Cape Girardeau History and Photos

May 8, 2012

Shedding Light on Carbide Lanterns

Here’s a shot of Dad helping set up a campsite. That’s Brother Mark hiding behind the tree. I’m pretty sure that’s Mother in the background looking for some poison ivy to step in. The setting is kind of odd: it’s right on a road and butts up to a fence. I don’t know who the boy on the right is. Brother David is in another shot, and that’s not him.

What caught my eye, though, was the lantern Dad is reaching for. It’s one of at least two carbide lanterns we owned. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

What’s a carbide lantern?

They were one of the most common sources of light for miners and coonhunters. There’s a good explanation of carbide lanterns on Mother Earth News.

I’m pretty sure we bought the lanterns at Beard’s Sport Shop. They were simple devices. They consisted of a super-bright reflector attached to a device that contained two chambers. You put water in the top chamber and calcium carbide in the lower chamber. When you dripped water onto the carbide, it would emit acetylene gas – the same stuff you use mixed with oxygen for welding. A wheel flint, like on a cigarette lighter, would provide a spark to ignite the gas. No matches required.

Calcium carbide was available in just about any hardware store when I was a kid. We kept ours in a big glass jug with a wide mouth. It looked like gravel. In fact, we’d freak out new campers by putting some on the ground and pouring a little water on it. Casually pitching a match in the general direction of the brew, we’d warn them that you had to be careful where you built your fire because the gravel around there would burn. POOF! They’d spend an inordinate amount of time trying to light rocks until you clued them in.

The highly efficient reflectors would throw a beam a long way. If you cut back on the water drip, they’d burn for hours. The only catch was that they emitted a lot of soot that would clog the gas passage. They were great when they worked, but I always found them a pain to keep burning.

Carbide lanterns are hard to find these days. There was only one listing for carbide lanterns on Amazon. This caver site has some good information on how to buy a used lantern.

May 7, 2012

Night Football Photo Challenges

I think this was a Central High School football game, but I can’t swear to it. I have a few Missourian clips of high school sports, but none of these photos were in the ones I could find.

Shooting night football was full of challenges.

The fields were too dark and the film was too slow to shoot available light, so you had to use flash.
Electronic flash was better than flashbulbs because you could shoot as quickly as the strobe would recycle. Unfortunately, the more you shot, the more the battery discharged and the slower the recycle time.
Electronic flash duration was very short, so it stopped action very well. Unfortunately, the shutter had to be completely open when the flash went off, so the shutter speed had to be set at 1/60 or 1/90 of a second. The flash would stop the action, but there would be enough ambient light that “ghosting” would occur. You can see it on some of these shots where there is a blurry line around a helmet or arm.
The flash was limited to about 30 feet, so plays down the middle and on the other side of the field were out of range.
You had to guess where the play was going to be so you could set the exposure correctly. You could follow focus as the action moved, but you were pretty much stuck with your exposure.
You had to judge where the action was going to be, give or take 30 feet. Do you stand slightly ahead of the line of scrimmage and hope they run toward you? Do you go down the field and gamble that a pass that will be on your side of the field? When you get close to the end zone, do you stand under the goal posts and hope for a play coming at you or do you drop back behind the line of scrimmage? By the time the game was over, you probably covered as much of the field as the players did.
The goal was to drop off one to three prints at the paper before deadline. Usually there was only room for one in the paper. So, you spent a couple of hours shooting the game; an hour processing and printing it; a drive to the game and to and from the office; film, chemical and photo paper that cost about $1.50. For all of that, you got $5. Oh, I forgot to mention that you had to buy all your own equipment, too. Maybe I should have paid more attention in math class, because something doesn’t add up here.

Football photo gallery

If anybody knows the teams or anything about the game, chime in. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to move through the gallery.

May 6, 2012May 6, 2012

Cinco de Mayo Super Moon

Riding partners Anne and Osa thought the night of the Super Moon would be a good time for me to take my first bike ride since my crash on February 19. We had planned it earlier, but weather hadn’t cooperated. We were going to watch the moonrise from the Lake Worth Beach, but there’s a tall drawbridge to go over, so they suggested we check out a new park with boardwalks going out into the Intracoastal Waterway north of the Lake Worth Bridge. I guess they didn’t want to risk having to tow me over the bridge if I hadn’t gotten my legs back. Click on any image to make it larger.

Boardwalk puts you out over water

It’s a beautiful place to sit. The mangroves behind you muffle the city sounds. The breeze off the water was actually a little on the chilly side. We got there a little early, so my partners talked me into riding back into Lake Worth for a sinfully good ice cream cone.

Traffic was pretty heavy and I heard a car with a bunch of guys in it hootin’ and hollerin’ in the next lane coming up behind me. This sounds like trouble, I thought. When they got closer, I could see if was a bunch of young Hispanic guys wishing everybody within earshot a happy Cinco de Mayo. Dial the Threat-o-Meter back to green again.

Super Moon over Lake Worth Beach

We got back to the boardwalk from our ice cream run with a couple minutes to spare before Osa spotted the big orange ball coming out of the haze above Lake Worth Beach. It was huge, but indistinct until it got a little above the horizon. We’ll go a little photo geeky on the rest of the pix. If you don’t care for technical details, just skip over them like I do names in a Russian novel.

Light turned blue

With the sun going down, the sky picked up a bluish cast. The exposure here is 1/30 of a second @ f/5.6. The camera boosted the ISO to 500 from my normal 200. I was underexposing the photo by as much as four stops to keep the moon from becoming a white blob. I was zoomed to the max at 55mm on my 18-55mm zoom lens. It would be nice to have a longer lens, but I like to travel light on the bike.

Boat adds movement

Several boats went by, but this one showed up best. I zoomed out for a bit wider shot than the previous one. This was zoomed to 34mm. The exposure was 1/30 @ f/5.0 and the ISO was 400.

I love digital photography for the ability to change the film “speed” with every shot. With film, you were committed to one type of film and speed for the whole roll. That’s one reason why I carried three cameras: each one might be loaded with a different type of film to cover every contingency.

Switched to video camera for big moon shot

Since I didn’t have a longer lens for my Nikon D3100, I switched to my Canon FS100 video camera video camera in still mode for a tight shot of the Super Moon. I didn’t expect it to be tack-sharp because I was zoomed way in and using a 1/25 second shutter speed. I was braced against the boardwalk, but the water pounding the pilings caused some movement.

Street lights shift everything orange

Just before we left, I started experimenting with other than moon photos. This shot of the Lake Worth draw bridge was taken when pretty much all of the light was gone from the sky except for the moon. The camera bumped the ISO up to 3200 and dropped the shutter speed down to half a second @f/5.6.

Here’s what the big bridge looks like in the daylight, plus a little history of the original bridge built in 1919.

May 5, 2012August 6, 2024

1965 Sikeston Jaycee Bootheel Rodeo

I’m not much of a Jim Nabors fan and I don’t follow the Indy 500, but I did notice a brief story that said that Nabors, who has sung “Back Home Again” at the race since 1972, will be undergoing heart surgery and won’t be able to perform on May 27. Nabors, better known as Gomer Pyle, is 81. I covered him when he appeared at the 1965 Sikeston Jaycee Bootheel Rodeo. He must have a lot of fans. because someone goes to read the story almost every day.

Rodeo action missing in action

The Nabors film was filed separately from this action so it wasn’t available earlier. Some of this film had some pretty ugly scratches, so I just cleaned up the worst part and let it fly.

Jim Nabors as Gomer Pyle

You can see more photos of Nabors here.

Rodeo photo gallery

Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to move through the gallery.