Teen Age Club Archives

May 11, 2013

Cheri Pind

A couple of Cheri Pind portraits were on the roll with Tom Holt and his grilling extravaganza. I mostly knew Cheri as a cheerleader, which put her in a whole other social league. Since I didn’t exactly know them, I sort of categorized them.

Anne Buchanan had a classic beauty. Joni Tickel was the All American Girl Next Door who could look good even in those hideous gym uniforms.

Cherie had a twinkle in her eye that always said, “Go ahead and dare me.”

Sassy then, sassy now

Her bio in the Class of 1965 20th Reunion captured her sassy spirit. “Cherie does not work and never will, if she can help it.”

“My hair was beautiful”

“Let me state that I thought my hair was beautiful in high school, but since, I have heard talk about it,” the bio continued.

Here is a photo from the Class of ’65 Senior Banquet. The Missourian’s caption read, “Miss Cheri Pind just realizes that she is the one being described in the class prophesy being read by Chuck Dockins and Steve Seabaugh at the Senior Banquet Tuesday night in the Central High School cafeteria. Jim Stone, background, seems relatively unimpressed.”

Cheerleading skirt not too short

“I have terrific memories of high school and classmates, and I did not think my cheerleading skirt was too short!” she said.

As a male, I would have to agree with Cheri.

Cheri was the second from the left in this photo of the cheerleaders collecting for the March of Dimes in 1963. Norma Waggoner is, alas, keeping us from being able to judge the length of Cheri’s skirt.

Dancin’ in the parking lot

Cheri was one of the dancers to set the floor of the Teen Age Club on Spanish bouncing so much a city inspector shut the place down. Dancin’ feet gotta dance, so the action was moved to the bank parking lot at the corner of Main and Broadway.

Miss Pind is the girl facing the camera in the middle. She shows up in other photos of the parking lot dance.

May 21, 2012August 1, 2015

Bill East, Class of ’66

We’re getting to the point where we have more yesterdays than tomorrows. Still, it was a punch in the gut to see this posting about Bill East on Facebook a couple of weeks ago:

This is a very difficult status to enter. As you all know Bill is a very private person. I asked him to please allow me to let all of his friends know of his situation. Bill is in the later stages of stage 4 kidney cancer. The latest CT scan has shown it has spread into both lungs and has now gone into the bone causing a compression fracture of the T4 vertebra. It is an extremely aggressive type of cancer He was given the choice of trying additional treatment that most likely would not work and would make him sick or he could not get any more treatment and he could have better quality and a little less time. He chose to have quality time. We should be moving him in the next few days to a Hospice facility. This is a very difficult time for all of us and we ask for your continued thoughts and prayers. We will keep everyone updated as things change. Thank you, Bill, Judy and Heather

Monthly mini-reunions

A couple of years ago, some of the Class of ’66 members started getting together once a month for luncheon mini-reunions. Some months only two or three folks would show up, other months might see nearly two dozen show up. Regulars were Marilyn Maevers, Gail Tibbles, Jacqie Jackson and Wife Lila, when she was in town.

Lila came up with the idea of inviting Bill to participate in this month’s luncheon by webcam. She put Son Adam in touch with Nephew Rocky Everett in Cape, who handled logistics at that end. Considering that we were all winging this, it worked out quite well. I tried to get some screen captures of the participants, but the program didn’t save them.

Terry Hopkins wanted to share some things

Terry Hopkins, also Class of ’66, who likes to come off as the class clown, has a serious side he tries to keep hidden. I first became aware of that when he wrote how much the Capaha Pool meant to him when he was growing up. After participating in the webcast, he wrote this for Bill and gave me permission to share it.

Terry’s message to Bill

I remember you in high school as the guy who worked at Wimpy’s and wore a white apron. You were the guy who knew the secret of Wimpy’s French fries. At times, you were the guy who chased all of us out of Wimpy’s parking lot for Mr. Lewis when we were too rowdy or we were just staying too long and not buying anything. So when I close my eyes and think of Bill East, I see you in the parking lot at Wimpy’s with a white apron, hands on your hips and looking at the parking lot filled with cars and teenagers of the sixties. I can close my eyes and see you now.

We were Hall Monitors

You and I were Hall Monitors and in this exulted position, we were able to roam the halls of Central High School knowing nothing could stop us from our rounds doing what ever we did to maintain order in the cosmos and to prevent others from butting up in the lunch line. (… and really knowing nothing, at the time, about life either.) This is where I noted your patented “Mount Rushmore Pose”. There you are with your head looking up to horizons that only the lofty can see.

I can close my eyes and see you now, no wait here is the picture!

[Editor’s note: Bill is in the second row on the left in this Girardot photo of the Hall Monitors. I posted this photo to the Class of ’66 Facebook fan page in December. I don’t want to break the serious mood, but here’s Terry’s comment at that time: “We all were Hall Monitors…Sly is telling me that I was unzipped and Linda Maddox is trying to look! Bill East has his pose for Mt. Rushmore, Stovall is doing his natural thing…Linda Stone is vamping and doing a good job of it…Dee has glasses from someone else…”

[Bill, always a stickler for accuracy, filled in the blanks: “We hall monitors had to meet exacting criteria: Have a study hall during lunch time, have no outstanding wants or warrants, and, I think, be a senior.”]

Honored as Outstanding Senior

You were in National Honor Society, spoke in the Optimist speech contests and you and several others were honored as up and coming High School Students. I remember you and Russ Doughty posing down town at the court house and there is “The Pose” again. At the time I just thought that you were nice guy and it was great to be honored in such a way by your school and faculty and you deserved it!

[Editor’s note: this vertical photo was cropped into a tight horizontal in the yearbook for this reason.]

Terry and Bill’s acting career

I also think of you as my brother. In Claudia Modder’s Pulitzer Prize winning Thanksgiving play in high school (sure wish I could remember the name of it…) you and I played brothers. That was the highlight of my short theater career. I really appreciated you carrying me during the play. I remember all the practices that we did, with Mrs. Wright, Vivian Walton, Mary Ellen Baker (as sis) and you my friend. I remember the effort it was for me to learn the lines and repeat them correctly, and you nailing every line on the first walk thru. I still was using the mimeographed script sheets in the later practices. I still can remember the smell of back stage and mimeograph ink…that was a nice smell and those were pretty good days.

I never had a brother, and the interaction of you and me during the play moved me. In the play, I was the straight-laced military brother having just returned from Viet Nam and you, my good friend, were the hippie brother. The details I forgot except a couple of things like the line when Mary Ellen Baker comes walking toward me and I said, “You were just a little squirt when I left” to roars of laughter…Mary Ellen was pretty short then and probably is now too… The play ended with both of us standing in front of some stained glass windows with the choir singing something with you in your “Mount Rushmore” pose and me in Civil Air Patrol Uniform. The message was we are all brothers and we are all Americans. Nice message then, even better message for today. I can close my eyes and see you now.

[Editor’s note: I didn’t record the Hopkins/East theatrical performance, but I did catch Bill dancing in the First National Bank Parking lot after the floor at the Teen Age Club started bouncing so much the city shut them down. Terry says that Bill was known for his Mount Rushmore pose, but I seemed to always catch him with his mouth open. Of course, in the photo at left, that was the typical male reaction when confronted with the Barringer Twins.]

Bill and Judy start their lives

You went to college, joined the Air force, got married ( to a lovely lady), had kids, moved around and got jobs doing things you loved to do and maybe some you didn’t. Ditto for me, and we lost track of each other while in pursuit of our own dreams.

Years pass, and then there was the Internet. 1998 or so, I was sitting as my desk in Naperville, Illinois at the house and I get an email from a Bill East. Low and behold it is my old buddy Bill East from Cape Girardeau, Mo., class of 1966 and all around good guy. We email each other and catch up a little. Please remember that this way before MySpace, Facebook and a million other social networks. The Internet was new and BILL EAST found me out of the clear blue sky! As far as I knew we were the only guys on the internet and that was cool….

We start connecting with classmates

As the years pass, once again BILL EAST invites me to new thing called FACEBOOK and I join. A month or so later Larry LaBruyere joins and now there are three people on the internet. We catch up some more. I see a present day shot of Bill and think…geez he looks the same! Not Ditto for me… and we catch up a little more. Then Gail Tibbles discovers us and the WHOLE world is on the Internet and we all can see and talk to each other again! So now I know that Bill has a family, kids and grandkids and whole life lived that I knew very little about, and you know it looks like a pretty good life too! So I get another picture of you as an older and wiser man with kids and responsibilities and think, hey we both made it as adults. I can close my eyes and see you now.

Got together at the 2010 reunion

I met you again at our reunion this last year and had a great time. We talked for only a couple of minutes at a time about ten times over the weekend and I enjoyed hearing about your life now and of course talking about our classmates. It seems we all were trying to talk to everyone all the time in catch up with everyone all at the same time; at least it seems that way for me.

We connect with Jacqie

You and I were talking and then up comes the best dressed lady in the house and, of course, we both have to talk and take a picture.

[Editor’s note: That’s Jacqie, formerly Bill Jackson, also Class of ’66.]

You and I bumped into each other at lunch, on the tour of Central high School at breakfast, in the auditorium, in the halls and in the weight room. Saturday night you and I bump into each other again with Mike Friese and John Hoffman plus their spouses, and catch up a little more with life and times. During the course of this weekend we really did see each other a lot and I got to catch up on the Bill East of the 21st century. I even got to know about Buddy a little, more on Facebook about Buddy, but this started it.

Today we had lunch together via the Internet… you in Ohio, the lunch bunch in Cape and me in Florida. I did not say a lot, my camera and microphone were on the other computer which died TODAY. You looked the same, well, except for the headphones and O2 tube. I thought you looked quite dashing. High attitude pilot of the 1930’s was the look you had going for you, and it was working dude! I saw flashes of Buddy running around in the background and his mother too, which was nice. I listened to your interaction with Buddy and got to see the loving grandfather part of my friend, Bill.

Life is full of glimpses

I guess life is full of glimpses. We only get to see and get short takes from our friend’s real lives, just little pieces of their real lives. Thru the last 60 years or so I have been privileged to see and hear pieces and only pieces of a normal life of good guy, you, my friend.

So when I close my eyes and think of you I see the young Bill East in white apron, my brother Bill East as a hippie with stained glass behind us both, The younger Bill East getting married, the mature Bill East with dashing 1930’s high attitude flyer looks stopping to talk to his grandson off camera. All of these small pieces make a whole picture for me. That is what I see when I close my eyes, and think of you.

[Editor’s note: Thanks to Terry for sharing his thoughts. Bill has been a frequent contributor to this blog and a good guy for an underclassman. I’ve grown to appreciate his dry wit and attention to detail. The journalist in him seems to think that truth and accuracy should be as important as telling a good story. I consider those things merely incidentals, if not impediments.]

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.

March 9, 2012August 24, 2015

101 North Main Street

I was walking east on Themis toward the Common Pleas Courthouse trying to spot the old Teen Age Club that got to bouncing so hard one night that the city inspector shut it down because he was afraid the floor might collapse. On the opposite of the street was a nondescript red brick building that had a plaque on it. (Click on any photo to make it larger.)

The Rotary Club plaque read, “Telephone Service. In 1877 the first long distance telephone line in Missouri was completed December 18, 1877, between Cape Girardeau and Jackson. In 1896 here in a 10′ x 12′ second floor room the city’s first telephone exchange was established by A.R. Ponder, L.J. Albert, J.F. Brooks and M.A. Dennison doing business as the Cape Girardeau Telephone Company.”

As a former telecommunications manager, I was vaguely intrigued.

I flashed back to when I was offered the telecom job just before I left on vacation to head back to Cape in the early ’90s. I knew absolutely nothing about phone stuff, but I remember thinking as I was going through little villages like Old Appleton, “Wow, if I take this job I’ll have a bigger phone system than this town.”

That call to Jackson

I put the story on the back burner for a slow day. When Friend Shari Stiver and I took a stroll down Main Street one day when we were both in town, she said she’d like to swing by to look at the old telephone exchange, which had also been the Sturdivant Bank, the oldest bank in Southeast Missouri.

“The call may have originated in Cape,” she said, “but do you have any idea where it terminated in Jackson?”

Somehow or another, knowing Shari, I was pretty sure I was going to find out.

“The first call rang in my great-grandfather’s kitchen,” she elaborated. “He was the J.F. Brooks mentioned on the plaque. He was the engineer who laid out the railroad for Louis Houck. Houck wanted to be able to get hold of him, so he had him pull a phone line between Cape and Jackson.”

Major Brooks “advanced” down to Advance

“Are we talking about the Major James Francis Brooks who Houck told to ‘advance’ down the line another mile to a stand of mulberry trees where land for a train depot could be bought for $10 an acre instead of $30 an acre in Lakeville?”

That “advance” turned out to become Advance, Missouri, Mother’s hometown.”

Yep, it was the same guy. Major Brooks’ engineering ended up resulting in the establishment of many of the small towns like Sturdivant, Brownwood, Blomeyer and Delta.

Brooks came west on a spotted pony

Shari added that her great-grandmother, “Bookie” (Florence Adele Turnbaugh Brooks) played telephone operator after the initial excitement of the first couple of calls died down. Maj. Brooks got his engineering degree at Vineyard College in Kansas City after he rode his spotted pony west with a wagon train to get there.

The Turnbaughs were Southerners who owned slaves, which Shari suspects caused some heated discussions over a bottle of whiskey on the front porch of the Turnbaugh house in Jackson.

Brooks created SEMO terraces

The excellent history, A Missouri Railroad Pioneer: The Life of Louis Houck (Missouri Biography Series), describes how Houck was concerned with preserving the pastoral beauty of Normal School (which became SEMO) and reducing water runoff so he hired Maj. Brooks to landscape the terraces on the east side of Academic Hall that are still visible today.

The book said that part of the project was to build a two-foot sandstone retaining wall along Normal Avenue, “although admittedly this last project was more to stop wayward farm animals from straying onto the grounds.”

101 North Main condemned

The landmark building has been condemned by the city. You can read the details of the wrangling in this Missourian story by Melissa Miller.

Cable reinforces wall

As much as I love old buildings, I can see what the concern is. When you look through the gallery of photos taken over a three-year period, you can see that the upper level has deteriorated to the point that a covered walkway had to be constructed to protect passersby from falling wayward bricks.

A double cable around the top of the building keeps the walls from sagging outward. I don’t know that I can argue with a Missourian commenter who wrote, “Look how the front is shifting out. If it falls about all the plywood awning will do is separate the bodies better from the rubble.”

Sign says Cape Wiggery

I’m not sure what the last business was to be in the building. The sign still says Cape Wiggery Shop. The 1969 City Directory said Kay’s was in there.

Interior has been cleaned out

The inside, at least from looking through the window, looks pretty clean.

It’ll be missed

I’ve made some iconic pictures of the building over the years, so I’ll miss it if it’s pulled down. It would be nice to think it could be saved, but it sure has the sniff of a parking lot about it, based on what I’ve seen and the news stories.

101 North Main photo gallery

Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to move through the gallery. (Thanks to Shari for the Jackson house picture and for sharing the story of her great-grandfather.)