Cape Girardeau History and Photos

May 1, 2012October 19, 2016

Fire Engine at Capaha Park

The negative sleeve says “airport fire truck 6/12/67.” The Missourian didn’t have any stories about it for a couple days on either side of that date, so I assume it was just something I spotted and snapped off nine frames before moving on. (Click on any photo to make it larger.)

Looks like they might be practicing drafting water from the Capaha Park Lagoon, a common practice for rural fire departments without access to fire hydrants. The firefighters drop 10-foot lengths of hard suction hose with a strainer on the end into a pond or other water source, then use the engine’s pump to either fill the engine’s water tank or distribute it through smaller diameter hoses to fight the fire.

Water supply is critical

If the water source isn’t close to the fire, then the water has to be shuttled from the pond to the fire using a series of trucks. For long distances, two or more pumpers could be spaced out over a long run of hose to boost the pressure. That takes a LOT of hose and a lot of manpower. That’s one reason why rural volunteer fire departments were called “chimney savers.” By the time they could get to a fire, establish a water supply and a resupply, too often a chimney would be the only thing left standing. That’s not to criticize the firefighters who were putting their lives on the line; it was just a fact of life.

Even hydrants fail

Murphy’s Law works in town, too. These two Gastonia, N.C., firefighters are looking down the street for the surge of water that’s going to charge their hose. It never came. There was a problem with the nearest hydrant. By the time a supply line was laid from the next nearest hydrant, the house was a loss. You can tell from their expressions how frustrated they were.

Fire-related stories

April 30, 2012May 24, 2015

Location, Location, Location

These shots were on the rolls with the photos Jeane Adams I used for the End of Summer story. Some of her photos were taken at Cape Rock, so that explains the towboat photo. The Mississippi River looks almost as low as it was last fall. (Click on any photo to make it larger.)

Google is a wonderful thing. I blew the picture up large enough to be able to see that the towboat was The Albert M. of B & M Towing. A search found that the craft has been built by St. Louis Shipbuilding and Steel Company of St. Louis, located on the site at the foot of East Davis Street in the Carondelet section of St. Louis, where James B. Eads built the Union Navy’s gunboats during the Civil War. It was called the Rohan Boat, Boiler & Tank Company when it was acquired by Herman Pott in 1933 and renamed St. Louis Shipbuilding & Steel Co. It closed in 1984.

Research by someone named Ingo Steller said that the The Albert M. was built in 1965, so it was fairly new when it passed Cape Rock in September of 1966. It was renamed the The Liz Brent, and, most recently, rebranded as The City of Greenville.

Here’s a launch of a towboat I covered in in 1965 or ’66.

Dennis Scivally’s bridge

I had to smile a little when I saw this frame of the stone bridge in Dennis Scivally Park. At least three Facebook friends posted photos of that bridge on their Facebook pages today. It has to be one of the most-photographed landmarks in town since it was built in 1941. Here’s what the park looked like about this time last year.

For some reason, I didn’t shoot anything of Jeane in the park. There’s no telling why you get a feeling for a place on one day and not another.

Beating the heat

I guess I couldn’t persuade my model to hop on this cow cooling off in a pond. Looks a lot like the ones trying to keep from melting in Perry County last summer.

April 28, 2012

Fall Cometh Before the Spring

I should have run these during the fall, but it’s hard to say what’s going to catch my eye on any particular evening. These were taken in the fall of 2009 in Memorial Park Cemetery. If you click on the photo to make it larger, you can see flowers on some of the graves. It’s pretty hard for florists to compete with the natural beauty of nature.

Those aren’t persimmons

Mother’s a real fan of persimmons. We usually make it up to Tower Rock where there’s a great tree. When I took a closer look at the leaves on the ground, I saw the ground was covered with what looked like persimmons, so I made a mad dash up to the house to bring her back to see the treasure I had discovered. I don’t know what they were, but they turned out NOT to be persimmons.

Beard’s Sport Shop, 818 Broadway

A reader was asking me about 818 Broadway. It’s been a whole lot of things, but it’ll always be Beard’s Sport Shop to me. When I photographed it in 2009, the sign on the front of building said Grace Cafe, but I think it had already closed its doors. I used to go to Grace Cafe when it was located in the old Vandeven’s Mercantile building at Pacific and Broadway because they had a fast internet connection.

Ornate decorations

I never noticed how ornate the trim was on the building until I looked at these photos. I thought that it might have been added recently, but Fred Lynch had a Frony photo of Beard’s and Wayne’s Grill that shows it clearly in 1961.

When Friend Shari and I shot the interior of the Broadway Theater in December, we retreated across the street for some coffee to thaw out. I couldn’t remember the name of the place, but a Missourian business column on April 18, 2011, said “Calix Coffee opened at 818 Broadway, at the former Grace Cafe location in Cape Girardeau. Owner Andrew Whaley, Jackson, previously worked at Grace Cafe as a barista. The shop sells coffee and fresh baked pastries, and Whaley hopes to add sandwiches and salads in the future.”

That must be it.

You can barely make out the Beard’s sign in a photo I ran the other day of a wreck at night on Broadway.

Interested in Pinterest?

I’m always a little slow in adopting new social media, but Son Matt added a new button to the front of the blog. You’ve been able to “Like” a page on Facebook and Google+ for some time. Starting last week, you could “pin” an image on Pinterest. It’s probably easier to show you some of my stuff that’s been “pinned” than to try to explain it. It’s sort of a nice way to get a high-level feel for the kind of stuff I shoot.