Cape Girardeau History and Photos

June 6, 2013

A Pie Sale?

The negative sleeve said “Pie sale, but I couldn’t imagine a pie sale generating this big a crowd.

Well, it turned out to be either a piece of bad handwriting on my part (or a piece of bad reading). It actually said “pic sale,” as in “picture sale.” The Girardot yearbook staff was selling leftover photos after the final deadline was met, setting off a mad scramble.

My internal facial recognition software in woefully inadequate. Wife Lila and her yearbooks help put some names to faces – Jane Coile and Joe Snell, for two. The girl in the middle who is looking at the camera is driving me crazy. I know her face, but I can’t think of her name to save myself.

Please excuse the dust spots

The film was in pretty bad shape, so I gave up after getting most of the spots off faces. (Sorry for missing a spot on your nose, Margaret.)

There’s an interesting mix of students here. I think Rick Meinz, Class of ’64 is on the left, Joe Snell, Class of 65 has his back to the camera, and Margaret Randol and Bill East, Class of ’66 are on the right.

Photographic feeding frenzy

I can’t believe how many people showed up to look through the photos. Names I am willing to guess on include Diane Meystedt, Jane Coile, Bob Swaim and Susan Welker. You’re going to have to fill in the rest.

You can make the photos larger by clicking on them.

June 5, 2013

1964 Award Ceremony

This is the 1964 last day of school award ceremony. I’m surprised to see both male and female students wearing shorts on stage.

The three fellows sitting on the left were the 1964 and 1965 Student Body Presidents, Kenny Fischer, Mike Price and Jim Feldmier. Bill Wilson and I ran against Jim for SBP. I don’t know why Bill didn’t win, but I blame my loss on general candidate ineptitude and picking Bill Hopkins to be my campaign manager. Mike Daniels is getting a handshake from principal Fred Wilferth.

Preston Foster

Milton Ueleke may be recognizing Preston Foster for having the greatest height discrepancy between presenter and presentee. Cornelia Glockel looks on.

Susan Seabaugh

I recognize Susan Seabaugh because the first big assignment debate coach Ruby Davis gave me was to give the nominating speech for Susan at a student congress or something. I figured she trusted me with the task because Susan probably had such a lock on the office that even I couldn’t foul it up. The last thing Ruby did was to scrub my speech for any words that would trigger my Swampeast Missouri twang. Every once in awhile I let slip the word “warsh” just so I can hear Ruby spinning in her grave.

Here was another story about the last day of school.

Photo gallery of award winners

I’ll let you figure out who is who and what they did that was special enough to make it to the stage. There are a few faces who look familiar, but I can’t put a name to them. You WILL see Robert Sheets and Bill Kuster. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the sides to move through the gallery.

June 4, 2013

W.T. Grant Company

These two shots were tacked onto the end of a bunch of pictures taken at Central. I liked the young man reading a comic book because I whiled away many a happy hour perusing the comic books in Child’s while Mother was shopping. I, being one who believed in keeping my comics pristine would NEVER have folded the pages back like this miscreant is doing. It caused me untold pain when I came home from college and saw what my destructive younger brothers had done to my collection.

[Note:Wife Lila asked, “Do you REALLY want to label the young man as miscreant?” It is obvious that SHE didn’t collect comic books. You gotta call ’em as you see ’em.]

Grants operated from 1906 to 1976

When you look at this slightly fuzzy photo of a little boy in cowboy boots looking and wishin,’ you know where the phrase “like a kid in a toy store” came from. The sign behind him lets us know he’s shopping in Grants, “Famous for Extra Saving and Extra Quality.”

I thought Grants was in the Town Plaza, and a quick check of the 1969 City Directory confirmed that it was at 2138 William Street. The manager was Tom Larson.

The first W.T. Grant Co. 25 Cent Store opened in Lynn, Mass., in 1906. Sources say that they were slower than Kresge stores to adapt to the grown of the suburbs and the change in shopping habits. I can remember seeing Kresge stores (although I’m not sure if Cape had one), but I didn’t realize until now that they were the forerunner of K-Mart. W.T. Grant’s bankruptcy in 1976 was the second-biggest in U.S. history.

I probably helped contribute to their bankruptcy because I don’t recall going out of my way to shop there.

June 4, 2013

Chuck Murdoch’s Kids

I’ve run a picture of Missourian Sports Editor Chuck Murdoch a couple of times: here and here. The first time I did, some of his relatives ran across it and left the following comments

Judy Weiss: “Chuck was husband’s uncle. I had not seen that picture before. Thanks!”
Norman Weiss: “Unfortunately cancer took my Uncle Chuck’s life but many great memories remain. Trivia about my Uncle Chuck before he became a sports writer, he was a St. Louis Cop.”
L. Louton: “Oh wow, just stumbled across this article – Chuck Murdoch was my grandpa. It puts a smile on my face to see such a great pic of him!”
Cara Murdoch: Would you be able to send those photos of Dad(Chuck)? I would love to get copies! And, of course, my little sister, Terri and little brother, Roy. Any of Mike(big brother)?

Chuck’s kids

I KNEW I had some pictures I had taken of Chuck’s kids for a New Year’s Eve illustration.

Let’s set the record straight: I was lousy at shooting illustrations and setting up photos in general. These hokey photos prove it. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

The microfilm copy of the December 31, 1966, newspaper was missing part of the caption, but the part you could read said “Terri, 5, and Roy, 4, children of Mr. and Mrs. Charles W. Murdoch, 106 Edgewood, thought it would be great fun to practice for the arrival of a new year. At 8 o’clock Terri and Roy were going strong.”

Midnight was a different story

“But as the clock ticked off the minutes and hours, eyes got heavier and by midnight the sandman had called. Well, maybe next year will be different and sleep won’t be so overwhelming.”

A favorite sports editor

Chuck was one of my favorite sports editors. To be frank, most sports editors fit into one of two categories: former high school athletes wanting to relive their glory days or ones who were dumber than a packet of possums.

The latter would drive us crazy. One of them would send you out on the most hackneyed situation with an assignment sheet that would invariably read, “Avoid cliche shot.”

Another one couldn’t read a sport schedule. The photographer would show up at where an event was supposed to be held and find out that it wasn’t at THAT field or on that date. We couldn’t dope out how a couple of thousand spectators could manage to figure out where the game was being played, but the sports editor couldn’t.

Chuck was easy to work with, tried to get me as many $5 assignments as he could sneak by jBlue, and didn’t take himself or his job too seriously.

Gentlemanly politically incorrect

Much of what Chuck’s persona wouldn’t pass today’s politically correctness, but he was careful about his language around “the ladies” in the office. He COULD fog up the place with his cigar, though.

His watch says 11:20. If it’s AM, that means he has wrapped up his section for today’s deadline and he’s wandering around kibitzing; if it’s PM, then we’ve both made it back to the office after covering a game. I doubt that’s the case. I would have had to go home to process the film before going back to the office to drop off the prints so Chuck would have them when he came in around 4:30 in the morning. With those kind of hours, I doubt he was hanging around in the evening. He’d been banging out sports stories for so long he wouldn’t have been staying up late agonizing over every word.

A technical side note: the pictures of Chuck were taken with the half-frame camera I carried for “goofing around.” It shot two photos in a normal 35mm frame, so I could get 72 shots out of a 36-exposure roll. The trade-off was that the quality was only half as good. On top of that, this roll had some uneven development streaks. I guess it would be the equivalent of taking photos with a cellphone camera instead of a real camera these days: you sacrifice some quality for convenience.