Cape Girardeau History and Photos

September 9, 2010

Broadway Demolition

When I first saw this photo, I thought it made have been the razing of the St. Charles Hotel on Main Street. I’m going to let you tell me what building is in the foreground, because I’m not sure. Here are some clues, though.

Criss Cross Cafe?

This photo, shot from a little more to the east shows a tantalizing amount of info. There’s a Pepsi sign advertising what looks like Criss or Cris Cross Cafe on the side of the building.

Like the movie Blowup

A 1966 British movie about a photographer who photographed what might have been a murder scene came to mind here. The photographer took the negative into the darkroom and made increasingly larger blowups of it trying to figure out if he really saw what he thought he saw. Of course, the bigger the enlargement, the more the image degrades, and the less sure he was.

Playing the British photographer, I blew up just a portion of the frame above, enhanced the contrast and applied some sharpening filters to bring out maximum detail. That provided a few more hints.

Clues to the location

There is a street sign that looks like it says Broadway.
There’s a Rt. 34 marker
There’s a Conoco Station sign.
There’s a three-story building with a doorway on the corner. It looks like it might be Finney’s Rexall Drug Store.
There’s some kind of parking, maybe for a hotel and / or cafe.

Did Subway shop replaced Finney’s?

This October 2009 photo looks like a Subway shop may have replaced Finney’s. A Google Earth aerial of the intersection shows a vacant lot at the northwest corner of Sprigg and Broadway today. That might mean that these workers razed the whole building, or it might have been taken down later.

Any idea what was in the building being torn down?

September 7, 2010April 11, 2021

Radioactive Teenage Girls

When I first ran across the photos of this giggle of girls in front of the Arena Building, I thought they might be refugees from some kind of band camp. One girl is strumming on a guitar, there’s at least one other guitar case there, and another girl has what appears to be a ukulele under her arm.

Ouija Boards and sleeping bags

Then I noticed a Careers board game, a Ouija Board, sleeping bags, canteens and other camping paraphernalia.

Is this a Girl Scout campout?

If it is, they certainly don’t travel light. They appear to be a thirsty bunch, too. I see canteens of various shapes, thermos bottles, an insulated jug and a pitcher. Those square boxes look like they might contain beauty aids. Or ham sandwiches.

Headed INTO the Arena Building

They weren’t meeting in front of the Arena Building to go somewhere, they were headed INTO the building. That’s interesting. If you have really sharp eyes, you can see a Civil Defense triangle on a box on the table at the top of the stairs. Maybe that’ll provide a clue to what’s going on.

What is that on her head?

There is some kind of signing up going on here. I covered lots of Boy and Girl Scout events, but I don’t every recall running into the ceremonial or protective headgear the girl at the table is wearing.

Elaborate forms to fill out

The forms these girls are holding look more formidable than the ones we face on April 15 every year. What ARE they up to?

Civil Defense and National Security

Then, I finally found the two frames that made it all clear. Notice the small box with the Civil Defense triangle on it the man is holding? It’s a Geiger Counter.

You have to remember that this was at the confluence of The Red Scare and the Dawn of Rock and Roll, you know, Devil’s Music.

The girls were suspected of being Radio Active

Some busybody neighbor must have heard these girls listening to rock n roll on the radio and passed the word to the local Civil Defense office. The message got garbled at each stage along the way until it finally read, “Scores of teenage girls in Cape Girardeau are radioactive.”

The next thing you know, buses were dispatched to snatch the girls and quarantine them in the Arena Building until they could be screened with Geiger Counters.

That’s my theory and I’m sticking to until someone can come up with a better one.

September 6, 2010

Riverside West vs ISC

Newspapers in the 60s and 70s didn’t expend a lot of ink covering women playing sports, so I didn’t shoot a lot of it.

All I know about this game is that some of the women have shirts with Riverside West and ISC on them. I wonder if ISC stood for International Shoe Company?

Limitations of electronic flash

Technically speaking, these pictures suck canal water. It was dark enough that I used a strobe to punch up the lighting. The problem is that strobes are great for stopping action – they have a very short duration – but the cameras of those days required you to use a slow shutter speed, generally around 1/60 of a second. That meant that you picked up ghosting and movement from the ambient light.

On top of that, the negatives were scratched up from being rolled up in a coffee can for 35 or 40 years.

Photo Gallery of Riverside West vs. ISC

Y’all have been getting really good of late at identifying people and places. Maybe you can fill in the details of this game. Click on any image to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the photos to move through the gallery.

September 6, 2010September 6, 2010

Kool-Aid 3¢ (Buy 2, Get One)

There was a Missourian story about Samantha and William Gardner in the Sept. 5, 2010, paper. The youngsters sold vegetables they grew in a garden and proceeds from a lemonade stand to donate $113.07 to FISH, a Cape Girardeau food pantry.

Kool-Aid stands a Cape tradition

Samantha and William were carrying on the old Cape tradition of setting up a card table in front of your house where you would sell lemonade, Kool-Aid or home-grown produce.

That’s my old 1959 Buick LaSabre station wagon up there. Looks like I must have cruised by the kids, figured that I’d better grab a piece of wild art while I could, and put the land yacht in whoa-back.

Ways for kids to make money

These kids showed a real knack for business. Their sign, with a smiling Kool-Aid pitcher, touted Ice Cold Kool-Aid (they even got the trademark spelled right, with a hyphen) for 3 cents. “If you buy two, you get one free.”

Another sure-fire way to make money in those days was to scrounge the side of the road for soda bottles at two cents apiece. I’d have a lot fewer flats if they’re bring back bottle deposits (especially on beer bottles).

The house in the background looks familiar, but I can’t place what street it’s on, nor can I identify the entrepreneurs.