Here was her Facebook comment under this photo: “Lovin’ old men in overalls. This cutie blushed a bit when I asked him if I could take his picture. I just wanted to squeeze his cheeks.“

Recognized by Southern Living Magazine

Annie Laurie’s Antiques was featured as “a definite stop” in Southern Living Magazine’s Southern Antique Shops.

Laurie was written up in The Southeast Missourian’s 40 Under 40 column April 3, 2009.

Brian Blackwell interviewed her Sept. 28, 2009. He quoted her as saying, “You name it and I have done it. Snow cones, tanning salons, hostess, juvenile detention worker, internship at local police department, soldier, nonprofit organizer, veterinary assistant, office manager, university instructor [and] business owner, just to name a few.”

Annie Laurie’s Antiques Photo Gallery

Here are a selection of photos of Laurie and some of the things in her shop. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the photo to move through the gallery.