Author: Ken Steinhoff

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A Fortress Penetrated

Saturday was a day dominated by song lyrics and emotions I can’t explain.

When I became a newspaper photographer, I was sure my press pass was bulletproof and I thought my camera lens was a magic shield that protected me from the things that my camera was recording. It was only years later, that I discovered that the lens wasn’t a shield, it was a magnifying glass that etched a movie deep into my memories, a movie that often plays when most normal folks are asleep.

Most of the time I’m the guy Paul Simon sings about in I Am A Rock.

 I’ve built walls

 I’ve built walls,

A fortress deep and mighty,

That none may penetrate…

I touch no one and no one touches me.

I am a rock. I am an island.

And a rock feels no pain;

And an island never cries.

 An auction caused a crack in the wall

Friend Shari Stiver and I were headed up to Tower Rock in Perry County when we stumbled across a yard sale. The folks there said we might like to stop at a home auction going on about a block up the road. I’m not going to mention where it was, because it’s not important and I don’t want to invade anyone’s privacy. They said the owners were a well-regarded elderly couple getting on in age who decided to sell their home and possessions to move into a smaller place.

The auctioneer was moving rapidly through small lots of odds and ends, having to work hard to get a $5 or $6 bid. When he finished, he invited everyone to step inside the modest little house to look at the furniture before he moved on to the farm equipment. The man was noted for restoring antique tractors, we were told.

Childish artwork struck me

There wasn’t much to look at inside. I was going to suggest to Shari that we get back on the road when we walked into a bedroom and I saw these scrawled pieces of art probably done by a grandchild. I made three half-hearted exposures. The light was lousy and the color balance was funky. It didn’t feel like a situation that was going to make a picture good enough to work any harder.

For the record, I love shooting old, abandoned buildings. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I can feel vibrations from the folks who have passed through those places.

THIS building wasn’t abandoned enough for my taste. I felt something looking at those pictures on the wall that caused me to suddenly tell Shari I had to get out of there.

When Shari and I walked back to the car, I didn’t tell her how those scrawled pictures hit me. All I told her was that John Cougar Mellancamp’s Rain On The Scarecrow, the story of a family farm being auctioned off, was playing in my head:

” When you take away a man’s dignity”

And Grandma’s on the front porch swing with a Bible in her hand;

Sometimes I hear her singing, “Take Me to the Promised Land.”

When you take away a man’s dignity and he can’t work his land and cows,

There’ll be blood on the scarecrow, blood on the plow.

Maybe the end is closer than the beginning

Over some fine Italian dishes that evening at Mario’s Pasta House, Shari volunteered that maybe we’re getting to the point in our lives where we’re starting to see the end more clearly than the beginning (my paraphrase). Maybe I saw those photos on the old couple’s wall and flashed on Grandson Malcolm’s scrawled artwork for his grandmother on OUR refrigerator.

Should I write about it?

Tonight I pulled up the 500+ frames I shot today and tried to decide what I was going to put in the blog for Sunday. All of the other photos neatly filed away under geographical categories: Tower Rock; Cemetery near Dutchtown; old barn near Egypt Mills…

When I got down to the three frames from the auction, I almost deleted them, something I hardly ever do. I pulled them up on the screen and felt a wave of emotion sweep over me. I called Wife Lila back in Florida and said, “I’ve got a photo that I think I’m going to run, but I don’t know if I should.” I tried to give her the 25-word-or-less version, but found my voice cracking. Finally, she said, “If it touches you, maybe it’ll touch someone else.”

So, here it is. We’ll be back in the fortress tomorrow and all will be well again.

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Cardinals and Marlins – What a Difference

When Brother-in-Law Don Riley and I went to the Cardinals – Marlins Spring Training Opening Day in Jupiter, Fla., on a sunny February day, we wouldn’t have predicted that one team would end up the World Champs and the other would be in last place in their division.

(In case you’ve been sleeping, it was the St. Louis Cardinals who won big in the seventh game in one of the most exciting series I can recall watching.)

Click on the photos to make them larger. Maybe you can spot David Freese, I couldn’t.

LaRussa’s autograph

I wonder if this kid held onto the ball Tony LaRussa signed for him and if he got to stay up late to watch the Series. I hope so.

Other baseball stories

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Did They Open the Time Capsule?

It was a pretty, if chilly, day in Cape, so Missourian reporter Melissa Miller and I decided to walk from the paper downtown to lunch by cutting through the Common Pleas Courthouse grounds and walking down (and up) 55 steps (plus landings). I won the honor by being the 100th person to “Like” her Facebook page. (Here’s how I know it was 55 steps.)

It was a pleasure meeting her after exchanging email and FB messages. It was a bit of a downer, though, when the cashier asked if I was her dad, but I suppose that’s better than being asked if I was her grandfather.

On the way back to the office, I looked around at all of the markers and memorials that I had never paid attention to before.

Research or nap?

This one is a marks a time capsule right next to the west foundation of the courthouse:

SESQUICENTENNIAL CELEBRATION
CAPE GIRARDEAU MO
AUG. 19 – 25, 1956
OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS AND OTHER RECORDS TO BE OPENED DURING BICENTENNIAL YR 2006

My interest was piqued. What was in the time capsule from 1956? Did they open it in 2006? I did a cursory search of Cape Bicentennial events in 2006 and saw no mention of it. As the afternoon went on, I had to make a choice: continue my research or take a nap. Nap won out. I’ll let someone else tell me if it was opened.

Cardinals to name Mother MVP

You’ll read about the other courthouse markers and memorials later. I couldn’t edit photos, do research and write copy with the Cardinals playing like they did in Game 6. I decided to call it a night after that last homer.

I’m waiting to open the door any minute though, and be visited by a plague of sportswriters carrying a big trophy naming Mother Most Valuable Player. When I took a break, I found her dead asleep with the TV blaring basefall. She and the Cardinals were taking the same approach to the game.

Fortunately, she woke up in the bottom of the ninth, and so did The Birds. I made sure to go upstairs and give her a poke every time the Cards came up to bat after that. I hope I can keep her awake for Game 7.

 

 

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Seventysix – the Town, Not the Trombones

A cold front blew through Cape this afternoon, bringing with it some spotty rain and wind. Hoping that I could get some colorful leaf photos between the clouds, Mother and I  headed up to Perry County. We checked in at the Altenburg Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum, then headed over to Tower Rock where the river is low enough to expose an old stone quarry I hope to get to when the skies are sunny. Mother ate her fill of persimmons from our normal spot (and even found another tree down the road).

Then we decided to explore. My GPS said we were headed northwest, but it felt like we were going south to me. Finally, we hit a road where we could go right to the Mississippi River or left to somewhere off the screen. That still didn’t feel right, but I opted to go to the river.

Seventysix or Seventy-Six, take your pick

Right after we got on the road, I said, “I wonder if this is going to take us to Seventysix. I’ve heard about it, but have never been there.” By the way, the town is spelled both Seventy-Six and Seventysix. I’m going with the latter because that’s what the Conservation Department calls it on their display above. I first heard of the town when I was researching what is said to be Missouri’s last train robbery.

After bumping over a railroad track, we came to the river and this marker. We had arrived. Click on the display to see that Severtysix was once a quite sizable town.

River gives, river takes away

Like Wittenberg to the south, the benefits of being on the Mississippi River come with a terrible shortcoming: higher and more frequent floods as man tried to control the waterway. By 1940, the town’s population had dropped to 35 people; in 1957, the Post Office closed. The train depot was also abandoned.

Two sources for more information:

  • The Missourian’s James Baughn wrote about the town in his blog,  which has good directions, a link to a Google map and another link for a Conservation Department map of the area. I’ll send you there to give him a traffic bump and to save me the trouble of duplicating his efforts.
  • This site has some excellent information about Seventysix, plus some photos. I’ll quibble with a few of his facts (he says Seventysix was the only area Post Office; Wittenberg had a Post office, too), but it’s an interesting read.

Little remains of town today

A few foundations and a railroad spur where the depot used to be are about all that would let you know the town with a curious name ever existed here. By the way, you’ll have to follow one of the links above to find out how the town was named.

Mailbox was worth the trip

On the way out of town, I did a double-take, stopped the car and quickly put it in reverse. This mailbox was worth the drive. It’s not every day that you see a saluting cowboy made out of chains, wearing real cowboy boots and accompanied by his faithful dog.

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