January 2014

January 19, 2014

White Sands National Monument

I thought you folks might like to see some white stuff that’s not cold. In fact, when Wife Lila and I took a vacation trip out west in June of 2009, it was anything BUT cold at the White Sands National Monument in New Mexico.

Don’t believe them when they say, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.” At some point, it IS the heat, particularly if the humidity is so low that the sweat is being sucked out of your body like a vacuum was attached to your pores. It was worth a little dripping and dehydration to see the natural beauty of sand on the move. We’ve got us a beautiful and varied country.

Turning the pictures loose

I can’t come up with words better than the pictures, so here’s a gallery of the Monument. Click on the photos to make them larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the gallery.

January 19, 2014

Old Washington School Aerial

I was looking over some aerials of the Red Star from April 2011 area when I saw a white parking lot west of the area being cleared for the Casino. When I got to thinking about it, that was where Washington School was located. All that’s left are a few trees and a little green space. Click on the photo to make it larger.

The street running left to right is North Fountain. The street on the south side of the school is Mill Street. On the north side is Pearl Street.

Earlier stories about Washington School

January 17, 2014

The Folsoms

One of the blessings and curses of Facebook is the feature that tells you who has a birthday coming up. Seeing Linda Folsom’s name pop up reminded me that I had run across this photo of her in a box last summer. The original was a Polaroid taken by her brother, Steve.

I made a deal with Steve

Linda and I dated briefly (the briefly part was her idea). Steve was a fellow photographer on either The Tiger or The Girardot (or both), so I cut him a deal: I’d give him a roll of Tri-X 35mm film for him to shoot informal candids of Linda.

(Whenever I tried to take her picture, she’d threaten to pummel me with my Pentax, something I noticed girls, including Future Wife Lila, were prone to do.)

Steve is the guy with Central’s most unique eyebrows on the left. You’ll have to go to my Mad Men of CHS post to get the IDs of the other guys.

Rat Fink Steve didn’t bring back 36 photos of Linda. In fact, he must have used the roll for something else, because all I got was the single Polaroid above. I wouldn’t tell him, but I always liked the way he captured her smile.

Other Steve photos

Steve the debater
Steve in the Red Dagger play. I think he’s in shots 18, 67, 69 and 70, but I’m not sure about all of them.

The Twin Game

Linda had a twin sister, Laura. The night I walked up to the door for our first date, Linda and Laura played the twin game with me, challenging me to pick the right one. Their grandfather, who must have seen this game before, was standing behind them. He give me the high sign without them seeing him. It wasn’t long before I didn’t need the grandfather’s clue to tell them apart.

Laura is the girl on the far right in the front row of the bus headed to an out-of-town debate trip. This link has a bunch of the students identified by readers. Click on the photo to make it larger.

Betty Folsom

I was looking for some photos of the twins’ mother, Betty, who taught English and Journalism. I came up blank on any photos, but I DID find this press pass she signed for me.

It was fun reading the Facebook comments of the younger relatives of Linda, Laura and Steve who had never seen the trio in their high school days.

January 16, 2014

Downtown from the Air

When I ran the picture of the Town Plaza from the 1962 Girardot, I commented that the shopping center wasn’t much different than downtown’s Main Street, except that it had ample and free parking.

That got me to thinking of this 2011 aerial of the Old Town Cape shopping area. You don’t realize how compact Cape Girardeau is until you see that downtown was essentially bounded by Broadway on the north and Independence on the south. Themis hit a dead end at Spanish at the foot of the Common Pleas Courthouse hill. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

Not a lot of changes

There are a few buildings gone and a few new buildings, but the aerials from the middle to late 1960s look remarkably like the 2011 photo.

This post has a collection of links to stories about Main Street businesses.