Ken Steinhoff, Author at Cape Girardeau History and Photos

October 20, 2015October 21, 2015

The Last Rose of Summer

I’ve been struggling with what to post about Mother’s Birthday Season when she’s not here to celebrate it. I’ve made a dozen false starts, but none of them worked. Then, two things hit me today.

I got an email from Curator Jessica that read, “We had our first killing frost last night and my poor basil didn’t make it. This afternoon, while I was lamenting my basil, I turned around and saw one of my rosebushes had a bud that seemed to have weathered the frost. I sang the Grateful Dead to it and thought of you.”
I woke up to a flat tire (a nail nailed me). When I got back from having it patched, I opened the car door and was confronted with the rosebush on the light pole in front of the house. I took that as a sign I should visit Mother and Wife Lila’s Mother.

She was referring to Dark Muddy River

Miz Jessica heard Dark Muddy River because I told her I was considering it for a video about people and places along the Mississippi River that are no longer there.

When the last rose of summer pricks my finger
And the hot sun chills me to the bone
When I can’t hear the song for the singer
And I can’t tell my pillow from a stone

I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And sing me a song of my own
I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And sing me a song of my own

When the last bolt of sunshine hits the mountain
And the stars start to splatter in the sky
When the moon splits the southwest horizon
With the scream of an eagle on the fly

I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And listen to the ripples as they moan
I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And sing me a song of my own

Black muddy river
Roll on forever
I don’t care how deep or wide
If you got another side
Roll muddy river
Roll muddy river
Black muddy river roll

When it seems like the night will last forever
And there’s nothing left to do but count the years
When the strings of my heart start to sever
And stones fall from my eyes instead of tears

I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And dream me a dream of my own
I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And sing me a song of my own
And sing me a song of my own

The song

I’ve listened to that song while riding my bike around Lake Okeechobee on nights that are pitch-dark except for bolts of heat lightning cutting across the sky, and I’ve played it while watching the whirlpool swirl around Tower Rock in the Mississippi. It hits me differently every time, particularly in this context. I’m still going to have to come up with a Birthday Season story, but this will have to do as a space filler.

Click on the photo above to hear it on YouTube.

October 10, 2015

Quitting Cold Turkey

Buried back in a corner of the attic was a pipe stand and a bunch of Dad’s pipes. They hadn’t been used since one New Year’s Eve when he pitched all his cigarettes in the fireplace and quit smoking cold turkey.

I was a little late coming home from my date with Shari Stiver that night, and the next morning he gave me an uncharacteristic chewing-out. I mean, I wasn’t THAT late, so I was surprised.

A lack of smoke in the air

Over the next couple of weeks, we noticed he was sucking on a lot of hard candies and was crankier than usual, but we didn’t notice the lack of smoke in the air.

Finally, he told us what he had done. “I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure I could do it,” he said.

Most of the pictures we have of him showed him with a cigarette in hand. It wasn’t unusual for him to be puffing on one, have one smouldering in the ashtray and be reaching for a fresh one to light.

He said it was fairly easy for him to quit because “I had become disgusted with myself: the way my clothes smelled, the way I had burned holes in everything… I no longer LIKED to smoke.”

It sure made shopping for him a lot harder when Christmas and his birthday rolled around. We bought him a lot of smoking paraphernalia like those pipes and stand over the years.

October 10, 2015

Nobody But Daddy Touches It

When we bought our first Zenith TV set, the dealer offered to throw in a black ceramic panther with eyes that lit up for the top of the set. That must have been a standard promotion because I saw a score of them over the years.

Mother thought they looked tacky, so Dad traded it in for credit on an Alliance Antenna Rotor and antenna.

We kids were given strict instructions that “NOBODY but daddy touches it.”

It made satisfying noises

Turning the dial caused a motor at the top of the antenna mast to turn the big antenna to bring in the least worst signal of a distant station. It couldn’t turn all the way around or it would twist off the antenna wire, so you would run it all the way in one direction, then reverse it.

There was some kind of big relay or something hiding in the innards that caused a very satisfying CLUNK-CLUNK-CLUNK! as the rotor was turning. That’s one of the reasons we didn’t mess with it. Dad could have heard the thing all over the house.

That’s it on the left

If you look closely, you can see the antenna sticking above the roof on the left side of the house. If you click on the 1970ish photo to make it larger, you can see Brother Mark’s Sears Spyder bicycle with its fake leopard-skin banana seat in front of the porch.

I figured Laurie Evertt would tell us to toss the gizmo in the dumpster, but she put it in the Keep Pile. Turns out that ones in good condition are going for about 25 bucks on the Internet. (It’s even got the motor and a stub of antenna mast, although it hasn’t been turned on it years. Check it out at Annie Laurie’s Antiques on Broadway if your life has been empty without an Alliance Antenna Rotor.

Dad died in 1977, so I guess it’s OK for you to touch it. If you get hit by lightning, though, I guess the curse is still attached.

October 8, 2015October 8, 2015

There’s One in Every Class

When I ran across this photo I shot of a kid who was supposed to be using newspaper photos in an art project, I immediately thought of Mike Bruce Miller. There’s a Mike in every class in the world.

Mike and I went to Trinity Lutheran School K through 8, then made it through Central High School in one piece. We were in the same Cub Scout pack; I might have even been his patrol leader at Troop 8.

Round up the usual suspects

Mike’s claim to fame was that he was always getting into some minor scrape or another.

If there was trouble, he either instigated it, was in the middle of it or was caught in the dragnet when the teacher rounded up the usual suspects. The picture above was taken on the Trinity Lutheran School playground in June 1961.

Not a bad kid

Mike really wasn’t a bad kid. We didn’t run around all that much, but when he came over to the house, he was always respectful to Mother. She agreed with me that he was just a harmless trouble magnet, but warned me that I should make sure I wasn’t around him if and when lightning struck.

He’s the second from the right in the bottom row. I’m not going to tell you which one I am.

Taken too soon

I was sorry to run across his obituary:

Mike Bruce Miller, 54, of Scott City died Thursday, Oct. 31, 2002, at his home. He was born Nov. 8, 1947, in Cape Girardeau, son of Lowery B. and and Flora Pensel Miller.

Miller attended Trinity Lutheran School, Central High School, and Southeast Missouri State University. Survivors include his mother; a sister and brother-in-law, Diana and Stuart Rosenstein; and nephew, Mark Andrew Rosenstein, all of Boulder, Colo. He was preceded in death by his father.

He is buried in Cape County Memorial Park.

I’m sure that if the angels find itching powder in their robes or “Go Devil!” is printed on a cloud, St. Peter will go looking for Mike, but he’ll do it with a shake of his head and trying not to grin ’cause you just couldn’t stay mad at that guy.