Photos around Cape Archives

August 4, 2012

Restaurants (Colored)

I’ve spent most of this trip interviewing folks who lived in what we called South Cape. I’ve learned some things about that area that most of us “north of the hill” – Tollgate Hill – never knew.I'[ve heard tales of prejudice and discrimination in Cape – and the amazing lack of it in some other cases.

It’s going to take some time for me to boil it down and digest it. I need to talk with more folks, but it’s time for me to saddle up and head back to Florida.

Today was a wrapping-up day. The car had to go in for a minor repair; I was supposed to pick up some rubber stamps (not in); I roamed around shooting some quick topics to give me stuff to post while I’m on the road. One of my stops was to say goodbye to Friend Shari’s mother, LaFern.

(She thinks I’m a witch or a genius – she said it was the latter, but the look in her eye let me know it was the former – because I brought her dead computer back to life just by pressing the ON button.) As a reward, she gave me a 1944 Cape County telephone directory. (You can click on the images to make them larger.)

Cape County Restaurants

Like most people, the first thing I did was check for family connections – I recognized some. Then I leafed through the classifieds to do a light-weight piece on businesses that had come and gone. When I got to Page 32, which covered Rental Agencies (see Real Estate) to Service Stations (see Filling Stations), I thought I had found an easy and popular topic: Restaurants.

“Restaurants (Colored)”

Then, I saw the heading that appeared BELOW Restaurants.

When did this become unacceptable?

I wrote about Brother Mark and me hitting a bunch of antique shops in 2008. I ran across this set of postcards for sale and said, in part, “I saw a reminder of just how far we’ve come in this country. One night this week we’re watching Barack Obama stumping to be President of the United States and a day later, we’re looking at a collection of black memorabilia of the most racially offensive nature I ever recall seeing.

There wasn’t a stereotype left untouched. Lil Black Sambo and Aunt Jemima were tame compared to this stuff.

I’m not knocking the antique shop for carrying it. It’s probably valuable to see how crap like this was acceptable at one time.”

“I’m not going to point any moral”

With apologies to The Beatles, “I read the news today, oh, boy.”

We’re going through a period of anger and angst about another group looking for its civil rights.

Pete Seeger said it better than I ever could in his song, “Waist Deep in The Big Muddy:”

“Well, I’m not going to point any moral,
I’ll leave that for yourself“

August 2, 2012August 2, 2012

Another Full Moon

When you’re shooting your second full moon of a visit, it’s probably time to start packing your bags. The moon phase ap on my Droid showed that the orb was 97% full last night, so I told Mother we better be ready to saddle up to shoot it tonight.

We pulled in to the parking lot at the base of Cape Rock to find eight or ten cars getting ready for the free entertainment. Just about that time, a long, long, long southbound freight rolled by in front of us. It kept coming and coming and coming, slowing all the time. Finally, with the last three empty hopper cars and a pusher engine blocking our view, it stopped. Dead, put-a-penny-on-the-tracks stopped.

We decided to go to the top of Cape Rock, but feared that it would be parked solid. To our surprise, there was only one car parked there, and it moved on, leaving us some prime real estate to watch.

While I was setting up my tripod, a guy on a bike rolled up. We did all the ritual chicken dances that people with similar interests do and got so involved that I didn’t pay much attention to the horizon. I’d look over my shoulder from time to time and think, “Nope, not yet.”

Well, I had misjudged where the thing was going to come up. On one of my shoulder checks, I looked a little more to the south and did one of those, “Whoa! Where did THAT come from?” Of course, I pretended that I had been patiently WAITING for the moon to get 10 degrees out of the water before shooting.

I shot a few frames with the longer lens on my video camera, but I like this one better because it shows how low the river is now. That’s one BIG sandbox down there. The river’s about three feet lower than it was when I shot the little picture above from Cape Rock last fall.

Checked out the casino

When some clouds covered the moon, we headed toward town. I thought maybe there would be some night working going on at the casino, but it didn’t look interesting. I opted not to try for a moon shot from the floodwall and the bridge because I had done those before. I decided to see what the view was like from the Common Pleas Courthouse.

When I came around the corner, the two women going down the steps were standing shoulder to shoulder trying to get a moon photo with their camera phones. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that the puny little flashes built into those cameras weren’t going to do much good at lighting up downtown OR the moon. I didn’t do much better. It was already pretty small in the sky by now.

This view down Themis Street is pretty similar to the one I shot in March of 2010.

I may try this angle for my next full moon shot, but it had better not be taken on THIS trip..

July 30, 2012

A Non-Political Whitewash

When we hear people talking about a whitewash today, we generally think of “a metaphor meaning to gloss over or cover up vices, crimes or scandals or to exonerate by means of a perfunctory investigation or through biased presentation of data. It is especially used in the context of corporations, governments or other organizations.”

When we’re talking about trees like the one in this unknown back yard, “whitewash, or calcimine, kalsomine, calsomine, or lime paint was a low-cost type of paint made from slaked lime (calcium hydroxide) and chalk” was applied to the bark in the springtime.Click on the photos to make them larger.

Whitewash was also used by for painting barns and the interiors of low-income apartment hallways. It wasn’t good for this purpose because it had a tendency to rub off onto clothing. It was associated with poverty in an old saying that I don’t recall hearing in Southeast Missouri, “Too proud to whitewash and too poor to paint.”

Painting the elm trees

When I was a kid visiting my grandparents in Advance, it was a springtime custom for my grandfather, Roy Welch, to paint the elm trees lining the yard on Cypress Street with whitewash. Some folks say that it was to prevent “sun scald” or to protect the trees from insects. It didn’t do anything to keep Dutch Elm Disease from wiping them all out. I think it was done for cosmetic reasons.

This photo was taken on my fourth or fifth birthday, which would have been in March. That’s too early for the the trees in the background to get this season’s fresh coat. You can see that most of the white from last year has washed off.

So, is it still the custom to whitewash trees anywhere today? I can’t think of the last time I’ve seen it done.

July 28, 2012

Is Flossie’s Cafe a Clue?

I have a couple shots of a building that looks like a barn or dairy being torn down. They were on a roll of random shots, including some from Capaha Park pool, I think. At first glance, I thought they might have been taken west of the intersection of Hwy 25 and Hwy 61 in Jackson, based on railroad tracks and the bridge at the right of the picture. That doesn’t feel right, though. Click on the photos to make them larger.

Flossie’s Cafe and Frontier motel

When I blew up the frame to try to remove scratches and dust spots, I noticed the billboards at the far right of the frame. One of them says Flossie’s Cafe with a Pepsi logo and something about breakfast. In front of it is a sign with an arrow pointing to the left for Frontier, which I assume is a motel. It’s AAA-rated and has telephones and “Free ‘T.V.”

Elect Bill Rose and drink milk

This photo has several more clues. It has to be Cape County, because we’re supposed to “Re-elect Bill Rose,” a Democrat, for County Collector. Another billboard advertises Quality Dairy Products from Southeast Dairy. There’s a Texaco station up (down) the road.

So, where is this? It has railroad tracks in it, so Keith Robinson will probably not only know exactly where it is, but he’ll tell us who drove the spikes and the name of his dog.