Cape Girardeau Photos and History

Ken Steinhoff, Cape Girardeau Central High School Class of 1965, was a photographer for The Tiger and The Girardot, and was on the staff of The Capaha Arrow and The Sagamore at Southeast Missouri State University. He worked as a photographer / reporter (among other things) at The Jackson Pioneer and The Southeast Missourian.

Come here to see photos and read stories (mostly true) about coming of age in Southeast Missouri in the 1960s.

Please comment on the articles when you see I have left out a bit of history, forgotten a name or when your memory of a circumstance conflicts with mine. (My mother says her stories have improved now that more and more of the folks who could contradict her have died off.) Your information helps to make this a wonderful archive and may end up in book form.

Bill Cosby in Concert

SEMO Classmate, photo buddy and, eventually, best man, Andy McLean introduced me to Bill Cosby. Andy had every Cosby LP every pressed and had memorized every routine until he could do them better than Cosby.

So, when I had a chance to see Cosby in concert at Ohio University in 1969, I snagged two tickets for Fiance Lila and me. We had a front-row seat for his performance in the round (OK, it was in the square, but I didn’t do all that hot in geometry, so I didn’t quibble).

Unusual experience

This was an unusual concert for me. Usually I’m so busy shooting the show from every angle, including the overhead catwalks, that the actual performance is a blur to me. Well, my pictures are sharp, but my memory of what the artist performed is fuzzy. This time, though, I enjoyed the performance as a civilian. I still shot pictures from my seat, but I got to enjoy the show.

Depending on your generation, you may remember Cosby as Fat Albert, Cliff Huxtable or the guy who pitched Jell-O, but he’ll always be Noah to me.

“Come around, Idiot, Come around”

Cosby’s routine about driving a stick shift in San Fransisco resonated with me. See, Athens is said to be built on seven hills, and some of them are ungodly steep. Usually with a stop sign at the top of them.

I had never driven a manual transmission before, but I wanted a Volkswagen Squareback. I bought the car and trusted that Lila could teach me how to drive it. Trust me, if your girlfriend can teach you to drive a stick and still be willing to marry you, then you better snatch her up.

There was one killer hill (with a stop sign) on the way from the house to the office. She taught me the technique of pushing the clutch down with my left foot, putting my right foot on the gas, holding up on the emergency brake with my right hand, and frantically waving my left arm out the window while shouting, like Cosby, “Come around, Idiot, Come around.”

Did he cut it short?

I had a coworker on The OU Post who thought Cosby had cheated the audience by putting on a short show. If it WAS shorter than usual, the audience around me didn’t seem to mind.

Well, maybe Andy could have done it better, but I was pleased with the performance.

Other performances

I was telling someone the other day that I’m embarrassed to have shot a bunch of performances and paid so little attention to them that I don’t know if they were famous or not when I run across the negatives. Here are some I DO remember:

Bill Cosby 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.

Tips for Shooting Quickly

This picture has “brothers” written all over it. It happened to have been taken in Athens, Ohio, in 1969, but a similar one could be taken anywhere in the world.

So, how do you take a picture like this? I don’t remember doing it. It was a single frame sandwiched between a scenic of a tree and interior of a house. The scenic tells me that I was cruising around looking for wild art before or after the interior assignment.

My guess is that I was standing on the back porch talking with the homeowner when the kids started going at it. I had time to get that one picture before mom or dad broke up the scuffle.

To be ready for quick shooting, I always had at least one camera body set to shoot for different lighting situations. That might mean one would be set for bright daylight and another for low level lights. When you have to shoot fast, you don’t have time to take light readings and fumble with shutter speeds and f/stops. You grab the appropriate body, shoot and hope your exposure is close enough to fix in the darkroom.

Tight or loose?

I like the looser composition of this shot that hasn’t been cropped much because it gives the feeling that the kids are going at it unsupervised The tight shot feels like an adult is hovering.

Why did I emphasize the tight shot, then?

Newspaper rule of thumb was that a face had to be the size of a dime if you were going to be able to see detail in it. The cropped photo is the one that would have run; reader eyeballs don’t linger long, so you want to get your message across quickly.

Even this shot is cropped in from the left a little. The original shows a tricycle parked at the bottom of the steps on the left.

In addition to making the faces larger, there was another consideration: the boys are in the shade and a white house in the background is in bright sunlight. That’s a killer wide range of exposures to try to balance in a photo. Taking the background out meant less distracting blown-out highlights.

It WAS the Junior High School

When I asked readers to help me identify a building yesterday, it didn’t take long before Dennis Mize, Jim Feldmeier, Charlie Holt, Tim Ludwig, Keith Robinson and Dave let me know that it was Central Junior High School. This aerial isn’t from the same angle, but you can see the boxy shape and ramp that confirm what the guys were saying.

Here’s a new mystery

When Neighbor Bill and I looked at this picture, I said I thought the crane was probably working on the highrise dorms that would have been north and east of Academic Hall. He said he woke up at 3 a.m. with the revelation that the crane was working on the KFVS-TV tower across from The Missourian.

I’m not convinced. If that’s the case, then what is the building to its left that has a rounded rooftop? Click on it to make it larger, if that helps.

SEMO campus with dorms

Here’s a a 2010 aerial of the SEMO campus with the high rise dorms in it for comparison.

Downtown aerial

This aerial shows the KFVS-TV tower at the top left. The square is bounded by roughly Broadway – Themis – Sprigg and Main Street.

Common Pleas Courthouse 1964

This 1964 aerial centered on the Common Pleas Courthouse was taken before the KFVS-TV tower was built. There’s a parking lot across from The Missourian where it will be built.

I hope one of these will help you figure out the mystery building.

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