Photos around Cape Archives

September 6, 2011February 18, 2017

First Book of Last Times

A couple of my former coworkers put together a book called The First Book of Last Times. (If you are intrigued enough to buy it, click on the link and I’ll get 6%, without it costing you an extra cent.)

The Amazon description says, “First times get the glory and the high fives. When you first rode your bicycle without training wheels or got that first haircut without the booster board, the whole world applauded. But what about those last times, as forgotten as a petrified Fruit Loop under the sofa?

“One day you’re a kid playing hide and go seek and jacks on the front stoop and next thing you know you’ve moved on. No more “Ollie ollie oxen-free” and “Onesies and twosies. That changes now. In fact, we here at the First Book of Last Times remember them and celebrate them. And then we kick off our shoes and slide in our socks.”

That’s the old skate case

That’s the skate case I mentioned in my piece about my grandson’s 7th birthday and my memories of skating at Hanover and Maryann roller rinks in Cape.

Brother Mark crawled up in Mother’s attic to look for it when he went to Cape for Labor Day. Thanks to him for the photos.

The funny thing is, I would have SWORN the picture of the girl was white. I guess I must have been thinking of the trim at the top and not the red girl skater. That poor case sure has its share of dents and dings.

See, the wheels ARE wood

I hope Son Matt will believe me now that the skate wheels WERE made out of wood. Looks like someone took the shoelace out of the left skate. I thought I had a pompom on the toes, too, but I could be wrong there. The rubber toe stops are worn down quite a bit. Once you got proficient, you usually stopped or slowed down by turning your skate sideways to scrub off the speed. That kept you from wearing out the toe stops. You’d also use the stops for quick starts by tilting the skate down and pushing off the rubber for the first couple of strokes, sort of like a runner used a starting block.

I don’t know what the leather strap was for, nor where the red paint on the side of the wheel and the side of the shoe came from. The red paint was probably the work of my destructive younger brothers, who destroyed my pristine comic book collection as soon as I went off to college.

The wheels look like they’re covered in dust. Do I recall correctly that the Hanover rink would put a resin powder or something on the floor to give us better traction? Or was that just some kind of absorbent to blot up the spilled blood?

What does this have to do with the Last Times book?

It occurred to me when I looked as these photos that I don’t remember the last time I put those skates on. I wonder if I KNEW it was the Last Time? Wife Lila remembers going skating with me at Hanover. I wonder if the Last Time was with her?

On the way to dinner with Son Adam, we were talking about this topic, which caused her to flash on a time when he was sleeping on the living room floor when he was four or five. “When I picked him up, I thought, is this going to be the last time I’m going to be able to do this?”

I thought the last time I walked out of the newspaper after close to 35 years would be traumatic, but it turned out that the paper left me long before I left it. I thought that would be a Major Last Time, but it was anticlimactic.

What are your Last Times?

If you need hints, click on the link below and buy the book. Retired newspaper guys need all the help they can get.

When did you have your last burger at Wimpy’s or a Mighty Caesar at Pfisters?
Or a barbecue at the original Blue Hole BBQ by the cement plant?
When was the last time you stayed in a motel where you had to put a quarter in a slot to keep the TV playing? Or in one with Magic Fingers?
When did you last think of a Cape phone number as being EDgewater5-XXXX or a Jackson number being CIrcle2-XXXX?
When did you last cruise down Broadway after putting in a buck’s worth of gas?
When was the last time you crossed the old bridge?
When was the last time your mother left you off at the comic book rack while she was shopping at the grocery store?
When was the last time you rode holding onto the front of the grocery cart and pretending it was a railroad car?
When was the last time you pumped your arm up and down to get a truck driver to honk (scaring the wits out of your dad?)

Let’s hear it from you.

September 5, 2011February 26, 2015

Casting about at the Fair

It’s getting to be Southeast Missouri District Fair time again. That means it’s gonna be cold and rainy or hot and dusty or both. I shared photos of the 1964 Midway last year. I ran across a couple sleeves of other activities to celebrate this year’s Fair.

The caption under this September 16, 1967 Missourian photo said, “Too many fishing rods in the same place created a tangle that called for adult assistance at the casting pool at the District Fair Friday night. Chris Sawyer, whose tackle is in distress, watches intently as Richard Holekamp, middle, a state farm forester, and B.F. Carr, 2823 Lear Drive, seek to unravel matters. Young Sawyer is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Jim Tom Sawyer, 1431 Rose.

The Carrs and the Sawyers were the big winners in the casting contest.

Photo gallery of Chris Sawyer

Chris really took his casting seriously. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to move through the gallery. I’ll have a few more fair pictures later in the week.

September 4, 2011June 23, 2015

Glee – Advance Style

Mother, my harshest critic and biggest whip-cracker, took me to task this morning because I didn’t run pictures of the Advance High School Band with the Advance photos I posted.

I tried to explain that I like to hold some stuff back for a slow day. To keep from getting cut out of the will, though, I thought I’d better feature the band and the 1936-1937 Glee Club.

(I put Glee in the headline, hoping that people who are searching for the TV show might land here by mistake, boosting my traffic stats.)

That’s Mother on the right side, holding a clarinet. (Click on any image to make it larger.)

Southeast Missouri High School Band

In the fall of 1937, students from all over the region and their teachers gathered at the State Teachers College to form the Southeast Missouri High School Band. W.A. Shivelbine from Cape was one of the conductors.

Cape Central was well represented

Much to my surprise, I found out that she was one of only two Advance students listed as playing in the band. She was on the clarinet and Thornton Jenkins played the trombone. Cape Central was well represented by some familiar names.

1937 Glee Club

The 1937 Glee Club doesn’t look particularly gleeful. Mother’s in the front row on the left. “I couldn’t sing,” she confessed.

September 3, 2011June 23, 2015

Advance School Photos from the ’30s

September 3 is the Advance Hornet Alumni Banquet. My grandmother, Elsie Adkins Welch, and my mother, Mary Welch Steinhoff, were Advance High School graduates. Mother was in the Class of 1938. When I was home a few weeks back, she pulled out an old scrapbook I’d never seen before. In honor of the reunion, I’ll throw up some of her class photos. (Click on any photo to make it larger.)

Mother thinks this was her third or fourth grade class. She’s in the front row, third from the right. She recognizes her “fancy” socks. Fern Sample is to her left in the photo; Bonnie Jenkins is on the right.

“I didn’t much like him”

This is a photo with a mixture of classes in it. Mother is fourth from the right in the second row. The teacher in the dark suit at the right was Mr. Tippitt (Tippett?). “I didn’t much like him, she said.

I find the picture interesting from a photography standpoint. If you look at the right-hand size, you can barely make out some words at the edge of the frame. That’s an indication that it was a contact print made from a 5″x7” negative. Most photographs were made on smaller film and then enlarged.

Juniors in 1937

One of the pages in Mother’s Senior Memory Book was labeled Juniors / Seniors. This was the photo associated with juniors. If she was in the Class of 1938, this would have been taken in the 1937 school year. She is in the front row, third from the right.

I really like the girl in the front row, third from the left, with the tie and the mischievous grin.

Class of 1938 – Check out the belt buckles

This is labeled Seniors, so it must be the Class of 1938.

She’s third from the left in the front row. Check out the “A” belt buckles on the two boys standing at the left. The boy in the back row, fourth from the right is sporting one, too. I wonder if they were the Advance version of a letter sweater? Note how they are all wearing sweaters, but they are careful to have them pulled up to display the the buckles.

Undated school photo

She thought this must have been an upperclass photo, but she couldn’t be sure. She’s third from the right in the front row.

Caps and gowns

This must have been the Class of 1938 in their caps and gowns. It looks like there is a hornet in the window pane on the left. Mother said her class was the one that came up with that as the name for the school’s mascot. She’s second from the right in this shot.

More graduates

This is a larger group shot. She’s to the right of the middle in the front row. (She had a knack for getting in the front of photos, even then.) Mother hasn’t decided if she’s going down for the reunion. She doesn’t think there are many of her class left.

Here are the birthday pages from her Memory Book. We’ll have more of her scrapbook photos coming up if there are enough Advance readers to make it worthwhile.