Cape Girardeau History and Photos

December 23, 2013

The Bill and Ruby Show

Speech teacher and debate coach Ruby Davis was a diminutive force to be reckoned with. She was on the short list of teachers who had a major impact on my life, even if my Swampeast Missouri twang drove her to despair. As I’ve mentioned before, she could dectect the “r” in “warsh” at a hundred yards, even if you were whispering.

She never discouraged my political ambition to be President of the United States in 1984 – the earliest year the Constitution said I could serve – even though she cringed when I told her that I would invite her to Warshington to see me sworn in.

This series of two photos is a chicken-and-egg conundrum. I’m not sure which came first. Bill Hopkins’ sneak attack on Ruby (which was immediately picked up by the eyes in the back of her head) or the next shot.

You don’t mess with Ruby

I’m betting the retaliation photo was the second in the sequence.

So far as I know, no students nor teachers were harmed in the filming of this encounter.

I’m sure Ruby would be happy to know that I gave up my dream of being POTUS after campaign manager Bill Hopkins torpedoed my chances of even making it to President of the Student Body.

She would be even more surprised to learn that Bill – someone she probably thought would be lucky to become a bartender – actually became a member of the bar and a judge who was never indicted. (So far as I know.)

December 22, 2013November 27, 2020

Picking the Perfect Tree

I’m pretty sure Missourian editor jBlue gave me a Christmas bonus in 1966 without calling it one: he ran five of my photos on the front page. That’s $25 in my pocket when my salary was in the neighborhood of $50 a week. Here are most of the shots that ran, plus a couple of extras for good measure. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

The caption on the Dec. 12, 1966, paper read, “Louis Owens, 805 South Sprigg, asks Mrs. Owens if the specimen he holds is satisfactory.”

“I found it!”

Joy Metje, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Earlie Metje, McClure, Ill., shouts she’s found the one she wants.

It’s a cold day

To Jimmy Trickey, son of Mr. and Mrs. James Trickey, it’s a cold day and he wishes mom and dad would hurry and make up their minds.

Mother and daughter choice

Mrs. Lowery B. Miller, white coat, and her daughter, Diane, discuss a tree.

Not the Stones

The paper ran a photo of Mr. and Mrs. John Stone and son, Timmy, 1726 Stoddard Court, but I couldn’t find the negative. I’ll substitute this young woman with a boy instead.

Is this Milton Ueleke?

I don’t know for sure, but this pipe-chomping man looks like “Uncle Milty” Ueleke, science teacher at Central High School.

It’s the season

If you want to leave me a lump of coal or something better, click on the yellow DONATE button at the top right of the page.

I had a lab tech who would always give me a lump of coal as a present. I should have saved them for the fireplace.

December 21, 2013

Downtown Chillicothe, Ohio

I’m cleaning up some loose ends from my Midwestern meanderings. Here is the Ross County Courthouse in Chillicothe, Ohio, built back in the day when public buildings were supposed to be imposing.

I figured it would be easy to come up with the history of the building, but Google was light on information. The courthouse was built in 1858. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

Chillicothe was the first and third capital

Chillicothe was a rolling stone of a state capital. It served as the capital of Ohio from the beginning of statehood in 1803 until 1810 when Zanesville became the capital for two years as part of a state legislative compromise to get a bill passed. In 1812, the legislature moved the capital back to Chillicothe. In 1816, the state legislature voted to move the capital again, to Columbus, to have it near the geographic center of the state

Part of Underground Railroad

Wikipedia reports that migrants to Chillicothe included free blacks, who came to a place with fewer restrictions than in the slave states. They created a vibrant community and aided runaway slaves coming north. As tensions increased prior to the breakout of the American Civil War, the free black community and white abolitionists maintained stations and aid to support refugees on the Underground Railroad. Slaves escaping from the South traveled across the Ohio River to freedom, and then up the Scioto River to get more distance from their former homes and slave hunters.

Strange net on building

I never did figure out what the netting on the top two floors of this building was for. If it is designed to protected pedestrians from falling bricks or to keep birds away, it needs to be replaced.

The Carlisle Building

If newspaper stories are any indication, the community has been trying to figure out what to do with the Carlisle building for more than a decade, since arsonists caused major damage to it. The local paper has its archives behind a paywall, so I could only read a couple of paragraphs of each story.

The Columbus Dispatch reported on June 22, 2012, that city officials and developers announced plans to spend up to $7.5 million to rehabilitate the 1880s building and reopen its doors by mid-2014. They might pull it off, but it looks like they have a long way to go. Still, it’s a neat building.

A story by Pat Medert, a local historian, said the cornerstone of the Carlisle Building was put in place in April of 1885. It contains a copy of the city ordinances, a report of the Chillicothe schools, the local newspapers, a photograph of Andrew Carlisle, a picture of the old building and a list of the tenants who occupied the old building.

December 19, 2013

Boy with Bumbershoot

These photos of a boy and his bumbershoot got me thinking about clothing and customs. I don’t recall carrying an umbrella much until we moved to Florida where we can count on brief, but fierce localized thunderboomers showing up just about every afternoon in the summer.

I don’t know who this youngster is, where it was taken or even when. That storefront peeking out of the side might give someone a clue. He might have kept his head dry, but his feet clearly in the splash zone.

Ken in the rain

Here I am covering a night football game in Logan, Ohio, with nothing but a jacket and a rain hat to keep me dry. I think I stuck a towel under my jacket to wipe the camera off from time to time, but those old Nikon F bodies were pretty bulletproof. Was there a “sissiness” factor attached to umbrellas in those days? I definitely used an umbrella by the time I got to West Palm Beach.

At what age did boys stop wearing shorts?

There was a cutoff time for wearing shorts, too, wasn’t there?

I remember going to construction job sites with Dad when I was about 10 and wearing long pants. None of the guys on the crew wore shorts. In fact, they’d have been laughed off the job if they had shown up showing knee. MEN didn’t wear shorts to work.

That’s not the case these days, particularly in Florida.

How about blue jeans?

My uniform of the day is blue jeans (when I bother to put on pants to go out in public), but I don’t think I wore jeans at Central. Didn’t most of us wear chinos? Or course, there was the swish-swish sound of corduroy pants in the winter.

What other informal clothing standards did we have?

Of course, girls had a whole ‘nother’ set of official rules, including having to kneel down to make sure their skirts were long enough to touch the floor, but that’s a whole other topic.