Cape Girardeau History and Photos
News photos that have grown whiskers and have become history
Wife Lila is gradually making more room in the West Palm Beach house by shipping stuff up to me in Cape (where it originally came from). Today’s box contained the 1960 Trinity Lutheran School Yearbook.
I was a nerdy 7th grader in those days, a look I managed to carry with me throughout life.
I won’t spend a lot of time on descriptions. Stroll through the gallery by clicking any image to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move around.
I looked down at the ground this week and saw something that transported me back to grade school days on the playground at Trinity Lutheran School.
The little seeds would auto-rotate down like a helicopter whose engine had quit. It was nature’s nifty way to make sure the seeds were distributed over a wide area.
When the seeds had just fallen, and you squeezed them just right, you could sneak up to a buddy and give him an earful of juice.
Before long, the whole playground was full of little squirts giving little squirts to little squirts until a teacher intervened.
I can see sitting in detention when the miscreant next to you whispers, “What are you in for?”
“Assault with a Maple seed.” Not exactly something that earns you playground cred.
The maple trees and redbuds are the first trees to come alive in the spring. The walnut trees are more conservative: they want to make sure the cold weather is gone for good before they come out of hibernation.
(Speaking of hibernation, I was moving a stack of old walnut logs the other day and disturbed three snakes. They were harmless garter snakes who moved slow until they realized there was a reason the sun was suddenly beating down on them.
I can tell when the term is ending at Southeast Missouri State University. That’s when I start getting requests for information and photos about Cape landmarks and businesses.
In 2013, I compiled a list of Links about Main Street businesses for Katy Beebe’s Historic Preservation class. It would be nice if I could submit my work for extra credit to bring up my grade point average from 1965 – 1967.
Here are some of the photos students have requested this time around. The student was planning to print the pictures on 5 x 7 paper, but the images didn’t always scale out to that proportion. To keep from cropping the images, I sent them to the printer with white space around them to make them fit the format.
Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the gallery.
Just to show you how your permanent record can come back to haunt you, here is a note I found stuffed away between the pages of a book. I was captain of the Trinity Lutheran School Safety Patrol in the eighth grade.
Mr. Mueller, the eighth grade teacher, was also advisor to the safety patrol. He evidently caught two of my patrolmen leaving their post three minutes early (with an exclamation point, no less). He wanted me to mark them down for five demerits each.
At this late date, it’s really not worth it to add to their shame by publishing their last names, but they DO appear in this photo.
Here are other school safety patrol stories and photos: