Author: Ken Steinhoff

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Bill Adams’ American Flag

I overshot my street this morning and ended up going down Anna Street. About a third of the way down the hill, my eye was drawn to what I thought was a huge plastic flag hanging in front of 1733 Anna. I was almost halfway to the next house when I saw that it wasn’t plastic, it was an American Flag made out of red, white and blue license tags. I hit the brakes and the go-back lever so fast I may have left black marks. (Click on any photo to make it larger.)

Bill Adams and his wife were walking out to the car with keys in hand, but Bill was kind enough to chat with me. His wife must have known what a talker he is when he encounters another talker, so she went back inside the house where it was cool.

Found license plates on eBay

Bill, who said he isn’t really a license plate collector, started acquiring his tags on eBay around November 2010, and snagged his last plate toward the end of January of this year.

The cheapest tags were about a buck each; the most expensive was $55. “I could have gotten them cheaper if I had waited around, but I wanted to get the project done,” he said. Overall, the tags averaged about $7 to $10 each. His favorite tags are the ones with the state slogans on them. His least favorite are states like Delaware that have flat plate without embossed numbers and letters.

I think he said he had every state represented except Idaho, New Hampshire, Georgia and California.

Flag folds up for storage

After getting the plates, he spent a little time trying to figure out how to mount them. Instead of one large unit, he decided to string them together with Nylon ties so the whole contraption could be folded up into a storage container. The two support poles are made of two 2x4s joined together on each side and dropped into a 4×4 sleeve so they can be removed.

Bill is thinking about using the poles for other holidays, but he’s not sure if he’ll make the displays out of license plates. There are a lot of green and white tags, though, he said. Those would work out well for Christmas.

Riding the Mother Road

Bill just retired from a career as a postal carrier. “Retirement is great. For awhile, I thought I’d better make a list of things to do. That didn’t mean I had to KEEP the list; I could put off a task to the next day, change priorities…”

One thing on his list is for the couple to take a trip to see their daughters in Seattle. They’re going to fly this time, but Bill’s other obsession is to drive every inch of Route 66, the Mother Road. He’s managed follow it as far as the New Mexico-Texas border. “I’m not looking forward to Southern California and LA.” He admits, however that even big cities can have quiet moments. They hit Chicago on a winter Sunday morning and had the road almost to themselves.

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Fireworks on the 4th

Christmas with its presents, Easter with its egg hunts, Halloween with its trick-or-treating candy, your birthday and the Fourth of July (fireworks) were the biggies when I was a kid. Sure, there were religious and patriotic overtones to the holidays, but, be honest, what did YOU think of?

One year Dad ordered a huge box of fireworks through the mail. When it arrived – and I mean a HUGE box – we all gathered around and unpacked it piece by loving piece. We were admonished NOT to pull on the fuses or they might not work. We weren’t allowed to open any of the individual packages and we certainly weren’t allowed to jump the gun and actually light anything early.

The funny thing is that dad used REAL dynamite on his construction jobs, but he was as excited about the 4th of July as we were. (By the way, how do you like Brother Mark’s bright red, get-away-fast shoes?)

Cherry bombs and M-80s

I don’t recall exactly what was in there. I’m sure it had cone-shaped fireworks, all kinds of rockets, Roman candles, bottle rockets and fire crackers from the lady fingers all the way up to the two-inchers. For the little kids, it had carbon snakes and sparklers. It might even have had the mighty cherry bombs and M-80s.

Launching cans

Our big thing was to see how far we could launch cans. The small cans that frozen lemonade came in were perfect for the smaller crackers. We quickly learned that the M-80s and cherry bombs wouldn’t send the can in the air. It would blow them up on the launch pad.

To keep from burning up a gazillion matches, the fireworks stands would give you cork-covered sticks – punks- to light the fuses.

Even fireworks can become boring

Shooting cans in the air and lighting firecrackers one at a time was fun, but quickly became boring. The next step was to twist together the fuses of half a dozen firecrackers so you could try to get them to all go off at the same time “like a stick of dynamite.” Of course, that never happened. the first one to go off would cause the others to scatter or it would blow out the other fuses.

Dad considered it bad form to light whole strings of firecrackers. Until, of course, even HE got bored playing with them. He usually suspended them from a tree branch so they’d writhe, pop and flash in the air. This was particularly good at night.

Dad wasn’t big on picnics

I don’t know how many times I heard him grouse, “Six days of the week I sit on the ground chewing sandwiches full of sand. I don’t plan to do that on Sunday.” I guess the 4th didn’t fall on a Sunday, so my grandmother, Mother, Brother David and Dad are gathered around the table in our backyard.

Don’t go back too soon

When we lived over on Bloomfield road, Dad got half of the instructions right. The “light fuse and get away” part he understood. He didn’t bother to read the section that said, “If the firework doesn’t go off immediately, do NOT lean over it to see why.” One of those cone fireworks came to life when he was checking it, causing us to hold off lighting the rest of the fireworks until he returned from the emergency room.

I don’t remember what the exact nature of the injury was, but he never shot off that particular type of firework again.

Writing with sparklers

The date stamp on the front of the print says JUL 1960, so I must have shot this with my trusty Kodak Tourist II folding camera set on Time Exposure. I’ve got some shots filed somewhere where my brothers spelled real words in the air. I didn’t bother: my handwriting looks like this ALL of the time.

Two more generations

Wife Lila captured Son Matt and Grandson Malcolm shooting off fireworks in 2008, when Malcolm was four. He’s not exactly sure how he feels about the noise.

Y’all be careful out there

  • Light fuse,then get away.
  • If the firework doesn’t go off immediately, do NOT lean over it to see why
  • If you’re in a drought area (I’m talking to you Florida and Texas), don’t be shooting off fireworks. The house you save might be mine.
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Creepy Lorimier School Murals

When I published the collection of pictures titled, “Do These Photos Say Cape?” I mentioned that I was pulling them together for a friend. The friend – I guess I should say Virtual Friend – was Nicolette Brennan, Cape Girardeau’s public information coordinator, who wanted them for the city’s website. I dropped them off at City Hall, the former Lorimier School, Tuesday afternoon.

Where are the murals?

When I wrote about Lorimier’s transition from a school to a city hall, someone asked me if the murals were still in the hallways. Since I hadn’t attended school there, I didn’t know what they were talking about. On the way out of the building, I asked a nice woman (who is a reader, by the way) if she knew where they were. I don’t remember if she used the exact word “scary, spooky, weird” or what, but I knew what she was talking about as soon as I saw them. Huck Finn, above, is the most benign of the batch. Ironically, because the plumbing in the water fountain or sink in front of it is broken, there was a filing cabinet in front of it that almost hid it from view.

Three Men in a Tub could cause nightmares

The Three Men in a Tub would give any kid nightmares. It’s not exactly what I would picture over a water fountain in an elementary school, particularly since the character on the left looks like he’s losing his lunch into it.

Don’t believe me?

If you don’t believe me that the characters are grotesque, here’s a closeup. Like always, you can click on any image to make it larger, then click on the sides to move to other photos. I’m not sure I would encourage you to do that in this case.

Long John Silver has Mick Jagger lips

I’m assuming the guy with the eye patch is Long John Silver or another pirate. His lips, though, look like they could go on Rolling Stone’s Mick Jagger.

Video games are violent?

It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about nursery rhymes. Sing a Song of Sixpence starts off with a king being served a piece of pie that opens up to contain singing birds. I find that neither sanitary, entertaining nor filling.

Sing a song of sixpence,

A pocket full of rye.

Four and twenty blackbirds,

Baked in a pie.

When the pie was opened,

The birds began to sing;

Wasn’t that a dainty dish,

To set before the king?

The birds get their revenge in the third verse, though. Animals didn’t need PETA in those days, they took care of their own problems.

The maid was in the garden,

Hanging out the clothes;

When down came a blackbird

And pecked off her nose

These graphics explain a lot about my classmates who came through Lorimier.

 

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Flooded Quarry, Sprigg Sinkholes

The water in the cement plant’s quarry is a little lower than when neighbor Bill Bolton took his photos earlier in the month, but there’s still a lot of water in the bathtub. Here are pictures of the ebb and flow of water in the pit since 2002.

Pumping water into Cape LaCroix Creek

One reason they’re gaining on it is a new pipeline pumping water into Cape LaCroix Creek at South Sprigg. I don’t know if both pipes were being used at one time or if the one is being held as a spare.

It’s only fair that water be pumped  back into the creek because that’s where some of it is seeping from.

Sinkholes present challenge

Getting TO the quarry was a bit of a challenge. You can’t get there by going south out of Cape on South Sprigg. It’s closed at Cape LaCroix Creek because of some massive sinkholes. We had to come in from the west.

Devices along railroad tracks

I don’t know what these devices are along the railroad tracks north of the cement plant and south of the creek. Railroads have been using defect detectors for years to find overheating wheel bearings, called “hotboxes;” loads that have shifted; how many axles are on the train; objects sticking out and other anomalies. The devices transmit a radio report to the crew when it passes.

Until regular reader and train buff Keith Robinson chimes in, I’m going to speculate that these devices may be looking for changes in the track that would signal a sinkhole has opened up or swallowed the track.

Gallery of photos

Here are more photos of the Sprigg Street sinkholes and the railroad devices. Click on any image to make it larger, then click on the right or left side to move through the gallery.

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