Tag: Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum

Posted on

Christmases Past

This is the time of year when newspapers run lots of year-end stories.

  • They’re popular with readers.
  • They can be produced early before everyone disappears.
  • They’re easy.
  • Everybody is too busy to read the paper, so you don’t want to burn up serious stories.

So, in that spirit, I’m going to recycle some stories from past Christmases. Follow the links for the Real Deal. Click on any photo to make it larger.

This was from a photo book Wife Lila and I did on our first Christmas as a married couple.

David’s first bicycle

Getting a bike for Christmas was a Big Deal. Here’s a video of Brother David getting his and helping Dad put it together. I love the way he keeps reaching over with his bathrobe sleeve to wipe off fingerprints from the chrome.

Christmas Confusion

People were running all around to try to figure out where these photos were taken.

Could it have been Good Hope?

Nope, it turned out to have been in Jackson.

 

St. Mary’s 1967 Christmas Novena

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.”

Witness Protection Program Santa

This is the first and only Santa I’ve ever seen wearing a full-face mask. (He’s almost as scary as this Easter Bunny in my past.)

Hutson’s Christmas Display

Hutson’s Fine Furniture has been hosting a Christmas display window for as long as I can remember. It’s not quite as large as I remembered it, but it’s still magic for youngsters.

Hutson’s is 2011 Old Town Cape Ornament

Coincidentally, Hutson’s window display was chosen as Old Town Cape’s featured ornament this year. Here’s a list of past ornaments.

Common Pleas Courthouse Live Nativity scene

Close to 2,000 people a day stopped by the live Nativity scene on the steps leading to the Common Pleas Courthouse in 1965. The exhibit proved so popular that the run was extended past the expected Christmas Eve closing date.

North County Park

Cars line up bumper to bumper to enjoy the Christmas displays at North County Park.

Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum

The folks at the Altenburg Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum have been putting together a wonderful Christmas display for the past six years. Here are photos from this year’s exhibit (plus a shameless plug for my Tower Rock book and East Perry County Calendar. Follow this link to see the 2010 exhibit.

Water Park holiday lights

The Family Aquatic Center at Osage Center was all lit up for the holidays. Quite impressive.

Here’s wishing you all a Merry Christmas or whatever holiday you’re celebrating at this time of year. We’ll probably take it easy for a couple of days. I’ve got a Top Stories of 2011 Review in the works.

Posted on

Christmas Exhibit and My Calendar

My 2012 Glimpses of East Perry County calendar is available at the Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum in Altenburg and at Annie Laurie’s Antiques in Cape Girardeau. I’m pleased with the way the project turned out. Despite the “East Perry County” in the title, the photos should appeal to anyone who likes scenic photos, the Mississippi River, historical landmarks and quirky stories. I tried to pick images that you could enjoy for a month.

They’ll be available both places for $14. I’ll list contact information at the end.

Tower Rock book available

Tower Rock: “A Demon that Devours Travelers” has gone into its second printing. (OK, so the first press run wasn’t all THAT big until I could be sure I wouldn’t have a shed full of them.) It’s available at the Altenburg Museum. The price is $14. They’ll mail it for an additional $5 shipping and handling.

It’s worth a drive up to Altenburg

Admission to the museum is free. It’s worth a drive up there to see this year’s themed Christmas exhibit with more than 30 trees. Here’s what the exhibit looked like last year.

Photo hint of the day

Most of the room light in the museum and the Christmas tree lights are tungsten (old-fashioned light bulbs). They produce a warm glow that your eyes and brain translates into normal shades without us thinking about it. I didn’t realize how much color plays a part in how we perceive things until I had an assignment to shoot color photos in a grocery store. When I saw the film, I discovered that the store used red-tinted bulbs in the meat aisle to make meats look more attractive; green tints in the produce cases and yellow lights in the bakery to make the breads prettier.

This is what this tree and ornament looked like with my camera’s color balance set to Automatic (which usually works fine). Notice how “warm” the colors look.

Change the color balance to Tungsten

This is what happened when I changed the color balance menu to Tungsten, meaning he camera added a bluish digital filter to the image to compensate for the overly yellowish tint imparted by the bulbs. This comes closer to being how your eye would see it. In this case, however, you may find that you are a warm dragonfly person instead of a cold butterfly person. Most of the Christmas tree photos were taken with the Tungsten color balance turned on.

Christmas exhibit photo gallery

Here are what some of the trees looked like. Click on any image to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to move through the gallery.

Sneak peek at January

I try not to be back here in January because this is how I remember the month: gray, gloomy and cloudy, with just a hint of color from time to time to keep you from going bonkers. My February photo is a bit more colorful.

Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum

P.O. Box 53
75 Church Street, Altenburg, Missouri 63732

Open daily 10:00am – 4:00pm (free admission)

Telephone: 573-824-6070 Email: info@altenburgmuseum.org

Museum Website

Annie Laurie’s Antiques

536 Broadway; Cape Girardeau, MO 63701 (at the corner of Broadway and Frederick across from Shivelbine’s)

Telephone: 573-339-1301 Email: info@capeantiqueshop.com

Annie Laurie’s website (or click on her ad on this page)

Posted on

Trinity’s Boy Scout Troop 8

Tom Mueller, younger brother of my old debate partner, John Mueller, sent me an email the other day that he and his mother had gone up to Altenburg to the Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum where the bought a copy of my photo book, Tower Rock:  “A Demon That Devours Travelers.” (Shameless plug will appear at the end of this.)

The Mueller family was prominent in Wittenberg, just down the hill, so he thought I’d be interested in talking with his mother. We made arrangements for Tom, his mother and his friend Becky Kleckner to come over Sunday evening to look at old pictures.

This gave me an opportunity to drag out a bunch of photos that I think he might have rather have stayed lost to history, but this shot of Trinity Lutheran School’s Boy Scout Troop 8 was deemed acceptable for public display. (Buying my book gives you a lot of leeway over my picture selections.) You can click on the picture to make it larger.

Tom is in back row

Right after we shook hands, he agreed that he wouldn’t call me Kenny if I wouldn’t call him Tommy. Deal.

TOM is in the back row, fifth from the left. I’m guessing this was probably taken around 1966, so almost all of these boys were younger brothers of my classmates. Little brothers weren’t something that older guys paid much attention to, so I’m just going to throw out some last names since I notice family resemblances.

Ronnie Dost is frozen as Ronnie in my mind

In the back couple of rows, I see what has to be a Huckstep, a Pensel, Brad Verhines and Ralph Fuhrmann. The two guys standing at the far right are Ronnie Dost and Joe Snell. Ronnie died right after we graduated, so he’s frozen as Ronnie forever in my mind. He and Joe were both Central High Class of ’65, so they deserve two names.

The two men kneeling in the center are Assistant Scoutmaster Harry Ruesler and Scoutmaster Ralph Haman. Ralph’s son is in front of him. I’m pretty sure that’s an O’Connell second from the left, kneeling.

The middle row has, I think, a Fiehler, a Boardman and a Ruesler in it.

This was an orderly grouping. You can tell from all the scuff marks on the floor that the troop was usually about one atomic particle from attaining critical mass and exploding in every direction. (Jim Stone will probably tell me my analogy is all wrong, but that’s why he was a physicist and I was a photographer.)

Here’s the shameless plug for Tower Rock

My kid tells me I should be pitching my book harder. So, if you’d like to have a book of pretty pictures of Tower Rock, contact these folks. It costs $14 if you pick it up yourself, which I encourage you to do. The museum just finished setting up their Christmas exhibit and they tell me it’s better than 2010. Admission is free, so that’s a double good deal, because shipping and handling on the book is five bucks and you won’t get to see the exhibit.

Lutheran Heritage Center & Museum
P.O. Box 53
75 Church Street
Altenburg, Missouri 63732

Telephone
573-824-6070

Email:
info@altenburgmuseum.org

 

 

Posted on

Perry County Servicemen

I was spending some more time up at the Altenburg Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum this week interviewing some folks for an exhibit and book I’m working on. The museum volunteers were scurrying around getting ready for their annual Christmas Tree display, so I prowled around looking at other exhibits. My eye was drawn to a set of uniforms worn by servicemen from the Altenburg and Frohna region. It looked perfect for a Veterans Day post.

I thought one of the men looked familiar. It turned out he was Robert Fiehler, who died Nov. 10, 2009, not long after I had spent some time talking with him in the museum. A nice guy. I photographed Mrs. Fiehler setting up the Christmas tree exhibit last year. (She’s in the first photo on the page.) His son, Gerard, has been my guide to area landmarks and people.

“Hell, SOMEBODY’S got to go”

Gerard has a lot of Bob’s mannerisms and gestures. It’s easy to see the father in the son. Gerard said, “I remember when Dad found out he wasn’t going to make it much longer, he said, ‘Us World War II guys are going at 1,500 a day. Hell, SOMEBODY’S got to go.'”

Gerard said his dad was the last of the World War II vets from the area to have served in Germany; the other survivors – and he thought there might only be three –  had been in the Pacific.

Good German names

The East Perry County boys who went off to serve had good German names like Fiehler, Schlichting, Gerler, Schmidt and  and Petzoldt.

The Cape Girardeau and Perry County German-Americans went off to defend a country that didn’t take kindly to their heritage. During World War I, many of the churches stopped having services in German and families spoke the language only at home because of anti-German sentiments.

The Deutscher Volkfreund, a German-language newspaper in Jackson, which eventually became The Jackson Pioneer, was forced to switch to English when a mob gathered at the office and threatened to destroy all the German type. (The Pioneer hired me as a reporter / photographer /engraver / all-around flunky when I was a junior in high school. I wasn’t hired for my German surname; I was hired because I’d work cheap and was a Barry Goldwater Republican.)

Altenburg Militia: “Better bring your lunch”

The men of Altenburg, hearing of mobs burning German books in churches and schools in the area, formed the Altenburg Militia. When the word came that the community was going to be attacked, they responded, “You better bring a lunch, because it’s going to take all day.” The attack never came.

Photo Gallery of Service Uniforms

Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to move through the gallery. This exhibit moved me much more than a lot of similar displays. Maybe because I actually knew one of the men whose uniform I was looking at or it might have been the pairing of the actual uniform with a photo of the man who wore it. Take a few minutes to thank a veteran for his or her service.

Here’s a link to my post from last Veterans Day.

 

About Proudly powered by WordPress