Cape Girardeau History and Photos

March 9, 2015

BSA Official Twin Signal Set

Right here in front of you is an Official Boy Scout Twin Signal Set bought in the basement of Buckner’s for $4.25 about 55 or 56 years ago. Click on the photos to make them larger.

Contained two “sturdy plastic instruments”

Inside were two “sturdy plastic instruments” that would allow you to send Morse code to a buddy using buzzers or lights. Included was a length of wire to go between the two units and the batteries to power them.

Cheat sheet provided

In case you didn’t KNOW your Morse code, there was a handy-dandy chart on the top of the sending and receiving unit.

My KFVS television debut

I wrote about my first TV appearance in a 2011 post. (By the way, your computer isn’t broken. We didn’t have sound movies back in the old days.) Here’s how I told the story:

I think my TV debut might have been during Scout Week in the eighth grade or my freshman year. Boy Scout Troop 8 was supposed to have someone tap out “Scouting is fun” in Morse code, but the guy who was supposed to do it backed out at the last minute for some reason or other. I could send like a demon (but couldn’t receive worth two cents), so I was sent in as a sub.

Dad set up the family’s Bell & Howell 8mm movie camera to record the moment off the Zenith television in the basement. For what it’s worth, he had a guy working for him who could read code who pronounced my transmission flawless. I’m not sure who the Scout was looking in awe over my shoulder.

The whole escapade ended with future debate partner John Mueller being interviewed. I’m sure he said something about how important being able to send Morse code would be in an emergency. Unspoken was the fact that my buzzer couldn’t be heard on the far side of the room and that the little light on the key was a tiny flashlight bulb. I guess it was OK for close emergencies.

I could sell it for a profit

The bugs have gotten to the box in a few places, but I see a “Vintage Official Boy Scout Twin Signal Set” priced as high as $75 (or best offer) on ebay. One just sold for $9.99 a few minutes ago, so that’s probably what it’s really worth, give or take. Of course, MINE could carry the tag, “As seen on TV.”

You know, I should hold onto in case there’s an emergency where I need to send a message to someone sitting across from me in the same room. I can tap out “Scouting is fun” and S-O-S really well, but don’t expect me to translate anything you send me.

March 7, 2015

Trinity Lutheran Group Shots

I’m not sure both of these photos are mine. This photo’s lighting and overall tone looks more like it could have been taken by Master Photographer Paul Lueders.

I don’t recognize anyone in the photo. I’m going to guess they are members of a Trinity Lutheran School confirmation class. Click on the photos to make them large enough to see the faces.

Trinity graduates, maybe?

This looks like a different group than the one above, and their caps and gowns might make it an eighth grade graduation. Trinity Lutheran School also had a kindergarten graduation, but it’s pretty safe to say these aren’t kindergarteners.

The technical quality of this photo makes me think I took it. Where the picture at top of the page is evenly lit and has a full range of tones, this one appears to have been shot with one strobe light held high and off to the left. It got rid of most of the shadows, but the light is a bit harsh. The highlights are a little blown out, too. That’s because I tended to overexpose and overdevelop “to be safe,” leading to contrasty photos. That’s not a good thing when you’re shooting people in white robes.

So, Mr. Lueders, if that WAS your shot at the top, please forgive me for stealing your picture. I imagine you are too busy taking pictures of angels lounging around on cloud tops to have noticed, though.

Dodged a bullet

While I was still in high school, I was contacted by a company that wanted to hire me to shoot photos for a church book at Trinity. I don’t remember the details, but it was going to involve me convincing families to show up at the church to be photographed. The results would be assembled into a book the company would take advance orders for. I’d get a cut of the action, plus be able to sell prints to the families.

I turned the idea down. I figured if they offered ME the job, they were shady to begin with. It sniffed of something where they used a local to rope in the marks and collect the money for a product that would never be delivered. I didn’t have confidence that I had the technical skills to pull of the job, and I sure didn’t want to get run out of town on a rail by a bunch of German Lutherans with pitchforks if this turned out to be a scam.

March 6, 2015

Linemen Hanging Around

Editors like feature photos with unusual shapes because they allow them to do something different with page layouts. You wouldn’t want to go running in with some extreme like this on deadline, because of the work it would cause to change headline sizes, story placement and jumps, but it was great to have in the bucket for a slow day.

In West Palm Beach, Florida Power & Light (AKA FP&L or Florida Plunder & Loot) had a bunch of poles set up for training. Rookies would climb and reclimb the poles until they got good at it. You’d drive by to see half a dozen guys (is was all male then) playing catch with basketballs. A miss meant you had to climb down, retrieve the ball and climb back up.

I thought maybe that’s what was going on here until I looked more closely. It looks like the three guys on the poles are positioned to attach another piece of diagonal bracing after the fellow on the ground hoists it up to them.

The Kiss of Life

They would also practice doing the Kiss of Life: mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while hanging in the air.

Photographer Rocco Morabito won a Pulitzer prize for one of the most dramatic rescue photos I’ve ever seen, and one I had in the back of my mind on every spot news run.

Follow this link to see the photo, read Marabito’s account of taking it, and to find out what happened to the guy whose life was saved.

March 5, 2015

Snow on Cyders’ Mountain

Jessica Cyders, curator of the Athens County Historical Society and Museum in Athens, Ohio, and her husband, T.J., live on the top of a tall hill in a rural part of Athens County, a place that practically defines “rural area.”

How tall is the hill?

She texted this photo captioned, “TJ got the ATV stuck in the Ken Steinhoff Memorial Ditch. I just helped him pull it out with the winch. Snowshoes came in handy today.”

Steeper than it looks

The last time she and I took a road trip from Cape to Athens, we rolled into town late to find her driveway covered with wet leaves. “I don’t think you’re going to be able to make it up it,” she warned me.

I gunned the van. I mean, what does SHE know, she just lives there.

Just a little beyond where T.J. is standing, the road kicks up a few degrees. It was there that the traction control kicked in, then the wheels started spinning out. I conceded defeat and stomped on the brakes. The car started sliding back down the hill with all four wheels locked. I might as well have been on ice.

I booted her out to make it up to the house by herself, and started to back down the lane, which, unfortunately, has some curves in it. Every time I had to make a correction or step on the brakes, gravity would take over.

Ken Steinhoff Memorial Ditch

The next thing I knew, I was in a slow slide into a ditch. It didn’t matter if I gunned the engine or put on the brakes, it was just a slow-motion train wreck. I called Jessica on my cell to tell her about my predicament.

She and T.J. ambled down to see how bad the situation was. She had a smirk on her face.

T.J. teaches engineering at Ohio University, so I counted on him to take one look and say, “No problem. I’ll just go back to the shed and get some duct tape and some binder’s twine and we’ll have you out in less time than it’ll take the Little Woman to heat up some hot chocolate and bake us some cookies.”

Instead, he shook his head and said, “You need a wrecker.”

“Call me a wrecker”

I remember an exchange on the police scanner one night in the distant past: “Athens 1 to HQ, Call me a wrecker.”

“OK, Athens 1, you’re a wrecker.”

When it’s almost midnight-thirty on a cold, blustery, rainy weekend night, it’s not a good time to call for a wrecker. The first two companies said, “We’ll be there on Monday morning. If we can find you.”

The third guy said, “I’ve got my shoes off and I’m sitting where it’s nice and warm watching my girlfriend do her homework. But, I’ll be there shortly.”

I didn’t even ask how much it was going to cost. It didn’t matter.

The wrecker went sliding down the hill

About 40 minutes later, the wrecker showed up. After a little backing and filling, the driver hooked up a tow cable to my van. He told me to stay in the vehicle to “help” him try to move it. I’ve seen what happens when a cable snaps, so I wasn’t crazy about being in direct line of the tow, but I also couldn’t open the driver’s side door because it was up against a bank.

He took up the slack on the cable, the van gave a little lurch, then the wrecker started sliding toward me. He repositioned the wrecker, gave another pull, and got the same result.

It was time to get creative. He rigged a pulley to a tree on the opposite side of the road and said he was going to try to pull me crossways in the road, with the eventual hope that he could get me onto a solid surface pointing downhill.

When he finally got me to a 90-degree angle to the roadway, he said, “Give it the gas. See if you can pull yourself up and out.”

“You can’t see it in the dark, but about four feet in front of me is a steep drop-off that ends up in a creek,” I warned him. “If it grabs hold, you’re going to see a blur and hear a splash.”

“You’ll be OK,” he assured me.

He was right

The tires got some bite, I got pointed downhill, he unhooked the cable and said he’d go to the top of the hill to turn around, then he’d meet me at the bottom to settle up.

The trip down was a little interesting, but I made it down to flat ground where their lane meets what passes for a real road. I waited. And waited. And waited. After about 30 minutes, he pulled alongside me.

“I thought I was going to have to call a wrecker for the wrecker,” he said.

“Are you the owner or a worker bee?” I asked him.

“I own the company, but I’ll entertain an offer right now.”

The job cost me a hundred bucks plus a tip. Worth every penny of it.

I was about as happy as Curator Jessica doing a snow angel selfie.

[Thanks to Jessica for providing the photos.]