Photos around Cape Archives

December 4, 2014

David Louis Motel Sign

Here’s another dip into the Terry Hopkins General Sign box.

When I was doing daily picture pages at The Athens Messenger, I had a technique for having an easy day. I’d shoot something like a old general store and run an outside photo on Monday with the caption, “Tomorrow we’ll go inside.” That let me get a two-fer out of the story.

This is going to be somewhat like that. Today we’ll look at a sign advertising the David Louis Motel, a name that didn’t stick around long. The next day, we’ll go into the history of the renamed motel and see photos of what is there today. You can click on the photos to make them larger.

My perspective has changed

I spent years editing my shooting session down to the most striking and story-telling image and ignoring the rest because newspaper space was finite.

Hanging around with museum folks like Carla Jordan in Altenburg and Curator Jessica in Athens has given me a totally different perspective: I crop more loosely to keep background objects visible and I run more photos that are similar but contain slightly different details. It’s those little details that I used to crop out that contain valuable historical information.

This is a good example. The picture at the top of the page shows the sign best, but looking off to the left edge of the frame above shows the old Alvarado service station and restaurant with its sign proclaiming “The Best in Foods” on its side.

Ward’s Big Star

A frame from a slightly different angle shows the yellow sign for Ward’s Big Star Super Market at the left. I can remember going in there lots of times with Mother.

The store must have been getting bread deliveries: that’s a Hart’s Bread truck on the left and a Bunny Bread truck on the right.

The two red trucks are from Central Asphalt. I thought maybe they were paving the parking lot, but the lot is full of cars.It looks like they may be working behind Ward’s.

There’s no date stamp on the slide mounts. Anybody want to guess about when it was taken based on the cars in the photos?

The trees are devoid of leaves, so it must be either fall or winter. The day is warm enough that the man driving by has his window down, but chilly enough that he’s wearing a long-sleeve shirt.

December 4, 2014May 3, 2021

Yes, That IS a Camel

If you look off to the west as you motoring north of Fruitland, you are liable to see a tall neck sticking above a fence bordering the service road. THAT’S Miss C, a real, live camel.

Behind her are static camels, lions, sailors, soldiers, gargoyles, snakes, alligators and anything else that can be fashioned from concrete.

Concrete Castings of Fruitland

Concrete Castings is the brainchild of Clarence Lee Shirrell, who sold the business to his long-time employee Crista Meyer a few years back. He still maintains a presence, acting as tour guide or casting finisher-upper every time I’ve stopped by.

You name it, they’ve got it

There’s something for everyone. In addition to the camel and the concrete figures, there’s a petting zoo with peacocks, goats, chickens and other assorted beasts and birds.

Concrete Castings photo gallery

I shot these photos way back in 2013 and promptly forgot about them. My notes have long gone cold (that’s a fancy way of saying I misplaced them), so I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. Click on any image to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move around.

December 1, 2014November 28, 2020

Cairo’s Railroad Bridge

You can find out more than you ever wanted to know about the railroad industry in general and the Cairo Railroad Bridge in particular at the Bridges & Tunnels website.

By the late 1800s, as many as 500,000 railroad cars a year were ferried across the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. Bridging the rivers was hampered by the Civil War, economics, engineering challenges and the steamboat industry, which saw railroads as an attack on its livelihood.

Click on the photo to make it large enough to see Cairo on the right and Kentucky on the left . Just beyond the curve in the background is where the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers join at Fort Defiance, the southernmost point in Illinois.

First bridge finished in 1889

The first Cairo Bridge was an engineering marvel. The 10,650-foot, 52-truss bridge was the longest steel bridge in the world at the time. The total length, including trestles was 3.875 miles.

On October 29, 1899, the first train, consisting of nine 75-ton Illinois Central Mogul engines, the heaviest ones in service on the line, inched across the span. After they made it across the Ohio River safely, the train reversed and picked up a tenth engine, and blasted across the bridge at full speed. The second train to cross was full of newspapermen. I’m surprised they weren’t the first test train.

The Ohio River and the railroad bridge are in the foreground. The blue-green bridge in the background is the I-57 bridge crossing the Mississippi River into Missouri.

Bridge needed replacing by mid-1940s

The website reported that a 6.6 earthquake in the New Madrid Sesmic Zone cracked a pier on the bridge in 1895, but repairs were made right away. A 1946 study showed quite a few dangerous deficiencies. Half a century of pounding by heavy loads had worn out key bars and rollers. An anemometer was installed and trains were prohibited from using the bridge when winds were high.

Work on a replacement that used some of the existing piers started in the summer of 1949; it was completed in May 1952.

This photo shows the east side of the bridge and the high levee that protects Cairo from the north.

Keep me in mind

There’s a small DONATE button at the top right of the post.

Thanks for reading my ramblings and thanks for helping offset my expenses.

November 28, 2014May 3, 2021

Connie Crete Up Close

I’m not exactly sure what this man is doing, and I’m not sure I want to know. It was in the big box of prints and color slides General Sign Company had taken of signs and other stuff it had created from the 40s through at least the 1960s. Terry Hopkins, whose Dad worked there, said he didn’t know who the man was, but it wasn’t his dad. June 1964 was stamped on the cardboard slide mount.

Terry said General Sign made lots of fiberglass figures at the Kingshighway plant, including cows, BIG John, and Shoney’s little guys. I thought this gal looked familiar.

It was Connie Crete

A little deeper in the box was the answer: the girl was Connie Crete, perched high above Cape Ready Mix and down the street from Schneider Equipment Co. at Bloomfield Road and South Kingshighway.

Over the years, the concrete company would be known for the imaginative decorations its concrete trucks would sport. Dad said he bought concrete from Cape Ready Mix because he figured any company that was that creative and kept its trucks so clean probably also turned out a good product.

You can click on the photos to make them larger.