Cape Girardeau History and Photos

June 8, 2012

Keeping Kids Busy

Playtime in the ’60s was pretty unstructured. Parents shooed their kids out the door and figured they’d find something to do until mealtime. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

Richard, son of Mr. and Mrs. W.J. Drye, 1808 North Main Street, elected to protect the family garbage can from marauders. His bored expression makes it look like his backyard suffers from a dearth of marauders. His cap’s earflaps should protect him if an unexpected summer snowstorm sneaks up behind him.

Fun in the sprinklers

All of the photos but this one ran on the June 18, 1966, Missourian Youth Page to go along with a story about what made kids finishing the second grade at at Campus School happy about summertime. I try to do my posts from scanned negatives to get better quality, but I happened across these kid pictures in a box and decided to run them even if time and the elements has caused the prints to fade.

This boy’s picture didn’t run and there was no ID written on the back of the print, so he’ll have to stand in for all of us who ran barefoot through a backyard sprinkler.

The ups and downs of playing at the park

Debbie Statler came up to Capaha Park from New Madrid for a school picnic. The microfiche copy was blurry, but Debbie’s parents looked like Mr. and Mrs. Delbert Statler. Going to Cape for a New Madrid child was probably like a Cape kid going to St. Louis.

Richard Harris was busy stealing souls

New Madrid youngster Ricky, son of Mr. and Mrs. Hubert Harris, is making sure he has a record of the day’s activities. I wonder if it was a passing fancy or if he was sucked into his soul-stealing machine like I was at about the same age. I hope he got a clear picture without his finger in front of the lens. His Kodak Duaflex II was carefully protected in what we photographers called a never-ready case. They might keep your camera clean and safe, but they also got in the way and kept you from being able to shoot quickly and to change film easily. I’ve got a bunch of them in the attic that never saw service.

June 7, 2012

Advance Catholic Church Sold

Advance reader Madeline DeJournett, a reporter for The North Stoddard Countian, had a note on her Facebook page that the old Catholic Church in Advance had been sold. Here’s a photo I took of it in the fall of 2010. (You can click on it to make it larger.)

Madeline’s post said the church was built in 1909, but had been vacant since the congregation built a new church in 1991. The Rev. Chad Farris and his family have moved up from Malden to establish a Pentecostal congregation in the building.

From the photos she had, it looks like the interior is in good shape, too. I’ll have to check it out in a few weeks.

(Sorry for the heavy dose of churches lately. It’s just the luck of the draw.)

June 7, 2012

Moon Over Mississippi River

Cops say “You can’t outrun Motorola.” I learned this evening in the ’60s that you can’t outrun the moon, either.

I don’t know exactly where I was when I spotted the full moon coming up over the horizon, but I knew I wanted to get the golden orb pulling itself out of the muck of the Mississippi River. I flogged all the horses under the hood of my ’59 Buick, but the moon kept getting higher and higher and smaller and smaller.

I shot this from Cape Rock. I hope I didn’t interrupt anybody or anything when I went skidding in squealing tires and throwing up a cloud of dust. I was disappointed enough with the result that I didn’t bother to print it.

I have a moon fixation

It surprised me when I did a quick search for moon stories in my two blogs. There’s a batch of them.

June 6, 2012June 6, 2012

Matthews Store in Randles

Somebody said there was an old general store in Randles where the owner just closed the door and walked away with all his stock on the shelves one day. I don’t know who told me about it, but it came from a couple of different folks.

When Ernie Chiles and I passed through the town on the way to the Painton airstrip, I noted a likely candidate and decided to check it out on another trip. (You can click on the photos to make them larger.) See the black cat crossing my path on the left?

Matthews Store

The sign on the north side of the building says Matthews Store. I don’t know if that’s Matthews with or without an apostrophe, but it probably doesn’t make much difference these days.

I had Mother and Wife Lila’s Uncle Ray with me on this adventure. Mother’s got a sharp eye for persimmons, so she made me pick up the ones that were on the ground and hustle them back to the car.

Lots of goods in the store

I couldn’t quite see through the windows, so I held my camera above my head to peer in through the broken front window. I can see lots of stuff on the shelves, but it looks more random than would support the “walked away” tale.A lot of the bottles and jars appear to have been opened and empty, like they were placed there by a collector. The center of the store was taken up with stuff that looked more like trash than treasures.

Still, it must have been quite a store in its day. It big inside and out. I imagine it was the center of life in Randles.

Double doors to where?

I couldn’t tell if this was a separate storeroom or what the purpose the extension on the north side of the building would have served. I don’t think you’d have doors for customers this far away from the main entrance. My guess was they were used used for deliveries. It doesn’t have the feel of lodging for the store owner, either. It’s too long and narrow for that and probably wouldn’t have had double doors.

I guess when it’s time to add shoes to the Perkins Shoe Tree, I’ll have to ask around for more info.

[Editor’s note: I had originally said this store was in Perkins. Reader Madeline DeJournett, a REAL reporter, corrected me below in the comments. It’s actually in Randles. If you’ve been on the page before, you may have to press Ctrl-F5 to make her comment show up.]