Ken Steinhoff, Author at Cape Girardeau History and Photos

August 6, 2011September 18, 2011

Milton “Uncle Milty” Ueleke

This photo of Milton W. “Uncle Milty” Ueleke is technically flawed, but I think it captures his body language and bemused expression perfectly. I’m not exactly sure when he left Central’s science department for SEMO, but he retired from the university in 1981.

Missourian stories mentioning Ueleke

May 27, 1931 – Milton Ueleke was elected Reporter by the members of the Central High School Electrical Engineers Club.
June 2, 1932 – Central High Band to present first concert of the year in Court House Park, under the direction of W.A. Shivelbine. Milton Ueleke was listed in the band. In announcing the concert, Supt. J.A. Whitford said the public should recall that the band is re-organized every semester, the personnel changing as members graduate and new 0nes enter high school. [Editor’s note: that s0unds like Supt. Whitford had heard the band play and didn’t want to oversell it.]
Dad had a photo of the 1931 band in his scrapbook. Ueleke is in it.
Oct. 26, 1937 – Milton Ueleke has been elected vice president of the newly-formed Physics Club at the Teachers College. (The same story mentioned that Tom O’Loughlin, business manager for the Sagamore, announced that photos for the 1938 yearbook were being taken at Kassel’s Studio.
Sept. 15, 1945 – Milton Ueleke, a member of the Central High School faculty, recently discharged from the Army Air Forces, spoke to the Kiwanis Club about his stay in India. Ueleke, a former lieutenant, was a navigator aboard a heavy bomber and a veteran of 47 mission in the China-Burma-India theater of operations.

{It’s interesting how many of the science teachers at Central had served in bombers in World War II. Howard Bock, who had been a B-26 engineer gunner, was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, five air medals, the American Defense Medal and campaign ribbons (Battle of Europe, Battle of the Rhineland and Battle of Ardennes-The Bulge).

Tom O’Loughlin had been a bomber pilot. Maybe that made it possible for them to remain calm in the midst of classroom explosions and hijinks.]

Dec. 24, 1946 – Milton W. Ueleke and Miss Mary Ellen Miller were married in Centenary Methodist Church. Miss Alene Sadler provided the music. Miss Mary Reed (and others) in pink formals, lighted the tapers.
Oct. 15, 1947 – Was vice chairman of presentation on “Visual Aids in the Teaching of Science” at the Southeast Missouri Teachers Association at SEMO.
Aug. 31, 1956 – Was mentioned in list of Central High School faculty in 1956.
April 6, 1973 – Part of team that investigated Piedmont – Clearwater Lake’s UFO.
April 21, 1981 – Was on list of SEMO faculty members who were retiring.

August 5, 2011September 18, 2011

Emily Runs from Ken

In the middle of the week, it looked like Hurricane Emily was going to land right on West Palm Beach on Saturday at 2 in the afternoon. That’s when we decided to cut short our Seattle trip. Looks like our decision to head home was enough to chase the storm away.

I loved covering hurricanes

I loved covering hurricanes. The only thing was, I had a lousy track record for predicting where they were going to make landfall in those pre-Internet, pre-Weather Channel days. If I flew into Biloxi, it would hit Corpus Christi. It got to be such a joke that the general manager said he was going to put in my job description that I would be lashed to the flag pole in front of the building in case a storm was coming our way. “They never hit where you are.”

Hurricane Elena was the most frustrating

The worst was Elena in 1985 or thereabouts. I flew into Biloxi or Mobile to find out that the storm had curved east and was projected to go ashore in Tampa. The reporter and I chased that bleeping storm all the way across the Florida Panhandle and down the Big Bend, even driving around an abandoned roadblock on the bridge over Apalachicola Bay.

Being out there in the middle of the bridge with the waves breaking over it caused my rearend to bite holes out of the seat cushion. “You know, in 25 or 30 years,” I told my partner, “some shrimper’s net is going to snag a rusted-out car with two skeletons and a lot of photo equipment in it…”

When we got to the Tampa area, the office called to say that the storm had stalled offshore, then had recurved back west again. We got back in our car and retraced our steps until we finally caught up with it near Pascagoula, Miss., after a bunch of adventures I ‘ll share later.

“Which one of us is nuts?”

On the way back home, I stopped to talk with a woman on Cedar Key, an island on Florida’s west coast where Elena was supposed to come ashore. She told me she hadn’t evacuated.

“Are you nuts? The water would have cut off your only way out and the storm surge would have been higher than anything on the island. Why didn’t you leave?”

“You just told me that you chased this storm for almost 2,800 miles,” she countered. “I stayed in one place and let it come to me. Which one of us is nuts?” She had a point.

[Editor’s note: The photo at the right is of a tree that blew down at our house during 2004’s Hurricane Frances. 2005 was worse. It’s a lot more fun to cover a disaster in somebody else’s town.]

‘Unclean! Unclean!”

The plane ride from Seattle to Baltimore was pretty painless. When two folks sat down next to me in the bulkhead, I said, “I’m going to warn you. I’m the passenger I always hate to sit next to. I have a cold. I’m going to do everything I can to keep from sneezing or coughing in your direction, but I thought you should know. With any luck, and all the meds I’ve taken, I should pass out and not bother you.”

They looked at me like I was wearing a bell around my neck and was chanting, “Unclean! Unclean” like a leper in the Bible. Unfortunately for them, the plane was full and they were trapped. When the flight attendant said that they needed someone to exchange seats to accommodate a family with small children, they punched the call button like they were on a game show. Unfortunately, someone else was faster.

I put on a pair of noise-cancelling headphones and listened / dozed to an audio book. My symptoms were pretty much under control on the flight, but, when the guy sneezed getting off the plane, I said, “Sorry.”

The passenger from hell

When we got on the flight from Baltimore, I forgot to get my headphones out of the overhead compartment. Figuring it was only a two-hour flight, I didn’t bother to fish them out. A guy headed to Delray Beach was a seat over from me and we were hoping the middle seat would stay empty. Nope. Full plane. A woman sat down.

At first I thought she might have a speech impediment that caused her words to slur. I HOPED she had a speech impediment. Nope. She was sloshed. Talkatively sloshed.

I gave her my I-have-a-cold-I’m-going-to-sleep speech and turned my back to her. Whenever I woke up, I could hear her bending the ear of the poor guy next to me. Actually, Wife Lila, two rows away, could hear her holding court.

“Quit talking”

One hundred miles out of West Palm Beach, the poor guy had had all he could take. “I told her, ‘quit talking. I need to get some sleep,'” he confided when she slipped out to use the John. He signaled me when she got out of the lavatory so I could continue to pretend to sleep.

That’s when she started punching me, “I have to talk with someone,” she wailed. In fairness, she wasn’t a bad person, just an annoying one. She was coming back to deal with a family emergency, so the other guy and I were inclined to cut her some slack. Right up until we managed to open the exit door and shove her out at 17,000 feet.

That’s when I vowed to ALWAYS have my headphones with me.

It’s good to be back home. The first thing I saw was the open kitchen cabinet that was supposed to remind me that the garbage disposal had started leaking the morning we left for the Northwest.

August 4, 2011March 8, 2015

Seattle’s Pike Place Market

Lamberts might be the home of “throwed rolls,” but the Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle is the home of the flying fish. Fishmongers got tired of having to walk out to the Market’s fish table to retrieve a salmon each time someone ordered one. Eventually, the owner realized it was easier to station an employee at the table, to throw the fish over the counter.

It’s become part street theater and part efficiency over the years.

Customers get in the act

Not only can you watch employees flinging fish here and there, customers can get involved, too. Caron St. John of New Jersey was told to practice using her “eagle talons” to grab the fish when it came flying at her.

Caron celebrates catch

She must have paid attention, because seconds later she was holding a hunk of salmon in her arms.

Wide variety of seafood

If if lives in the water, it’s likely to be found in the market. Here is a link to the fish market’s website.

Farmers’ Market opened in 1907

Pike Place Market opened in 1907 and is said to be one of the oldest continuing operating farmers’ markets in the country. Even though tourism has caused the Market’s emphasis to shift towards crafts, there is still a lot of beautiful produce sold there.

Wikipedia has a long piece on the history of the place and how it was almost lost to development.

Produce as a work of art

It’s like walking through an artist’s palette of edible paints.

Covers nine acres

The Market’s official website says that it covers nine acres and attracts 10 million visitors a year.

That’s the good news and the bad news. They must have all been here when we were in town.

“Traffic Alert. Slow traffic ahead”

We’re leaving Seattle early, partly because it looked like West Palm Beach might be visited by Hurricane Emily on Saturday, but mostly because we were tired of fighting traffic. We couldn’t go five miles without the GPS intoning, “Traffic Alert. Slow Traffic Ahead. Expect delay of 52 minutes.”

This afternoon we wait through six cycles of a traffic light before getting through an intersection on our way to a downtown attraction. We decided we don’t have that many more years left to waste them in gridlock, so we bailed.

A tour guide said that the average Seattle resident spends 44 hours a year stuck in traffic. You can see why bicycles are so popular in the area.

There might be a couple days of no updates while we’re flying back home.

Photo gallery of Pike Street Market

Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to move through the gallery.

August 3, 2011July 1, 2021

Trotline Fishing on The Mississippi

After seeing that the flooding had gone down, I decided to drive down Old Highway 61 that parallels I-55 south of Sprigg Street and ends at a boat ramp. After taking a scenic photo, I noticed a couple throwing a cast net. [Click on any photo to make it larger.]

Aerial of Diversion Channel

Ed and Melinda Roberts of Jackson were trying to snag enough bait to put out two trotlines where the Mississippi River meets up with the ditch that is just north of the Diversion Channel. Ed Calls it the North Cut Ditch. I’ve heard it called the Little Ditch and at least one topographic map labels it the Dutchtown Ditch.

I was able to snap a picture of the Diversion Channel and the North Cut from the Cape Air Flight I was on. The Channel is on the right, the larger of the two canals.

“It’s all about stuffing the freezer”

Ed is a guy who fishes for the fun of eating fish. “I hope to have 400-500 pounds of fish in the freezer before the season is over. It’s all about stuffing the freezer.” Most of them will be channel catfish or blue cats. His biggest catch was an 82-pound blue on a trotline. “I WISH I had caught it on a rod.”

Enough bait to do the job

The water was boiling with fish, mostly gars, which the couple tossed up on the bank to join dozens more. “Most of them were killed by bow hunters,” he said. After about half a dozen casts, he brought up enough bait to do the job.

Heat killed many fish

“I’ve never seen shad die like this in the summertime. It’s the heat that’s killing them,” he explained. The hot water also limits how deep he can set his lines.

Nature’s cleanup crew

Maggots are hard at work cleaning up anything edible left behind by the flood and fishermen. “It’s a good thing,” Ed said.

Launching the boat

When I asked if I could follow them down to where they was going to put the boat in the water, ED offered me something better: a ride to watch them put out the lines.

Video: how to set out a trotline

Here’s your opportunity to see how to set out a trotline.

Motor wasn’t running right

When we started out, the motor was missing and sputtering. I wondered if they had invited me along to be a galley slave if the engine conked out. Ed assured me that wasn’t the case. He said that a plug was fouled and he wouldn’t go far from the ramp until he had it cleared.

Headed out the Diversion Channel

Before long, we were headed out the Diversion Channel to meet the Mississippi River. I’ll run scenic shots from the ride another day. I always thought of the Channel as a sterile ditch, but it’s a beautiful waterway with interesting trees on both sides.

Northbound on the Mississippi

Before long, we were northbound on the river. The boat felt a lot smaller out there.

Checking out the motor

When we got to where he was going to set his lines, he still wasn’t happy with the way the motor was running, so he left Melinda and me on the bank while he did a high-speed run in the river until he was satisfied.

Baiting the hooks

I couldn’t shoot both stills and video at the same time, so you’ll have to watch the video if you want to see what’s involved in setting a trotline. Here he is baiting one of the hooks with a fish he caught when we first met. If he’s in the river, he’s permitted to have 50 hooks; if he’s fishing in the ditches, he can have a maximum of 33.

Getting close to sunset

Ed was starting to run out of daylight, so he decided not to set out both lines. When we pulled into the bank, I asked what time the mosquitoes would show up. “I’ve got pepper spray, so I can hold ’em off for a little while while you make a run for it,” I offered.

Ed and Melinda assured me that they had plenty of bug repellent, but Ed said he’d run me back to the ramp before it got dark. They planned to stay a good part of the night running the line about every two hours and fishing with a rod and reel in the meantime.

It was a great experience. There’s a lesson here: you sure meet some nice people if you just get out of your steel cage from time to time and talk to the folks you come across. When I woke up that morning, I never dreamed that I’d end the day in a small boat on the Mississippi River.