Ken Steinhoff, Author at Cape Girardeau History and Photos

July 2, 2012December 8, 2016

55th Vandivort Reunion

When your family is small enough that we could hold our family reunion in a phone booth (for you young whippersnappers, go see an old Superman movie to see what a phone booth is), the Vandivort reunion made my head spin. Gosh, that sure is a lot of people.

Harriet Smith and Ron Stein

Harriet Smith, a regular reader, sent me an invitation to the 55th annual reunion of the Clyde and Julia Vandivort family to be held over the Fourth of July weekend. They were going to tour the old family home at 630 North Street, visit one of the old family farms and even have a paintball melee for the youngsters. At the last minute, though, Harriet sent out a message saying that the weather was too hot for the outdoor activities. They might have lots of members, she implied, but they didn’t want to lose any to the record-breaking heat wave.

I took lots of notes and even kept a digital tape recorder running for much of the visit, but I’m going to invoke the “Suzy Rule” and run mostly photos. (The Suzy Rule came about when Second Son Adam brought home his first date; I could tell that it was going to be E pluribus unum, so I told him that all subsequent girls would be called Suzy. Because of the high incidence of Julias in the extended Vandivort family, I modified it to be the “Julia Rule” today.)

I just couldn’t keep track of all the names, faces and stories. Sorry.

Ties to Cape

Paul Arthur Stein, a grandson of the Vandivorts, echoed the sentiments of many in saying that all of them have pieces of the family history.It was fun listening to the same account told in slightly different versions by different people.

When he was making the pilgrimages back to the home place, he and the other boys were exiled to the third floor where “it was really hot.”

Harriet made mention of the boys sneaking in beer and “having a gay old time.” Paul didn’t reference that. While the boys were sweltering on the third floor, the girls, she said, were in the carriage house “raising holy hell and having a wonderful time. Grandmother had lots of help and lots of patience.”

When Paul’s generation got older, they put the kids in the basement with a babysitter, games and a TV set so the adults could talk. Now, he said, THOSE kids are adults, the best of friends and come from all over the country to get together.

Owners opened house

The house stayed in the family until it was sold to a fraternity in the early 1970s. “Unfortunately,” said Harriet, “they just ruined it. We would come to town, drive by the house and cry.”

John Perry (no relation to the John Perrys in my family) and Steven Williams bought the house and have spent a lot of effort renovating it. The older family members could point out changes that had been made to the layout of the house, but they seemed to be happy with the job John and Steven have done.

With the exception of an apartment house on the east side, much of the neighborhood has remained the same, with some of the same neighbors. Half a block to the west is the Lamkin home where I photographed the children selling Kool-Aid

Vandivort Reunion Photo Gallery

Thanks to the family for letting me spend some time with them. You all have the same connection to Cape as I do. Even though we’re miles away from the place, it’s still close in our hearts. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to move through the gallery.

July 1, 2012

Walnuts, Woodpeckers and Wind

When Brother Mark brought his chainsaw down a visit or two ago, I asked him if it was time to take down a long-dead walnut tree in the corner of the yard. (You might recall my adventures as a tree trimmer from earlier.)

He said we should leave it up: it had a bunch of woodpecker holes in it, so he didn’t want to foreclose on any bird homes if he didn’t have to.

Take a look in the yard

A couple of mornings ago, Mother told me to come out to see something in the yard. Looks like we had just enough wind to take down a big chunk of the old snag.

Didn’t see any woodpeckers

The tree was mostly hollow and it DID have some woodpecker and other holes, but we didn’t see any sign of birds in it.

The wood is old and dry enough that it should be fairly easy to cut up for winter firewood. Maybe I can convince Mark that it’s too hot to attack a firewood project right now and I can slip out of town before it cools down. Who knows, maybe the rest of the tree will come down and he (note I said “he”) can make one big job out of it.

June 30, 2012

How Hot is Cape Girardeau?

It is PLENTY hot. Blast furnace hot. As hot as Texas was one summer I was there, and I use that as a gauge for hot.

I rented a bike in Dallas for a weekend ride, and the poor thing skittered from one pool of shade to another. It was so hot a highway work crew had to hang out in an air conditioned pickup until it was their turn to lean on the shovel. (Click on any photo to make it larger.)

100 degrees on the porch

Mother’s got one of the most comfortable porches in the universe. It faces east and is shaded, so you can generally sit out there in the hottest weather without even turning on the ceiling fan. Today, though, the thermometer on the wall registered just barely under an even 100 degrees.

That’s not a cardinal on the left; it was a bluebird. I TOLD you it was hot.

1969 high temperature record broken

A new high temperature reading of 106 degrees at the airport topped the previous high of 103 set in 1969. The bank sign at William and Mount Auburn thought it was 107.

It doesn’t look like we’re going to get much relief soon. The weather gurus have issued an excessive heat advisory to run through Monday evening.

Low reading on Mount Auburn

The lowest reading was just up Mount Auburn road from the 107 degree reading. I didn’t feel any pool of cool air when I stepped outside to photograph the sign showing 103 degrees.

108 in Jackson

This bank sign coming into Jackson from Cape says it’s 108 degrees. The grass is so brown and dry that it crunches when you step on it. This is not going to be a good year for shooting off fireworks.

Getting ready for hell and brimstone

The highest reading I found was at the Lutheran Church near the corner of Kingshighway and Cape Rock Drive. Maybe the pastor is getting the congregants ready for a real hell ‘n’ brimstone sermon on Sunday when temperatures are supposed to drop to a mild 104 degrees.

You can’t have this much heat without some big storms coming in behind it. I wonder if we’ll have a replay of last year. The ground is so dry and hard that a heavy rain would probably run off fast.

June 29, 2012December 24, 2022

Coins on the Train Track

I’ve always been fascinated by trains. I remember standing at the Advance train depot with my grandparents to watch the steam engines come puffing in with black smoke boiling from the stacks and a deafening blast of steam when it stopped.

Texas singer and songwriter Guy Clark describes how it was to be six years old in 1947, when the whole town turned out to see a “mad dog, runaway, red-silver streamline train” whiz though for the first time. Up until then, “Trains are big and black and smokin’ – steam screamin’ at the wheels, bigger than anything they is, at least that’s the way she feels…When they finally said ‘train time,’ you’d a-thought that Jesus Christ his-self was rolling down the line. Things got real quiet, momma jerked me back, but not before I’d got the chance to lay a nickel on the track.”

Coins on the track

When Bob, Claire, Mother and I visited Wittenberg the other day, a slow freight pulled slowly through the town, then came to a stop. I tuned the scanner in my car to the train frequencies and heard the engineer talking to dispatch about stopping for a signal that shouldn’t have been red. While they were sorting it out, I thought about Clark’s song and dropped a penny, nickel, dime and quarter on the track.

Watch the video to see what happened.

Crawling under trains at 10

I’ve been around trains quite a bit and have a lot of respect for them. When I was about 10, Dad had a road-building job down in the Bootheel and had the gravel for the job delivered by rail. He’d let me crawl under the hopper cars to bang open the door that would spill the rock onto a conveyor belt. He told me to make sure I didn’t come out from under the car until he gave me the all-clear, then he would have a bulldozer push the cars forward until the next one was ready to dump. (Just think how many regulations that would bust today.)

Where did my pennies go?

When we left to go home one Friday, I put a row of pennies on the main line, expecting to find them when we came back on Monday. When I rushed to the tracks to find zip, Dad explained that a fast, heavy train will smash the coins as thin as tin foil, then it’ll weld them onto the passing wheels or onto the track. To get good results, you had to do it on a siding or when the train was just starting out.

Kindergarten ride to Chaffee

I did the obligatory kindergarten ride to Chaffee from Cape; I rode the train from Cape to Chicago for a photo seminar right after high school; a train delivered me to Philmont Scout Ranch when I was 15; I took passenger trains to and from college in Athens, Ohio.

Over the years, I don’t know how many “last rides” I’ve photographed as passenger trains dwindled to a passing few. I rode the Silver Meteor from Florida to Chicago through a 100-year blizzard with drifts so high that they knocked out the headlight on our engine. I rode in the engine of a freight train along the east coast of Florida (where I learned that I couldn’t handle the stress of seeing so many cars drive around closed crossing gates with our engine bearing down on them.

In Gastonia, N.C., I saw a train hit a car that tried to beat it to the crossing. A 16-year-old kid died in my arms.

So, I don’t encourage you to do what I did. Still, like Guy Clark sings in his song, “Oh, but me, I got a nickel smashed flatter than a dime by a mad dog, runaway red-silver streamline train.”

Maybe I’ll leave a coin for Dad

Maybe I’ll leave one of the coins on Dad’s gravestone to show him that I finally pulled it off.