Ken Steinhoff, Author at Cape Girardeau History and Photos

March 12, 2013July 3, 2024

We Lost the Handball Court

It was appropriate that the first thing and the last thing you would see when you were coming into or leaving Cape by the Mississippi River Traffic Bridge was a religious institution, the St. Vincent’s College, a Catholic Seminary dating back to 1843. I suspect more prayers were said on that bridge than in all the churches in Cape on an Easter Sunday morning.

The first (or last) things you’d notice when looking at St. Vincents were the magnificent trees on the terrace to the east of the school and the curious brick structure in front of it – the handball court.

Goodbye handball court

Well, don’t look for the handball court in the future. The Missourian had a story today that dismantling the historic structure began March 12. The court, built in either 1843 or 1853 and possibly the oldest handball court in the country, is being torn apart so the green space where it has lived all these many years can be covered with academic and residential buildings.

Goodbye green space

The loss of the brick court is a disgrace. The loss of the open lawn that gave the College buildings its character is a crime. They could have stacked the buildings they are planning on top of the parking lot to the west and maintained the character of the River Campus.

The biggest joke

The biggest cruel joke is that the university and planners are going to honor the handball court by preserving “some” of the bricks and incorporating them into the facade of the new building. Follow the link to the Missourian and you can see the care Milam Masonry is taking in “preserving” the bricks. It looks to me like the workers are heaving them off a scaffolding to land in a truck. I doubt there are workers wearing catcher’s mitts standing down there to catch them.

When I made these photographs Feb. 12, 2013, I was astounded at how many had names and dates intricately scratched into them. There were some seminarians with a lot of time on their hands. What was fascinating was the different printing styles the students used over the years.

Did anyone document the bricks?

I wonder if anyone took the time to shoot individual closeups of the bricks before the wreckers got there? You’d think a university with an historic preservation program would have been all over that.

I shot a few of the bricks, but the lighting wasn’t coming from the best direction to capture detail. The 1920s and the 1940s were well-represented.

When I looked at the ones from the ’40s, I wondered how many of those boys were shipped overseas to fight in World War II and whose only markers are a white cross in a foreign land and a name scrawled on a brick in a handball court that is being torn down.

Will the terraces and trees be next?

It won’t do any good to cry over spilt bricks. We’ve lost that piece of Cape’s history. Now’s the time to head off turning the terraces and trees into parking lots.See how flat the ground is? Cut down those pesky trees and spread some asphalt and you could fit several hundred cars there.

I mean, after all, they could “preserve” the trees by turning them into commemorative toothpicks.

Earlier River Campus stories

River Campus celebrates 5th season

SEMO plans to erase Cape landmark

Photo gallery of handball court

Some day, someone doing research may come looking for photos of what Cape Girardeau looked like before Southeast Missouri State University bulldozed it. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to move through the gallery.

March 11, 2013

Buckner Brewing Closed in February

When most of us think of the building at 132 North Main Street in Cape, we think of the department store that was the Buckner-Ragsdale Co., home of great service and Tuf-Nut pocket knives. After the store closed in 1982, it housed a number of short-lived ventures. It became Buckner Brewing in 1998 and won local recognition for rehabilitating the landmark business.

The restaurant and microbrewery closed February 3. You can read the official version in The Missourian’s January 29 story by Shay Alderman, then you can scroll down to the comments to see why locals thought the business went under.

Previous Buckner-Ragsdale stories

March 11, 2013

Trail of Tears Swimming

Now that I’m back in Florida, I expect the weather to be warm everywhere. From the looks of the forecasted Cape lows for the next week, I might be rushing these photos.

The negative sleeve said Trail of Tears 1966, so I’m going to assume it’s right. I don’t recall seeing this many people at the lake, but it might have been a really hot day. Most of the bathing suits are pretty conservative by today’s standards, but I did spot a couple that probably caused the phone lines to burn up the next day. “Did you SEE what Mabel was wearing? Or, almost NOT wearing. It was scandalous. Wonder where she bought it?”

Photo gallery of warmer days

March 10, 2013March 10, 2013

On the Road to Florida

I had to pull out of Cape on March 4 in order to make it back to West Palm Beach by March 6. As usual, I got a late start. No departure would be complete without taking a final photo before backing out of the driveway.

I think I’m getting better at these photos. Either my arm is getting longer or Mother and I are shrinking in our old age, which makes it possible to get us both in the photo.

Headed across the bridge

This is an appropriate bookend to the trip. I posted a photo when Friend Jan made me turn around to get the bridge and the moon in a picture the night we pulled into Cape.

Atlanta skyline and traffic (what else?)

I left Cape in snow flurries, and woke up in Manchester, Tenn., to rain. By the time I got to Monteagle Pass, the rain had turned into a monsoon and the winds were threatening to blow me across two lanes of traffic. It was hard enough to stay on the road in my Odyssey van. I don’t know how an empty 18-wheeler could have handled it.

I hoped to get an Oink Moo Burger at Dave’s Modern Tavern, but it wasn’t open. A woman in a nearby business recommended an Italian joint just down the road. Their pizza was excellent. Just as I was switching from my eating glasses to my seeing glasses to pay the bill, the left side of the frame came apart and dropped my lens on the carpet. Fortunately, there was a CVS drugstore next door where I could buy a replacement screw. A helpful women at the checkout counter put the screw back in for me since I couldn’t see to do it.

All of this piddling around put me into Atlanta at rush hour. I hadn’t planned to take another photo of a traffic jam in my favorite city, but we were stopped and the skyline was interesting. I think all the cold weather may have caused the lube in the camera mirror mechanism to stiffen up. I had a few frames with dark tops a couple of days ago, and the gremlin struck again here. While I wouldn’t mind some kind of out-of-this-world General Sherman coming down to devour Atlanta, that was simply not happening here.

Crawfish at Bubba Jax

I get odd cravings on the road. For some reason, I had a hankering for Dairy Queen’s chicken strips with white gravy and a Blizzard for desert. A sign promised at DQ in Valdosta, but I couldn’t spot it. As luck would have it, I opted to make a U-turn into Bubba Jax Crab Shack. It was a nondescript kind of place, but there was a fair number of cars in the lot, so I decided to take a chance. A chalkboard at the entrance said they had a special on crayfish.

I love Cajun forms of crawfish, so I placed an order without asking how they were served. While waiting for my order to arrive, I saw plate after plate of lightly battered fried oysters and onion rings walk by. I was wondering if I had made a mistake.

When the server placed a bunch of red shells in front of me, I was sure I had. “This is embarrassing,” I confessed. “I’ve shucked oysters, peeled shrimp and cracked crabs, but I’ve never tackled crawdads before. How do I attack these beasts?”

She said, “I’m not exactly sure. I know you eat the tails and some folks suck out the insides from the top, but they’re not exactly my thing.”

When she came back, I suggested that she put these on the menu as the Dieter’s Special “because you burn more calories peeling them you gain in consuming the critters.” I got better and faster, but I sure wish I had ordered the oysters. I’m going to put crayfish on the list of things like crunchy rock shrimp I’m going to avoid as being too much work.

Lunch with the grandsons

While I was out of town, Grandson Graham turned 2, and Elliot was added to the family on February 4. Parents Adam and Carly asked if I wanted to meet them for lunch at a hamburger joint on March 7. Are you kidding? This was my first glimpse of Elliot. I’d have shot more photos except that he was sound asleep. I learned with Graham that you do NOT want to have a screaming awake baby on your hands. I had forgotten they don’t come with a mute switch.

Graham’s a big boy now

There’s nothing like having a newborn in the family to make a two-year-old look like a big boy. It’s incredible how much more he’s talking than when I last saw him about six weeks ago. Grandson Malcolm, who is eight, is almost as tall as his grandmother, and looks like he’s going to be asking for the car keys in another week or two.

Graham, even after getting a spit-shine from his mother, is still wearing a significant portion of his lunch. (You can, as always, click on the photos to make them larger.)