Photos around Cape Archives

August 22, 2013February 18, 2017

Flashback to the Rialto

While I was in Cape, I picked up some cans of Shasta Black Cherry soda at Schnucks. The taste took me back to the soda dispenser at the Rialto Theater on Broadway.

Buddy Jim Stone, in town chasing a big magnet, reminisced about Carol Klarsfeld, whose mother owned the theater. Carol got to keep the money from the weight machine and the soda dispenser, he said.

Carol used to joke that the two profit centers in the lobby were the soda machine and the popcorn machine. “The most expensive parts of each were the containers they were sold in.”

The soda machine sat over on the left side of the lobby, near the popcorn popper (which produced oceans of fresh-popped corn, drowned in real butter). When you put in your dime, a thin cup would plop down with a satisfying “SMACK!” followed by a smattering of thinly crushed ice and your choice of flavored soda. I don’t remember the other flavors because I always picked Black Cherry.

Rialto and other theater stories

I’ve done a number of stories about Cape’s theaters. Here are some links in case you missed them.

August 21, 2013August 22, 2013

American Queen

I see in The Missourian that The American Queen has stopped in Cape again. I shot her when she paused there July 7, 2013. You can click on the photos to make them larger.

Ambassador of the Boat

There’s a security checkpoint at the gangplank to keep non-passengers from boarding. I’d like to nominate this guy as Ambassador of the Boat. He’s the crewman who has to tell folks, “No, you can’t tour The American Queen” and to answer hundreds of dumb questions from guys like me (and worse).

I looked at his name badge and said, “Your name is Ronald Watchman, right?”

“No, Watchman is my title; my name is Ronald Moore.” Watchman Moore retired from the Memphis fire service after more than three decades as a firefighter. After about a year, he was bored with retirement and applied for a job on The Queen. He was hired almost immediately as a porter.(A percentage of the crew must hail from the home port of Memphis.)

After a short period of time, the captain called him aside and said that his skills were being wasted as a porter, and he was promoted to work security.

He’s a good-humored fellow who enjoys chatting with people and seemed to know every passenger by sight. It was clear from the way they spoke to him that he was well-liked. If he’s typical of the rest of the crew, service must be first-rate.

“I’m a character”

Passenger Lesa Knight, center, said, “I’m a character.”

“Most folks I run into are characters, so I’m not surprised.” I replied.

“No,” she protested, “I’m REALLY a character. I wear a penguin costume at the St. Louis Zoo.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

Bikes on board

I spotted several fluorescent green bikes on the streets in Cape. It turned out that they were bikes carried on board for the passengers to use when the boat docked. I asked one passenger who was returning to the boat how he liked climbing the Broadway hill. He admitted that he had walked up the hill, but it was worth it to be able to see some of the landmarks in the Tour of Rush brochure.

I should have confined our conversation to biking. He didn’t share Wife Lila’s Uncle Ray’s opinion of Rush as a “horse’s patootie.”

Tour buses followed The Queen to all if its stops to take passengers sightseeing and shopping. If a passenger literally “misses the boat,” it’ll haul them to the next stop so they aren’t left on the riverbank, Watchman Moore said.

American Queen built in 1995

I was surprised to learn The American Queen was built in 1995. It reminded me of the Delta Queen docking in Cairo in 1968.

The company that built it went under (a bad choice of words for a steamship company), and it was laid up until 2008 when it was refurbished. Most of the reviews I read were gushingly favorable, but a few folks weren’t happy with various things on their cruises. It seems like most of those were in the early days when service and mechanical issues were being worked out.

Some folks can find fault with anything. The boat has to take on water from the shore more often than fuel. One of the last things the crew did before shoving off was to disconnect the hose feeding Cape water into the storage tanks. A non-passenger on the shore commented, “I’d never sail on that boat. I saw them drop the water hose into the river when they were pulling it in.”

“Do you realize that up until recently all the drinking water in Cape came out of that river?” I asked.

Stacks lower

Because the level of the river fluctuates, some stops have to be bypassed when the water is either to high or too low to dock. The stacks are designed to lower if they need clearance to go under some bridges.

Rooms open onto decks

Some of the cabins have private balconies, but most of the reviewers liked being able to walk directly out on the decks to mingle with other passengers.

Boat has elevators

Unlike early riverboats, The American Queen has elevators to make the boat handicapped accessible. Since it sounds like there are a lot of passengers in their 70s and 80s, that’s important. Getting onto and off the boat can be a bit tricky for those with mobility issues, the review warned.

Good view from the top decks

This view from the Common Pleas Courthouse shows how The Queen towers over many of the downtown buildings.

August 16, 2013March 4, 2016

Blue Hole BBQ Sauce

Buddy Terry Hopkins invited me to lunch, then said we were going on a Super Secret Mission. It was so secret that I would have to be blindfolded to keep from seeing our destination. I thought that might be problematic since I was the driver, but Terry was pretty good at hollering “Gee” and “Haw,” so we made it around almost all the curves OK.

I think we may have straightened out Snake Hill.

Anyway, we made it to our destination after getting temporarily misplaced a couple of times – we were in an area so remote from civilization that neither of us had cell service and my GPS said, “Why are you asking me? I’m lost, too.”

Blue Hole Garden established in 1927

Somewhere in the wilds of Egypt Mills, lives the only person who knows how to make the REAL Blue Hole Garden BBQ Sauce, Barbecue Billie Haupt. She’s a descendant of William Franz, who established the landmark Cape restaurant next to the Blue Hole Quarry in 1927.

When Franz sold the restaurant, he sold the recipe for the sauce, but not the steps to MAKE it. That’s sort of like giving someone a parts list for a car, but not telling them how to assemble it.

I used to buy bottles of Blue Hole sauce in the store to take back to Florida, but I always thought it looked sort of watery gray instead of a rich red.

It’s all in the cooking

Billie said that watery sauce disappointed long-time Blue Hole fans, which caused stores to discontinue it.

She brews the sauce in this original 4-gallon pot custom-made out of stainless steel (the acid from the tomatoes will eat up other metals). The key she explains, is knowing what ingredients to add when and how long to cook them. The process takes about five hours, about three to cook and two to cool down. It has to be stirred all through the process.

She wouldn’t be any more specific. “The secret is staying in the family. If my granddaughter doesn’t learn it, it’ll die with me.”

I made her promise to look both ways before crossing the street until after her granddaughter gets married and she had enough time to learn the family secret.

How can I get some sauce?

You have to pick it up. She doesn’t ship.

“Most people arrange to meet me somewhere in Cape, like the K-Mart parking lot.” You can also go to the farm where she and Husband Martin live. If you can find it, it’s worth going to the source. Terry and I spent more than an hour in their kitchen talking about the Blue Hole, Cape and good eating places. It was one of the highlights of the week.

The sauce – the rich red stuff I remember – is sold for $12 a gallon, $6 a half-gallon and $3 a quart. It contains a tiny bit of preservative, so it should last about a year (if you don’t use it all up). Interestingly enough, she says it is better NOT to put it in the refrigerator after it has been opened.

You can place an order for the sauce by calling Billie at 573-334-1944.

August 16, 2013

Waxing Gibbous

When Mother and I headed out to the store for me to buy some bottles of water to freeze for my road trip back home, the moon was just starting to break over Neighbor Bolton’s house.

You can’t ignore a good mooning in Cape, so I grabbed my camera, underexposed by about five stops and came up with this. For you photo geeks, I normally use a polarizing filter to darken the sky. In this case, I dialed it back because I liked the little bit of blue hanging around. (Click on it to make it larger.)

If all goes as planned, this will be the next-to-last moonrise I see in Cape. We’re supposed to meet a plumber over at the trailer on Kentucky Lake Saturday morning, then I head south.

When I got home, I fired up my trusty Moon Phase Pro ap to find out what I was seeing was the moon 78% full (waxing gibbous).

A bicycle named Nostalgic

I’ve often thought about naming my bicycle Nostalgic.

That way, when Wife Lila asks were I’m going, I can say with a perfectly straight face, “Out to wax Nostalgic.”

Category: Photos around Cape