In that period between the time Mother picked out my clothes and the time Wife Lila came along to spare me from sartorial suicide, Central High School classmate Wayne Golliher was the guy I turned to. He worked in a Main Street clothing store, Al’s Shops.
Al’s Shops
Al’s, on the corner of Independence and Main St., billed itself on the side of the building as “Styles for the young at heart.”
Francine Hopkins and Wayne
I’d walk into Al’s and tell Wayne, “Give me three of everything that’ll go together: shirts, ties, pants, socks…” Underwear was something I could handle myself. How could you go wrong with basic white?
You might think it was strange that I would trust my wardrobe to someone who dressed like Wayne, but he managed to talk Francine Hopkins into donning similar duds in December 1966.
Note how he suggested vertical stripes to make her look taller?
Candidate for high school royalty
See how conventionally she dressed when Wayne wasn’t helping her make clothing decisions? Those stripes might have earned her a place on the podium. Francine was crowned Basketball Queen, but I’m not sure what this event was.
Son Adam and Daughter-in-Law Carly presented us with Grandson Graham Louis Steinhoff on Valentine’s Day 2011 at 8:13 p.m. He weighed 6 lbs 12 oz and was 19 inches long. He was born with more hair than his father and grandfather combined.
Louis was my Dad’s first name and carried on a semi-tradition of having a middle name starting with “L”; Graham “just sounded good,” they said.
Mother Carly is doing well
Adam called at 6:44 Sunday night to say, “something’s happening.” That was followed by an email 12:48 a.m., with the subject, “Not looking like tonight,” with the message “She’s laboring, but not ready to go to the hospital yet.”
Lila’s brother, John, (of termite, plumbing, missing wall fame) was set to fly back to Missouri this afternoon. He kept telling her to PUSH! PUSH! PUSH! because he wanted to hold HER (he was sure it was going to be a girl) before he got on the plane.
Father Adam looks pretty good, too
The baby was born at 8:13; Adam emailed me a photo with the subject line, “Baby boy!” at 8:17, and John’s plane landed in St. Louis at 8:19 our time. Lila, who was out running an errand, got a call from me at 8:18 with the good news. Adam posted a bulletin on Facebook at about 9:00. Electrons were flying in every which direction.
Old-time birth announcements
Adam and Matt’s arrivals were announced with mockups of newspaper pages. This was back in the days before folks had computers at home and could knock off stuff like this with their eyes closed. I had to call in some favors from my friends in the art department to throw these together, then run to a print shop with the paste-ups.
Matt’s announcement
You can tell from the headlines how competitive the boys were going to be. Adam’s reads, “7 Lb. 8 Oz. Weight Only 1/2 Ounce Less Than Weight of Firstborn.”
We didn’t have time to write creative stories to go under the headlines, so the artists pulled real stories out of the paper to fill the space. That’s why there are stories about the Space Shuttle, how we’ve been misled by history, unethical conduct by a politician, and a 60 per cent increase in accidents by county employees on the pages.
I’m not exactly sure what draws me back to Wittenberg on almost every trip to Cape. There’s not much to see. There are only two buildings and three people left in the town. David Holley is one of them. I knocked on his door to get permission to go into what was called the Wittenberg Bomb Shelter when I photographed it in 1966. I’ll have more photos and stories about the German community in the future.
The last train robbery
While he was catching me up on what he knew about Wittenberg, he told me that what some folks call the last train robbery in the state – if not the whole country – took place just up the tracks from his house. Watch the video to hear his version of the story in his own words.
Last of the Jesse James Gang
History’s a slippery thing. David has the general story straight, but some other accounts have the names and some minor details a little different. (He admits that he takes things he hears with a grain of salt.)
In October, 1922 the St. Louis – San Francisco train was robbed two miles north of Wittenberg. Over $100,000 was taken before the robbers were shot at the little bridge in Wittenberg. One of the Robbers turned out to be Jack Kennedy, also known as “Quail Hunter” Kennedy, the last of the Jesse James gang.
Jack Kennedy had become a member of the James gang at 17. Although frequently incarcerated over the years, he was never convicted of murder and always managed to win parole. He went weeks before the train robbery roaming the Frohna area, where he lived in the woods and plied a trade of knife and scissor sharpening. He knew that each fall money was sent from St. Louis banks to Memphis, Tennessee.
After determining the best location for a bank robbery would be between Seventy-Six and Wittenberg, he and his two accomplices board the train and put their plan into action. While on gunman held the passengers captive, another searched the mail bags and located the packages earmarked for a certain bank in Memphis. The train was then disconnected from the locomotive and a baggage car while Kennedy, with a young dark-haired accomplice, got on the locomotive and took off into the night.
Bad choice of accomplice
About 100 yards south of the Wittenberg bridge, the robbers, each carrying a mail bag, left the train after opening the engine throttle and sending the locomotive and baggage car onward. Unfortunately, Jack Kennedy made a judgment error in choosing his third accomplice. This accomplice, chosen by Jack Kennedy because he had a car – essential to the getaway plan, was to wait for Jack Kennedy and his on-board accomplice to complete the robbery. What Jack Kennedy didn’t know was the accomplice he had so carefully selected was a Federal Marshall.
On that October night, the conductor, engineer, and the firemen on the train were aware of the planned robbery. Expecting Kennedy to release the locomotive, they made sure the fire was burned down when the robbery occurred. Quickly running out of steam, the locomotive stopped just seven miles down the track. The bank robbers, thinking they had successfully gotten away with the robbery, were surprised after leaping from the train to hear voices shouting “Halt!” Jack Kennedy didn’t halt. Instead, he pulled his six-shooter out, and he and his young accomplice were shot dead. Their bodies were taken to Mr. P.J. Lueder’s studio, where they were propped up and photographed while onlookers gazed at the gory sight.
The young accomplice turned out to be Robert Ford, an Oklahoman who had idolized Jesse James and, in an effort to imitate him, couldn’t resist joining with Jack Kennedy when a chance meeting put them together.
It had an account of the robbery that said the young accomplice was Lawrence Logsdon of Memphis. When his parents came to claim his body, which had already been buried, they said he had never been away from home until three weeks prior to the shooting. He had a clean record before meeting up with Quail Hunter Kennedy.
I’ve got a small wooden box on the dresser where I keep “heirlooms.” Any thief who mistakes it for a jewelry box is going to be disappointed. Well, now that I think of it, it has three rings in it: a Cub Scout ring, a Boy Scout ring and my Philmont Scout Ranch ring.
Tuf-Nut knives came from Buckner-Ragsdale
It also contains these two knives. Probably every boy in Cape had at least one of these Tuf-Nut knives. They came with blue jeans bought at the Buckner-Ragsdale store on the corner of Broadway and Main Street.
Have you earned your “Totin’ Chip?”
The Tuf-nut and the Boy Scout knife that dangled from a belt clip were rites of passage. You were supposed to have a “Totin’ Chip” before you could use any wood tool like a knife, saw or axe.
The wooden-handled pocket knife was a gift from my Grandfather, Roy Welch, when I was about eight years old. The handle was chipped when I got it and the blade had been sharpened so many times that it was about a third smaller than when new, but I still treasured it.
In that period between the time Mother picked out my clothes and the time Wife Lila came along to spare me from sartorial suicide, Central High School classmate Wayne Golliher was the guy I turned to. He worked in a Main Street clothing store, Al’s Shops.
I’d walk into Al’s and tell Wayne, “Give me three of everything that’ll go together: shirts, ties, pants, socks…” Underwear was something I could handle myself. How could you go wrong with basic white?
See how conventionally she dressed when Wayne wasn’t helping her make clothing decisions? Those stripes might have earned her a place on the podium. Francine was crowned Basketball Queen, but I’m not sure what this event was.
