Broadway Landmarks & Cracked Sidewalks

I don’t know if these women were leaving the DayZy Beauty Salon or Jordan Office Equipment and Supply. I suspect the former. The 1979 City Directory said the beauty salon was at 718 Broadway and owned by Mrs. Dorothy Willman.

“Women,” not “ladies”

I called them “women” because Missourian style was that females of a certain age were “women,” because that was a verifiable fact. “We don’t KNOW if they are ladies,” it was drilled into me.

Cracked sidewalks

These photos were in a sleeve slugged “Cracked Sidewalks 3/27/67.” There were some other photos in it, too. Wife Lila was in The Missourian’s print shop, where The Capaha Arrow was on the press, and I had a couple of shots of Jim Stone from a trip to the Ohio University campus. The variety of the photos makes me think the date was when the film was processed, not when it was taken.

I don’t know if I shot the sidewalks on assignment or on the off-chance that I could turn the photos into a story. There was a difference. At some point Editor John Blue or someone in the business office must have discovered that they weren’t paying me much salary ($50 a week to start and probably around $70 a week by the time I left), but I was making about half that much again in freelance photos. That probably put me in the salary range of real, experienced reporters.

Sliding pay scale

The solution: they changed my pay schedule. I got $5 for every ASSIGNED photo, but only $3 if the photo was self-generated.

That’s where I learned to think in terms of picture stories and multiple photos. A photo that contained all of the elements of the story in one picture was only worth $3 to $5. If I could find a way to tell the story in pieces, then it was more money in my pocket.

I understand how Frony became One-Shot

Oh, yeah, there was another catch. I had to pay for my own film, paper, chemicals and darkroom equipment.

I can understand why Frony became One-Shot Frony.

Still, I was living at home and didn’t have many expenses outside gas, photo supplies and dates. Lila will testify that I certainly didn’t spend a lot of money on THOSE.

I used to drive the accounting department nuts because I’d go weeks without depositing my pay checks. Eventually, someone would come up and ask me to cash them so they could balance their books.

Trust me, that was the ONLY time in my life that happened.

Armstrong Tires and Chris Cross Cafe

I could have used this photo with two stories. The Armstrong Tire ad would have fit nicely with the one dealing with the early days of the automobile in Cape.

It also shows a corner of the mystery building that was being demolished at the corner of Broadway and Sprigg in my Sept. 9 piece. Readers identified it as the Chris Cross Cafe. I don’t know that I was ever in the Broadway Radio-TV Shop.

Chamber, Boy Scouts & Salvation Army

This cracked sidewalk photo in the 200 Block of Broadway picks up several landmark establishments: The Chamber of Commerce, the Boy Scouts of America and the Salvation Army. That’s my ’59 Buick LaSabre station wagon facing the river.

16 Replies to “Broadway Landmarks & Cracked Sidewalks”

    1. That was a pig of a car, but I always liked it.

      I make mention of it on this blog so often because there is an active group of 59 Buick LaSabre collectors out there.

      I discovered the group when I happened to photography a cherry 59 Buick LaSabre convertible passing me on a bike ride. I threw it up on the bike blog, where it was found by a guy in Denmark who knew the owner, who was from NY.

      The poor car went to my dad’s mechanic, Sylvester, when it lost reverse. Sylvester, I’m told, used it to haul firewood. It’s probably rusting away out in some field somewhere. Sniff, sniff.

  1. I remember the Dayzy Beauty Shop very well. It was where my mother went to get her hair fixed, and it was also where she took me for haircuts and permanents when I was a girl. I even had one of those “machine” permanents there.

  2. In my memory, the owner of the beauty shop’s last name was Wellmann, but my memory could be wrong, as I’ve learned before.

  3. Do you really want a description of a machine permanent? I have a photo of one, ostensibly from a copy of Consumer Reports in 1938. I’m going to try to send it to you via email.

  4. HI,yes they are ladies and the one that has the checked dress or skirt looks like my Aunt Francis Kerr. Bet they were telephone operaters,because she worked at the telephome office until retirement!

  5. The owner of the Dazy Beauty Shops first name was Dorthy and I think she married a Richard. My family of Aunts and Mother went to her all the time. Am enjoying all you articles and pictures (memories) of where I grew up and gratuated from school!

  6. The Dayzy Beauty Shop is where our mother came every week from Marble Hill to get her hair done. It’s also where my twin sister and I went to pick up the weekly banana bread that she brought us when we were students at SEMO–and where I went to inform my mother that I was engaged to that cute Terry Begley!

  7. I think our mother, Betty Hopkins, is one of the women in the DayZy Beauty Shop photo, and maybe our Aunt Dixie Hopkins is the one next to her on the right end. My twin sister and I got our hair “fixed” before our weddings in June and August of 1961. I worked as a switchboard operator at the Missourian the summer of ’61 before I got married.

    1. I ran across some interesting stories about the early days of telephones in Cape. I’ve been holding onto them until I get find some photos to give me an excuse to run them.

      I was a newspaper telecom manager for about 15 years. I was offered the job just before I left to come back to Cape on vacation. As I was driving through a bunch of small towns in the area, I remember thinking, “If I take this job, I’ll have a bigger phone switch than most of these burgs.”

      Did you see the piece I did on lineman Lester Harris? Did you know him?

  8. The Boy Scout office on Broadwqay. I made many pleasant trips there taking in the completion papers for my merit badges as I worked my way to
    Eagle scout and the subsequent palms. Following you down memeory lane with those photos.

  9. My aunt was Dorothy Willmar and she did have the shop at 718 Broadway. My uncle did have a beauty supply business next door after the office supply place moved. My grandmother lived upstairs. Loved coming there to visit and would really love to be able to go into her old apartment. I have been in the business downstairs.

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