Ken Steinhoff, Author at Cape Girardeau History and Photos

May 9, 2014

Early Mother’s Day Gift

One of the last things Brother Mark asked me to do before I left Cape was to check out Mother’s hedge trimmer. He said the last time he used it, it gave him a little buzz, and not the good kind. He thought maybe the power cord should be replaced.

I remembered it well: it was probably about as old as I am. It had a metal case and a 12″ blade. Since our house was built long before three-prong plugs were invented, somebody – probably Dad – had broken off the ground prong so you could plug it into a two-prong outlet.

That meant if the trimmer shorted out, YOU were the effective ground, particularly if you were standing in wet grass.

I quietly slipped out and went to the local emporium of tools and toys and bought her a newer version that has a longer blade, more power and was lighter than her old disaster-waiting-to-happen trimmer.

That’s ENOUGH!

Mother isn’t big on change, so I bought a mushy Mother’s Day card and a cute bow (which, observing the Family Frugality Rule, I affixed in such a manner it could be reused) and left it in her spot on the kitchen table while she was sleeping.

To my surprise, she loved it. Loved it so much that nothing green in the yard is safe.

“That’s ENOUGH!” I said. “You’re not going to have anything left but a stump.”

I turned around and saw her attacking a dandelion that had the audacity to stick its head out of the ground. “Wow,” she said, “I can even use this like a weed eater.”

For the record, I did a finger count when I left town. She had ten digits when I pulled out of the driveway. I hope she doesn’t think she can use the hedge trimmer on finger and toenails.

May 9, 2014May 9, 2014

Old Windmill Funland

There’s another empty lot in Cape Girardeau: a building that was set on fire by a disgruntled employee in November 2011 was finally torn down this February. It was located at 1707 North Mount Auburn Road, near the intersection with North Kingshighway.

We oldtimers remember that area as the site of the Windmill Drive-In or the Windmill Funland. We used to go down the hill from Kingsway Drive for ice-cold watermelon. I don’t remember much about Funland, which featured childrens’ rides, go-kart track, go-cart rentals and a miniature golf course.

Fred Lynch’s blog has the windmill in the background of a Frony photo.

May 7, 2014

Ernie’s Earth Science Book

I’ve written many times about Earth Science Teacher Ernie Chiles and the friendship we developed outside of class. He interacted with students in a way that would be unthinkable today, but that’s what made him one of the most memorable teachers I had.

To keep from rehashing old stories, I’ll just post links:

Ernie was so green, Pam Taveggia remembers, “that we didn’t know whether to love him or take advantage of him, so I guess we did both.” The first time he took her flying, he let her handle the controls. “Such a joyous, beautiful, completely new adventure for me! This is it! I wanted to be an airline pilot. My lessons from my Earth Science teacher were some I have never forgotten. I didn’t get to become an airline pilot, but I DID get to become a teacher who cared about my students. I had learned by the best example.”
Ernie taught me how to drive. I made it about 150 yards before I crashed into the side of a bridge.
Ernie and I went flying 48 years to the day after I took my first newspaper photo.
The water barometer experiment (subtitled “Watching Ernie Squirm).

When we met for lunch this trip, Ernie presented me the actual Earth Science book he used to teach the class. I told him to play Vanna White or pretend he was selling soap so I could take his picture with it. He may have a shot at making it in the late-night infomercial game.

He even inscribed it

Jim Stone, George Cauble and I set a goal of acing all of Ernie’s tests. We’d get together in my basement to review and practically memorize the book the night before a quiz. Ernie, for his part, took the challenge and decided to make tests so hard they couldn’t be aced. You can imagine what THAT did to the curve.

Jim Stone and I are still arguing with him over a couple of questions he marked wrong.

Who did all the underlining?

When I leafed through the book, I noted that almost every sentence was underlined.

“Geez, didn’t they give you a new book when you started teaching? Who did all the underlines?”

“I did,” he admitted. “You guys thought I was kidding when I said I was only about a chapter ahead of you when I was teaching the class.”

We couldn’t go flying

We couldn’t go flying the last time I was in town because Ernie’s plane had a broken perambulator or something.

It’s perambulating fine now, but there had been a lot of rain around Painton Airport where he hangars the plane. That made the grass runway a bit iffy. I had hoped to get in the air before the leaves came out, but since I had missed that, we decided to err on the side of caution and wait until summer to go up.

Stone is going to be SOOOOO jealous when he hears I have The Book.

May 6, 2014

What Is the Green Stuff?

Mother and I were cruising around Allenville for a followup on an old story when we started passing field after field of green stuff. She thought it might be wheat, but she wasn’t sure.

I divide the world into two classes: food and feed. Food has feet or fins. If it doesn’t have feet or fins, then it must be feed for food.

So, what were we looking at? You can click on the picture to make it larger.

Travel update

Got a late start leaving Cape Monday, so I didn’t make it east of Louisville as planned. I stopped at a rest area with a decision to make: do I take a 22-minute nap and push on, or do I search to see if there is any lodging nearby. I selected Door Number 2.

There was a motel five minutes away in Ferdinand, IN. It was sometime around midnight-thirty (more about that in a minute), so I decided to stop.

I earned one discount because of the alphabet soup of travel organizations I threw out (I didn’t actually SAY I was a member of them; I just asked if they cut prices for them. I got another reduction by pointing out that I was the last person they were probably going to see that night, and I got another cut by being a member of their chain’s organization.

Time is a little confusing

Just before I headed to the room, the desk clerk said, “Time is a little confusing here. The motel is the the Eastern Time Zone; your cell phone is going to show Central time because the dividing line is the Interstate.”

He wasn’t kidding. My cell phone alarm went off at 9:32 a.m., but the motel’s alarm clock said 10:30. Must be tough to live around there.

I got into Athens in time to have dinner with Curator Jessica. She says I have to put on my shoes and pants tomorrow for a 3-hour oral history interview with the Ohio University School of Media Arts and Studies. Jessica is supposed to be asking me questions about what it was like to have gone to college shortly after the earth’s crust cooled. They told her that we don’t have to fill the whole three hours, but Jessica said, “I don’t think he’ll have any problem talking that long.”