Photos around Cape Archives

December 24, 2009

Before the Presses Quit Turning

When I was a kid growing up in Cape, it wasn’t uncommon for folks to gather on the sidewalk on the east side of The Southeast Missourian to watch the press in operation. Mural on Southeast Missourian There is something magical about The Big Iron rumbling away, pulling paper off huge rolls that weigh almost as much as a VW and spitting out the news at the other end. Those were kinder, gentler times; the huge window was bricked up when other cities were hit with riots and violent demonstrations in the 60s and 70s. For all it’s size and power, a printing press is a delicate machine that easily could be destroyed.

Newspapering was a sacred calling

Those of us who worked in the business in that era felt that we were answering a sacred call. Sounds corny, but I always felt like I was doing more than just a job for a paycheck.

The Three Counts

John Mueller, Rick Meinz and I had a brush with sacred callings, as this picture will attest. Well, actually, we were just dressed up for a play at Trinity Lutheran Church, but we should get some kind of credit for that. My biggest disappointment was that I couldn’t use one of my best lines, “We’re the Three Counts: Count de Bills, Count de Checks and Count de Change.” It’s a good thing the church had lightning rods.

Getting back to presses

One of the main reasons I ended up in West Palm Beach, FL, working for The Palm Beach Post was that I had been looking for the best photo papers in the country in the late 60s and early 70s. I subscribed to about a dozen papers and gradually let all the subscriptions lapse except The Post. It was doing the best day-to-day photo coverage with the best reproduction of any paper I had seen.

All good things have to end

By 2008, the economy in South Florida was in the toilet. Newspapers were sucking air as the real estate and classified advertising dried up. Big cuts were in the wind.

In August 2008, about 300 employees, including me, were offered buyout packages. At the end of the year, the biggest shoe dropped: The Post, which had a national reputation for fine press work, was going to outsource its printing to our biggest competitor in Ft. Lauderdale. Other papers would take over most of our distribution.

That subtracted about another 300 employees. In 18 months, the paper had cut nearly half of the original 1,400 workers.

I wanted to feel the magic

Even though I was no longer part of the paper, I wanted to feel the magic of a working press room one more time. I convinced some former coworkers to look the other way while I prowled around the production department two of the last weekends before the presses would be stilled forever.

These folks had made me look good in print for almost three decades. I’ve alway thought it was important for a worker to have a photo of themselves on the job to hand down to their kids and grandkids, so I burned CDs of the pictures for them to take home.

Go here to see the photographs. I really like some of them.

December 17, 2009December 14, 2015

Circus Elephant Comes to Town Plaza Shopping Center

If you needed any evidence that Cape Girardeau’s shopping district was moving west and away from the Main Street / Downtown area, look at Fred Lynch’s F/8 and Be There Blog with Frony’s picture of Santa arriving by helicopter at the Town Plaza.

I took these pictures of a circus elephant at the shopping center give or take a few months from Frony’s Santa visit.

The elephant hose-down pictures were taken at the Standard station at the southwest corner of the parking lot.

Here’s a gallery of the photos. (Click on any image to enlarge it and move from photo to photo by clicking on the edge of the picture.)

Elephant at Town Plaza

These are the kinds of events that would have taken place downtown a decade earlier. Little did we know then that the Town Plaza would suffer much the same fate as downtown a few decades later as the center shifted even more westward.

December 14, 2009November 28, 2011

Capaha Park Lagoon Ices over in 1968

Treading on thin ice, literally

Four folks brave – or foolish – enough to ignore a DANGER sign walk on the ice covering the Cape Girardeau Capaha Park Lagoon in late 1967 or early 1968.

This picture was on the end of a roll of film of buildings I was shooting for The Southeast Missourian’s year-end Achievement Edition. (In internal Missourian-speak, that was called the Atomic Edition. Never did learn why.)

When I came home from Ohio University on Christmas break, editor John Blue asked if I’d drive all over Southeast Missouri taking pictures of new construction.

Guidelines

Shoot all of the new commercial buildings you can find in each town.
Shoot a handful of new or remodeled residential buildings with a value of more than $25,000. (For awhile, I thought I might have a future as a property appraiser.)
Start at the far end of the circulation area and work my way to the center so they didn’t have to pay me mileage to backtrack.

Easy money for a college student

Most of the rolls of film had a note on them that said, “Printed 1/11/68,” so I’m going to assume they were shot within a week or 10 days of that date. It was a pretty good gig. Five dollars a shot, plus mileage. I’m sure I scored a couple hundred bucks for a week’s work.

That was good money in those days. When I left The Missourian to go to school in Ohio, I think I was making about $80 or $90 a week as a reporter.

December 14, 2009December 26, 2015

Second Christmas Shopper Mystery Solved

I posted a gallery of photos of Christmas shoppers last week that set off a scavenger hunt to figure out where they were taken. You can read about the search and eventual outcome here.

They cleared up where Santa was, but how about the other stores?

Missourian photographer Fred Lynch rode to the rescue here, too.

Here’s Fred’s account:

Ken’s pictures of Christmas shoppers inside a Rexall drug store were taken in Jackson. Not Cape Girardeau.

Fred asked Cathy Hancock at The Southeast Missourian’s Jackson office to take a look at Ken’s Rexall photos on his blog.

Cathy said: “I believe the drug store shot is Jackson Rexall Drugs, owned by John & Anita Schulte. Anita is the lady behind the counter. It was on High Street uptown and there was a Kroger store across the street, hence the bananas sign.”

Cathy is mostly correct

Fred walked inside the store Cathy remembered and was told that indeed it used to be a drug store. Now it is Amelia’s Fashion Exchange.

He called Cathy’s neighbor, who worked uptown before retiring, and learned that the grocery store was the A&P rather than Kroger. The A&P was located in what is now Siemer’s Best Brands Plus, an appliance store. He also confirmed the Jackson Rexall Drugs. So imagine looking through Amelia’s window and across the street in the window of Siemer’s is a sign for bananas.

By the way, Kroger was down the block from Rexall at the time.

Jim Vangilder provides more info

Jim Vangilder: These photos were taken in Jackson. The drug store was Kistner’s Rexall Drug. The A&P Grocery store was across the street. The Santa and package wrappers were in Priest’s Department Store. The photo with the china and glassware was Cox’s Variety Store.