March 2016

March 6, 2016

March Weather and Murder

You couldn’t beat Saturday’s March weather: winds were calm, skies were blue, temps were in the mid-60s. I decided to take advantage of it. I spent some time at Salem Cemetery, then made a quick pass through Dutchtown, and updated my old pictures of the Allenville railroad bridge. You’ll see those later.

By the time I got through with the bridge, the sun was about to dip below the horizon and the temps were dipping just about as fast. I stuck my camera in the car and was just getting in when I looked up, probably to keep from bumping my folically-challenged head on the doorframe.

These utility lines caught my eye. I was going to keep getting into the car, then my old rule kicked in: shoot it when you see it.

A view down Hwy N

This is what you saw if you looked down Hwy N instead of up in the air. Around that curve, headed to Delta, is where one of Southeast Missouri’s unsolved murders occurred.

On July 3, 1954, Bonnie Huffman’s 1938 Ford was found parked in the middle of this road. Sixty hours later, the body of the pretty, young schoolteacher was found in a ditch nearby. Her neck was broken, and the 100-plus-degree summer temperatures had caused advanced decomposition.

Over the years, countless theories have been advanced, leads followed and suspects interviewed, all to no avail. John Blue, a reporter at the time, covered the story from the start and became obsessed with the case. When he was editor of The Missourian, he kept the story alive.

Missourian front page

This is the original story on the July 6, 1954, front page. The timing of the story was unfortunate for the paper: July 4 was a Sunday, when the paper didn’t publish, and Monday was a holiday. That meant the story didn’t break until Tuesday.

March 5, 2016

Old Blue Hole BBQ Site

One topic that’s always sure to draw a lot of comments is the Blue Hole BBQ Garden on South Sprigg (and later on Kingshighway not far from Central High School). The topic lit up a Cape Girardeau-oriented Facebook page this week.

Someone mentioned the green trailer that was parked where the old landmark building was located. I said that the last time I was there, there was a big tree cleaving the trailer in two.

I was running some errands just before the sun went down, but I thought I’d take a swing by to see if the trailer was still there.

Yep.

Remember climbing on the rocks?

McDonald’s might have playgrounds, but the Blue Hole had some great rocks just made for kid climbing.

Earlier stories about the Blue Hole

March 4, 2016

Firestone’s Shocking Radio

This Firestone Fire Chief 4-C-3 radio was born the same year I was – 1947 – if Google info is correct. It was the size of a small suitcase, and quite shocking in its day (more about that later).

You can click on the pictures to make them larger.

Dad and Roy Welch would take it fishing

Dad worked at the Firestone store in downtown Cape for awhile, so he might have been the one who bought the radio, but I usually associated with my grandfather, Roy E. Welch. A huge 9-volt battery made it portable.

You can see it on the bank behind Dad while he’s fishing.

The radio’s innards

The battery is long gone. I find it interesting that the case and the side brackets are all wood.

A spec sheet on the Radiomuseum website said the “Reception principle was Superhet with RF-stage; ZF/IF 455 kHz; 2 AF stages.”

Tubes, remember tubes?

Tube testers could be found in all kinds of stores. If your radio or TV stopped working, you’d pull out all the tubes and drag them to your nearest drug, grocery or hardware store. There, you’d stick them in the tester gizmo one at a time until you found the bad one, pay a buck or so for a replacement, then go home to plug them all in again.

There was nothing that made you feel more like a scientific genius than seeing your gadget come back to life.

Radio made in Akron

A handy-dandy sticker said the radio was made in the U.S.A, in Akron, Ohio, to be exact.

It was even nice enough to include a little schematic showing the type of tubes it used and their locations. In case you are playing along at home, here are the six tubes it took: 1N5GT, 1A7GT, 1N5GT, 1H5GT, 3Q5GT and 117Z6GT.

A couple knobs are missing

The top opened up to expose the volume and tuning controls and a tiny selector switch in the middle that determined if you were running on AC power or the battery.

The knobs are missing, which proved problematic when it was plugged into a wall outlet. The radio was poorly grounded, so as soon as you touched any metal part on it, you would find 60-cycle electrical current passing through your body, a distinctly unpleasant experience.

One learned very quickly to approximate how loud you wanted it to sound BEFORE you plugged it in, and to turn it off by pulling the plug.

Always set to 960 AM

There was no need to tune the radio: it was always set to 960 AM, KFVS radio. That’s where Dad would listen to Harry Caray calling the St. Louis Cardinal games, hoping to hear his signature line, “It might be … it could be … it IS! A home run! Holy cow!”

I was tempted to see if it still worked, but I think I cheated death enough when I was a kid. That device might have been hiding up in the attic for 45 years just waiting for me to plug it in, thinking, “That fool is going to give me one more crack at him.”

March 2, 2016

No. 7-1/2 Erector Set

Many an hour was whiled away building stuff with my “Sensational New No. 7-1/2 Engineer’s Erector Set.” (Lincoln Logs came first.)

Based on an excellent reference, Gilbert Erector Set Guidebook by Bruce H. Hansen, my particular set was a 1957 model. The giveaway is the illustration of a walking beam engine.

Mine is a piker compared to the 1931 #10 Climax of Erector Glory set which weighed in at 150 lb. Fewer that 10 of them are known to still exist.

Parts, parts and parts

You’ll be able to see when you get to the manual how complicated some of the projects were. I don’t know how complete my set is today because Dad was known to dip into it when he needed a particular screw or nut for something that needed fixing around the house.

A. C. Gilbert was born February 15, 1884 and died January 18, 1961, Hansen reported. After winning a gold medal in pole vaulting at the 1908 Olympics, he earned his degree in medicine at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut. Instead of practicing medicine or becoming a college athletic director, he started the Mysto Manufacturing Company in 1909. He introduced the Erector set in 1913.

Made for a simpler time

A.C. was a frugal guy. If he found some old spare parts left over that didn’t match the current set, he’d throw them in anyway, figuring a 7-14-year-old wouldn’t notice the difference. In Gilbert’s 1954 biography, he estimated that over 30 million sets had been sold, and sales hadn’t reached their peak yet.

Erector sets were widely advertised, but parents back then didn’t have to worry about explaining to Little Johnny why he might have to go to the hospital if the project lasted longer than four hours.

Erector set gallery

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