Photos around Cape Archives

October 26, 2014

99 South Park Avenue

Mother said she remembered buying meat at this building at 99 South Park Avenue when it was a grocery store. It’s at the corner of Park Avenue and Merriwether Street.

The only quick story I could find was in the Society News of the March 26, 1942, Missourian:

“The marriage of Mrs. Hattie Huckstep Abbot and J.C. McLain of this city was performed by Rev. C.E. Fleshman at the Nazarene Church at 3 o’clock Wednesday afternoon.

“Until resigning Saturday, Mrs. McLain was employed at the Roth Tobacco Co. Mr. McLain, who operated a grocery at 99 South Park Avenue 12 to 14 years, until a year ago, has bought a residence from his mother, Mrs. Katherine McLain, at 103 South Park Avenue, where Mr. and Mrs. McLain will live and will open a grocery store.”

{That has to be one of the world’s longest run-on sentences.]

“His mother, who lived at 103 South Park Avenue, will move to 101 South Park Avenue.“

October 21, 2014

Sydney’s Fresh Veggies

Ridge Road in Jackson is an interesting street. A couple of blocks from the slow-moving golfer who had me confused, Mother and I spotted Sydney’s Fresh Veggies stand. Produce stands aren’t unheard of in South Florida, but this one had a twist that we don’t run into often down there.

It believed that people are honest

Nobody was in sight. There was a wooden cash box that may or may not have been bolted down, secured by a lock that I think my nail clippers could have defeated.

On top of the box was a slot, with two noted: “Money goes here,” and “If you need change, call xxx-xxxx and someone will be out.”

I almost left a tip for Sydney for restoring my faith in human goodness.

October 19, 2014

Parking Downtown and at Casino

You wouldn’t have had to fight for parking at noon-thirty on Wednesday August 13 when Ernie Chiles and I flew over the Isle Cape Girardeau Casino.

I didn’t look at it under a magnifying glass, but I DID blow it up a bit on the screen to let me count about 244 cars, two buses and what might be an RV in the parking lots. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

Here are some earlier posts about the casino and shoe factory area.

Downtown parking

I looked at a series of frames that showed the downtown shopping area parking lots from the city lot south of Independence to the two lots north of Broadway, plus Water Street and east of Spanish Street. The photos were taken on the same pass, just minutes before the Casino photo. I counted about 210 vehicles ion the downtown shopping district.

[I cheated a bit. Because of the angle, I couldn’t see cars parked on the east side of Main, so I doubled the number of cars parked on the west side, assuming that the same number of parking spaces were occupied on that side.]

(Sorry for the cloud shadows at the top left. I tried get Ernie to lasso them and drag them out of the way, but he said that kind of thing was out of his pay grade.

It would be interesting to know how many of the cars in both locations were owned by employees rather than customers.

Other downtown aerials

October 18, 2014

Cape Supply Co. Warehouse

Mother and I picked up a chicken pot pie from KFC, then we headed north on Sheridan Drive to go home. When I got to the large building at 24 South Sheridan, I stopped to try to remember what that used to be. Roofers Mart is in it today, but I knew that had to be a recent tenant.

The Missourian came through, as usual. The paper had a full page advertisement announcing the formal opening of the new Cape Supply Company in the November 7, 1951, edition. It described a “modern warehouse” that was built with floor space “considerably more than an acre which is entirely free of posts.” Railroad tracks could accommodate 10 boxcars, with six of them being unloaded at one time. It could hold 100 carloads of product, which would supply dealers within a 125-mile radius. It had enough truck docks to handle 25 vehicles at a time.

In typical newspaper advertising puffery the paper said, “These facilities provide the most efficient means of merchandising and handling of building materials known.”

Dow Chemical came in 1966

Dow Chemical Co. announced in the June 11, 1966, Missourian that it was establishing a manufacturing plant in the former Cape Supply Co. warehouse. The plant, Dow executive Paul Meeske said, would produce insulated building materials for use in the construction of low-temperature spaces.

I don’t know what companies occupied the space between Dow Chemical and Roofers Mart.

I thought Ralph Edwards may have been there at one time, but I couldn’t find any stories to support me. I also vaguely remember a company that made some kind of fishing equipment in Cape that might have been in there. Can anyone confirm my theories or come up with better ones?