Ken Steinhoff, Author at Cape Girardeau History and Photos

July 13, 2014

North Riverfront Park

Brother Mark and I rode our bikes from his house near the Botanical Gardens, past the Gateway Arch, and onto the St. Louis Riverfront Trail, over Chain of Rocks Bridge and into Illinois. You can read an account of our 2004 adventure on my bike blog.

Chain of Rocks Bridge

The blog has some neat photos and some interesting history of the Chain of Rocks Bridge, which used to be part of U.S. Route 66. The unusual bridge has a 22-degree bend in it to allow river traffic to have uninterrupted navigation of the river.

Quick tour for Curator Jessica

When I took Curator Jessica to the airport last November, we had some time to kill, so I took her to the North Riverfront Trail where we parked at the Union Electric Light and Power Company. Whenever I park at a trailhead, I scope out the lot for broken glass that indicates that cars have been broken into while their owners were away. Bad guys figure that you’re going to be gone for awhile.

The lot passed that sniff test, but I still felt uneasy for some reason. I’ve parked there before and ridden my bike in the area without my hackles going up, so I don’t know what I was picking up.

Floodwall Art Project

We passed the Floodwall Art Project, a seven-foot tall, 150-foot long tile mural designed by ceramic artist Catherine Magel and created with the assistance of at least 1,500 youth and adults from at least six St. Louis communities. The mural displays the history of the natural world beginning with microscopic life forms, moves into sea life, graduates to earth creatures, then ends with migrating birds.

Here’s where you can find out more about the Great Rivers Greenway. You can click on the photos to make them larger, too.

I felt uneasy

Curator Jessica was thoroughly enjoying herself, but my feeling of unease was growing. We were the only ones around, so there was no obvious reason why I was picking up bad vibes, but I suggested that we head back to the car.

This weird feature on a pedestrian overpass is unsettling, but I don’t think it was what was poking at my lizard brain.

I told Jessica that my misgivings were probably unfounded, but I had learned over the years to trust that instinct that something isn’t as it should be. She gave me her normal eye roll and “crazy guy” look, but didn’t object to moving on. I fully expected to see my car broken into when we got back to the parking lot, but everything was as we had left it.

I’ll have to see if I get the same feeling the next time I go there.

July 12, 2014

What’s Going On Here?

From time to time, I’ll go back looking at directories of photos I’ve run before to see if I missed anything. When I hit one containing photos of Terry Hopkins and Brad Brune smoking cigars on the riverfront and swapping lies, I was about to skip to the next one.

This thumbnail jumped out at me, though. What in the world is in this photo? What is that arm doing? What is he pointing to and why? Click on it to make it larger.

When I blew it up, it all became clear. Terry, whose dad had been in the sign business, was feeling where the lettering for Lang Jewelers had been scraped off the window when it closed after being in business since 1916. The buildings on the west side of Main street reflected just like I was shooting directly at them.

I’d like to call it art, but I have to confess to accident instead.

July 10, 2014

Beer Comes to Ohio University

Curator Jessica called to ask if she could use one of my photos to promote the Athens Country Historical Society & Museum’s Historic Tavern Tours this week. It’s all part of the 9th Annual Ohio Brew Week Festival, not that university students need any excuse to quaff beer. [Miz Jessica explained to me later I was wrong. Brew Week was cooked up to help the bars out during the slow summer season when the student population drops off.]

Kenny Kerr pours the beers

It was a chilly February day in 1969 when Kenny Kerr (the guy with the shiny hairdo) of Kerr Distrubuting poured the first beers to be served in Ohio University’s Ohio Room in Baker Center.

You had your choice of Stroh’s, Stroh’s or Stroh’s. And, it was low-test 3.2 beer. Low-point beer, as it is more accurately called, is a beer that contains 3.2% alcohol by weight.

Since it could be sold to 18-year-olds, it eliminated having to determine if a drinker was 18 or 21. I don’t think I ever saw anyone carded at the Ohio Room, probably because most college students were at least 18.

Theory about binge drinking

When I was in Athens over Halloween, I debated going uptown to shoot the costumed pub crawl festivities, but opted out because (a) it was cold, (b) parking was a problem and (c) one of the OU Post’s former editors from my era said, “I got tired of having my shoes puked on.”

He went on to explain that we lived in a different era: we didn’t have any money in 1969. Students would pool their cash with a few friends, head over to the Ohio Room for a couple of pitchers of 3.2 beer, do some socializing, then go home. Now it’s all about large quantities of booze, he said, and the streets are filled with inebriated students engaged in inappropriate behavior, some of which finds its way onto the Internet.

Pouring beer like water

Here’s a gallery of photos of the day when Stroh’s beer poured like water – and according to some purists – tasted about the same. Stroh’s, by the way, had an interesting history. It started as a regional beer, then ended up as the third largest brewer in the country. It even marketed a Stroh’s ice cream. A whole bunch of market changes caused problems for the company, though, and in 1999, after being in business for 149 years, it sold its labels to Pabst Brewing Company and Miller Brewing Company.

Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the gallery.

July 10, 2014November 1, 2023

Martin Temple C.M.E. Church

The Martin Temple C.M.E. Church is across the street from the Mt. Moriah Missionary Baptist Church I wrote about a couple of days ago. It is located at the intersection of 25th Street and Poplar Street in Cairo.

I’m glad I shot these photos in January 2013 when all the vegetation (and critters) were dead. I struck dead end after dead end trying to find some references to the church.

The only story that popped up was a Southeast Missourian brief in the January 22, 1955, headlined “Woman Bass Singer Plans Final Series.”

“Mrs. Louise M. Braxton, Negro woman bass singer, will give her last series of concerts in this area this week. She will give a concert of sacred music at the Martin Temple Methodist Church in Cairo, Ill., this evening. A special concert, sponsored by the First Baptist, South Side Baptist and Red Star Churches, will be given at 7:30 Thursday evening at Red Star Church, and Mrs. Braxton will speak on “The Problem of the Colored People.”

Shot the correspondent

I was rooting through the back copies of The Cairo Citizen trying to find references to the Martin Temple Church when this story caught my eye:

Thursday, 3 Jan 1895: Shot the Correspondent. Howard Perdue, an alleged correspondent of the Kansas City Sunday Sun, at Paducah, was shot by an estranged Kentuckian named Monroe Bouyou, Sunday, whom the paper had maligned, and died Tuesday. Such is the fate of the correspondent of that disreputable sheet. By the way, it is sold on the streets of Cairo in the most open and flagrant fashion. Is there no way to rid our city of this miserable post?

I’m going to be more careful about what I write about Cairo citizens. They prove to be harsh critics.