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Hirsch’s Northtown

When I published a piece on Hirsch’s Midtown, formerly known as Hirsch Bros. No. 1, and the establishment of Hirsch Bros. No. 2 as Hirsch’s Northtown, I mentioned that I didn’t think I had ever  been in the Mill Street and Main Street store.

Susan Fee Means commented on Facebook, “Ken – if you’d ever been to The Mule Lip, across from the old shoe factory on Main St, then you’d been to the Hirsch #2 store. Or at least the building.”

I led a sheltered life. I was never in The Mule Lip or its reincarnation as Margarita Mama’s. Now that the casino has leveled that area, I guess I missed my chance.

[Note: we made it as far as Lake City, Fla., tonight. I’m staying in a nice Comfort Suites I’ve stayed at before. I pulled in shortly before midnight after driving through moderate to heavy rain most of the day. The desk clerk gave me her “Your eyes sure are bloodshot super discount” that she said was even better than the alphabet soup list of names I usually give her.]

 

 

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Flood Creates Big Thirst

A Florida Power & Light dike containing a cooling pond at a power plant in Indiantown, Fla., broke in the middle of the night in 1979, washing a railroad locomotive off its tracks and sending residents scrambling to their rooftops for rescue. At first light, I waded into this bar in Port Mayaca because I saw people coming and going from it.

Thigh-deep water didn’t keep them from serving drinks.

The photo moved on the Associated Press wire. This is the original print I transmitted, including the caption. Click on the image to make it larger.

Decoding the caption

WPB-9 – this was the ninth photo we had transmitted from our office in West Palm Beach that day. We might go weeks without moving a photo, so to have transmitted nine meant that it was a big deal.

(AP LASERPHOTO) – was a required slug.

(ps041645mbr) – I think this was some kind of time stamp. “mbr” meant we we a member newspaper, not an AP staffer or PR flack.

MO MO NOT FOR USE IN FT PIERCE, STUART, FT LAUDERDALE OR MIAMI. Local TV out. – This is where I wasn’t playing nicely with the Associated Press. MO Means Magazines Out. (If they wanted to use the photo, they had to negotiate with us directly.) We were in a highly competitive area, so we “embargoed” our photos from being used by any competing media. I got into quite a set-to with the head AP guy who complained after we expanded our embargo to read, “Florida Out; USA Today Out,” meaning that no paper in Florida nor USA Today could use our photos. The AP guy said, “USA Today is a national paper. They don’t compete with you.”

“They’ve got a paper box in front of my office. I consider that competition,” I retorted, standing my ground.

One of my gripes with the AP was that they were very demanding. They wanted the pictures right away, not caring if you had to meet your own newspaper’s deadlines or or you hadn’t eaten or slept for 36 hours. Oh, yeah, they paid you five bucks a picture and didn’t give the photographer a credit line until just a few years ago.

Why am I running this?

Why am I running this? It’s two in the morning, I don’t have the car packed and I’m supposed to pull out for Cape in the morning. It was this or nothing.

The photo won a couple of national awards. Maybe it was because some folks thought it was news that people around Lake Okeechobee COULD pour water out of a boot without having the directions written on the bottom.

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Hirsch’s Midtown

 

Reader Bob Reese was kind enough to loan me a copy of Cape’s 1956 Sesquicentennial book. It took me half a day to scan it, but it’s a treasure trove of information, just for the advertisements alone. A lot of them are plain text “Congratulations for surviving 150 years,” but there are a few with logos and artwork I don’t remember seeing. (You can click on the images to make them larger.)

Hirsch Bros stores sold in 1955

The Southeast Weekly Bulletin had a story on December 22, 1955, that Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Hirsch have announced sale of the Hirsch Bros. Company’s two retail outlets in Cape Girardeau, Mr. and Mrs. Vernon V. Fee having purchased the Hirsch Bros. No. 1 store at Good Hope and Sprigg Streets, and George Hirsch now being the owner of the Hirsch Bros. No. 2 store at Main and Mill Streets.

Mr. and Mrs. Fee, who will operate the No. 1 store, plan to call it Hirsch’s Midtown. They have indicated that they will consolidate the grocery and variety departments and operate them as a self-service unit. Gilbert Popp will be assistant manager, with Bob Fee assisting in management of the food section and Richard Riddle in charge of the meat department.

The No. 2 store will be known as Hirsch’s Northtown, with Mr. and Mrs. George Hirsch in charge. The store will be redecorated, with some interior changes made.

The Hirsch Brothers Co. will remain an active corporation, retaining ownership of the store buildings and its other holdings. An office will retained in the Hirsch Building and the present officers will continue. They are Alfred Hirsch, president; George Hirsch, vice president, Mrs. Florence Hirsch Fee, treasurer, and Mrs. Alfred Hirsch, secretary. Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Hirsch have announced their complete retirement from the retail business.

Building is holding up well

The old Midtown building is still in pretty good shape, compared with its neighbors on Haarig’s Good Hope Street.

I can remember going in there with Mother when I was a kid, but we were more of a Broadway and Child’s customer, probably because we lived on the north end of the world. I’m almost positive that I was never in the Northtown store at Mill Street and Main.

Wife Lila, who lived just a few blocks from the store, remembers it more as a department store. I remember it for groceries. I guess it all depends on what kind of shopping your parents did there.

 

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Headed Home at Dusk

Folks ask how I decide what’s going to be on the page the next day. I sure wish I could tell you the formula..

I was dipping into my old office email the other day looking for something when I ran across a post I had made to a forum for telecommunications managers. This is an update to a post I had put up on a Friday worrying about a tropical storm headed our way. It mentioned a backyard trim-trimming adventure.

That story came to mind when I saw this photo of trees and a white fence whipping by my car at dusk. One plus one equals a blog post. (You can make the photos larger by clicking on them.)

Here’s the tree trimming story:

When I left you all on Friday, I was complaining that Tropical Storm Gamma was projected to follow Wilma’s path (right over the top of my house). Fortunately, despite the huge headline in our paper Saturday morning that said, “Here We Go Again,” it not only didn’t hit us, it turned into a fishspinner in the Gulf.

Unfortunately, Wife Lila decided that since we were in a hurricane mindset, we (meaning me) should get rid of a 40-foot non-native tree in the backyard “before the next storm blows it down.”

This tree is 15 feet from our storage shed, one foot from our fence, seven feet from our neighbor’s house and brushes the power lines.

Shouldn’t be problem, right?

I swamped off the two lowest branches and attached a rope about 20 feet up the trunk to help guide the tree’s fall. Then, I made a notch in the tree in the direction it was supposed to go and started to make the final cut, just like I learned in Boy Scouts 45 years ago.

When I heard the first crack, I decided to take up a little more tension on the rope. That was a good idea and a bad idea. Good, because the tree appeared to be leaning a bit in the wrong direction. Bad, because it was and I returned to find my saw blade trapped.

Kid, bring your chain saw

Wife Lila calls Kid Matt to bring his chain saw and to practices dialing 9-1-1.

The neighbors are looking out their second story window. They don’t wave back.

Kid comes with saw and second rope. When I pull on the rope, I can make the tree sway enough to free my saw blade. More cracking noises happen, but not enough to satisfy me, so I attack the tree with the saw again and prove that the law of gravity has not been repealed.

Tree falls to ground with satisfying THUD! missing the shed, the fence, the neighbors and the power line.

The neighbors still didn’t wave back.

I feel safe in crossing off lumberjack as a career option.

And, for the record, alcoholic beverages were not involved in this project.

 DZ has bright idea

Several managers shared their treetrimming experiences, but a virtual buddy, DZ, had a revenue-generating idea. (That’s why he’s a manager, I suppose.)

Lumber jack may not be in the cards for you. But rule number one when undertaking such a task is to set up the video camera. If it went really bad (like hit the shed or neighbors house) you may have been able to make some money on America’s Funniest Home Videos (or COPS)….

Some things are better left unrecorded

I explained to DZ that might not be a good ideal:

After Hurricane Wilma, gas stations couldn’t pump gas because the power was out and our carriers were close to not being able to deliver the paper because their tanks were dry. We managed to acquire 1,000+ gallons of unleaded from a variety of local sources and set up a pumping station in the back parking lot for carriers and essential employees.

I started to take some pictures for our in-house publications, but decided that we were probably bending, if not breaking, about 42 zillion OSHA and zoning regulations and that a permanent record of that might not be a good idea.

Ditto my lumberjacking.

Tree? What Tree? Must have been termites

“Tree? What tree? Must have been some weird strain of termites the storm blew in that ate right through that sucker. Waving at you? No, I was waving to warn you to get back from the windows because the troop of trunk-eating termites were causing the tree to sway. Good thing I had time to get a rope around it. Chainsaw? I was swatting the termites with it.”

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Speaking of heading home

Speaking of heading home, things may be a bit light for a few days. I’m headed back to Cape this week, Lord willin’ and creeks don’t rise. I’ll have to tear down all my computer gear Tuesday so I can be on the road Wednesday.

Anyone have anything they’d like me to shoot or research while I’m in Cape? No promises, but your chances of success are improved if your press the DONATE button at the top left of the page. It takes a lot of gas to get to Cape and back.

By the way, Wife Lila has taken over Son Matt’s gardening blog and is doing a super job with it. She’s probably going to tell you that my story and pictures don’t match. She’s right. (Which is ALWAYS the safe answer.)

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