Cape Girardeau History and Photos

June 23, 2013May 7, 2021

Cafeteria: For Sustenance and Socializing

It’s fun to look at the faces in Central’s cafeteria in 1964, but it’s more fascinating to look at the variety of food on the trays.

I spot pineapple slices with cottage cheese and a cherry. The girl in the foreground has something on a bun, but she also has what might be two deserts and a Sealtest milk. Vicky Berry, second from left, has a copy of English Grammar and Composition just like the one on my bookshelf. I have to confess that I don’t open it any more now than I did then, but it’s comforting to know I COULD if I wanted to.

I hope that’s not a rolled-up gym suit in the middle of the table.

Is that Carol Klarsfeld actually studying?

I never saw Carol Klarsfeld with her nose buried in an Adventures in American Literature book like that before. She does not appear to be reading for pleasure. There is a couple in the background exchanging a meaningful glance. Or, maybe she’s just asking if he wants her desert.

Sealtest milk was a big seller

I’m surprised at how many students are drinking Sealtest milk. Some trays have two and three cartons on them. I can’t quite tell what’s on the tray in the right foreground. I see some form of desert, a biscuit, something that looks like beans and, maybe, a piece of chicken. I saw chicken bones on another plate, so that’s a possibility.

That’s Bonnie Strom on the left. I went K through 8 at Trinity Lutheran School with her.

This looks like a freshman table

Those boys look too young to be in high school. Gary Schemel is in the center of the background.

Cafeteria photo gallery

Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the side to move through the gallery. Identify the people if you wish, but I’d rather hear descriptions of what they are eating.

June 22, 2013

Joe Snell

I’ve been thinking a lot about my former Troop 8 buddy, Tiger photo staffer and classmate Joe Snell. I found this photo of him cutting up outside the Central’s darkroom on the same day I got the sad news that his mother had died.

Norma Ruth Snell

Here is the obit that appeared in The Missourian:

Norma Ruth Snell, 96, of Cape Girardeau passed away Saturday, June 15, 2013, at Southeast Hospital in Cape Girardeau.

She was born Dec. 19, 1916, in Frohna, Mo., daughter of Joseph R. and Edna I. Hellwege Mueller. She and Stanley Lee Snell were married May 18, 1946, in Cape Girardeau. He passed away April 15, 2010.

Norma was baptized and confirmed at Concordia Lutheran Church in Frohna and was a member of Trinity Lutheran Church in Cape Girardeau. She was a perpetual care-giver to friends and relatives at the Lutheran Home.

Loving survivors include a son, Joseph (Marguerite) Snell of Lake St. Louis, Mo.; daughter-in-law Sharon Snell of Cape Girardeau; four grandchildren, Jennifer (David) Doering of O’Fallon, Mo., Joseph Snell Jr. of Imperial, Mo., Joseph (Julie) Vetter of Creve Coeur, Mo., and Mark (Agata) Vetter of Brooklyn, N.Y; and five great-grandchildren.

In addition to her husband, she was preceded in death by her parents; a son, the Rev. Jerry L. Snell; and a sister.

Stan Snell

I didn’t know Joe’s mother very well, but his dad, Stan Snell, was a favorite of the boys in Troop 8. He was a dead ringer for Popeye the Sailor Man.

He died April 15, 2010. The comments that followed the post I did on Stan Snell brought back a lot of fond memories.

June 21, 2013April 10, 2021

We Had 3-D: View-Master

While I was packing to head back to Cape next week I kicked a dusty box in the back of the closet. In it was a stack of View-Master reels. I don’t know why the were called reels, but that’s the name that shows up on the official Fisher-Price View-Master website.

I didn’t dig though the box to see if the heavy, Bakelite viewer was in there. I’m disappointed. The viewers are selling for less than $20 on eBay. I guess it can stay hidden for a few more years.

Not only did I have the stereoscopic viewer, which simulated 3-D by having two slides that you looked through at the same time that had been photographed by lenses slightly apart, but I had a View-Master projector, too. It ran on wall power and got so hot you could probably fry an egg on it.

When you were traveling across the country, you had to pick up a bumper sticker and View-Master reel from just about every attraction you stopped at. In later years, View-Master started phasing out the scenics and started producing more cartoon characters and TV stories.

I spent many a happy hour sliding those reels into the viewer, then reaching for the advance lever – click – slunk – new magic pictures. Unless, of course, the holes didn’t engage and you’d have to keep pressing the lever until they did. If you got impatient, you could bend the lever or even break it off. Patience, young man, patience.

June 20, 2013February 13, 2021

Remember EDgewater? Or CIrcle?

Do you remember giving out your telephone number as EDgewater 5-7543? Or, if you lived in Jackson, your telephone exchange was CIrcle.

This rotary dial phone was one I picked up used somewhere. It shows a number after area codes were assigned and names phased out. The phone in the basement is one that I talked on when I was a teenager, though. (Mother had been paying a couple of bucks a month to Ma Bell for the phone for 30 or 40 years. I wanted to hang on to it for sentimental reasons, so I paid the phone company a flat fee to own it.)

If you are a phone junkie, there is a site that has pictures of telephone central offices all over the country. Some of the ones in SE Missouri are interesting because they sit on fault lines and have had to be retrofitted for earthquakes.

When I was offered the job of telecommunications manager just before I left for Missouri on vacation in 1991, it dawned on me as I was driving through little towns like Old Appleton that if I took the job, I’d be in charge of more phones than a lot of towns had. I ended up taking the job and doing it until I retired in 2008.

Exchanges for this area

Advance – RAmond
Benton – KIngsdale
Bloomfield = LOcust
Cape Girardeau – EDgewater
Chaffee – TUlip
Jacksopn – CIrcle
Sikeston – GRanite