Fishing and Big Spring

Scouts fishingI thought these youngsters might have been fishing at Capaha Park’s lagoon, but I’m not positive.

The boy in the Cub Scout uniform has a Pack numeral on his shoulder and a Cape Girardeau city strip. My first guess he was in my old Pack 8 sponsored by Trinity Lutheran School, but it looks like there is another number in front of the 8. Was there a Pack 18 in Cape? Click on the photos to make them larger.

A hat made for fishing

Scouts fishingIf this kid is half as prepared as his hat, he is a fish killer supreme. He’s equipped with poppers, flies, plugs and some leaders that are thick enough to land a whale.

Is this Big Spring in Van Buren?

Possibly Big SpriingThe reason I wasn’t sure about where the photos were taken was this one frame on the roll. You know how sometimes you can take a quick glance at something and feel almost sure you know what you’re looking at.

This has the feel of Big Spring at Van Buren.Those caves look a lot like the ones in a photo on the park’s website.

I wouldn’t think a bunch of Cub Scouts from Cape would be fishing there, but who knows?

Northbound Towboats

Mississipi River BargesThese northbound towboats pushing a string of barges were off Marquette Island south of Cape Girardeau when I shot them sometime around 1964. The white smoke at the top left is from the cement plant.

Click on the photo to make it larger.

Like running in molasses

I’m still recovering from the data drive that went south. The backup restoration has been running for more than 24 hours and has recovered all but about 10,000 files out of 487,776. It’s still churning away, but because the rebuild is taking 99% of the CPU cycles, memory and disk access, everything else is running like that nightmare I have from time time time: the one where the bad guys are chasing me, but I’m running like I’m in a swimming pool full of molasses. I think I’d prefer that to a slow, non-responsive computer.

I hope things will be back to normal by Tuesday morning.

 

Delta High School Basketball

Delta High School basketball at Houck Field HouseThese photos show Delta High School playing a team with uniforms that don’t have a school name on them. The assumption must have been that if you bothered to show up for the game that you’d know who was playing. A cheerleader’s sweater in one of the frames has a big “N” on it surrounded by what might be a “D,” which would probably make it Notre Dame.

Beyond that, you are on your own.

Delta photo gallery

Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to navigate through the gallery.

We Had Snow in the ’60s

Snow and Ice around Cape GirardeauYou folks are tired of looking at snow and ice, I’m sure, but this is a reminder we had snow back in the 1960s. We had less snow than Cape has gotten in the last few winters, but I think we were better prepared for it. More cars had snow tires and it was common to put chains on the drive wheels back then.

I think this might have been taken at one of the stations where The Missourian would drop off our bundles of papers. It might have been a Gulf. The press would spit out the papers in batches of 50 or 100; they would be handed off to a binding machine that would put a blank wrap of paper around the stack, then twist a thick copper wire tightly around it to hold them together. A sheet of paper with your route number on it would let you know which bundles belonged to you.

When I first started carrying papers at age 12, I had to work to untwist the copper wire to get it off my bundle. When I got a little older and little stronger, I could grab the bundle under the wrapper paper, give it a hard yank and break the copper wire. When winter came around, the station owner would ask us to save the copper wire for him so he could use it to hold tire chains on his customers’ cars.

La-Petite Motel

Snow and Ice around Cape Girardeau La-Petite MotelA lot of these negatives are pretty scratched and spotted up. Just pretend the spots are snow flakes. The 1968 City Directory says the La-Petite Motel was at 1301 North Kingshighway and was owned or managed by Charles and Lorraine Scheller.

Human-powered snow cleaning

Snow and Ice around Cape GirardeauThe sidewalks around Central High School were cleaned by guys with shovels, not fancy snowblowers. The fact that they are being cleaned leads me to believe school was in session, snow or no snow.

A long throw

Snow and Ice around Cape GirardeauI don’t know if he’s shoveling out the stairwell or just breaking off overhanging snow.

Must have been a windy storm

Snow and Ice around Cape GirardeauThis snow storm must have had some wind with it to pile up drifts like these.

Central’s basement

Snow and Ice around Cape GirardeauI had forgotten how they built Central’s basement to be able to have windows to let light in.

Hilly neighborhood

Snow and Ice around Cape GirardeauI tried to read the mailboxes, but the letters were too small. I don’t know where this neighborhood was, but it was hilly and the snow didn’t have many tracks.

Out in the country

Snow and Ice around Cape GirardeauThis house looks familiar, but I can’t put a name or a face to it. Anybody? You can watch some 8mm home movies of snow here.

As usual, you can click on the photos to make them larger.