Cape Girardeau History and Photos

April 1, 2010March 1, 2012

Cape’s Not a Town; It’s the Twilight Zone

My friend, Jan Norris, the former food editor of The Palm Beach Post and a fellow blogger, asked me to look up a local artist, Brad Elfrink, who produces beautiful hand-crafted buttons and jewelry. Jan’s a button collector, who writes for other collectors.

Brad’s a a relatively young guy originally from Marble Hill who has developed a love for Cape Girardeau’s buildings and people. I was describing a couple of landmarks I had been searching for over the weekend. “Want to see some pieces of them?” he asked, showing me some remnants he had saved from the bulldozer.

I’ll be writing about Brad and his finds later.

When I got back into the car, I called Jan and said, “Most places have six degrees of separation. Cape reduces it to two.”

It was still early, so I decided to shoot some other buildings I remembered in and around the 1600 block of Independence.

Old Fire Station Number Two

We used to go there on grade school field trips. It looks like it might have had two bays in the old days.

Pak-a-Snak, an early convenience store

Just east of the fire station, on the same side of the street, was the Pak-a-Snak. A Missourian story Aug. 17, 1955, called it the first drive-in, cash and carry market of its kind in Cape. We’d call it a convenience store today.

Mr. and Mrs. Charles Farrow were the first owners. They sold it to Mr. and Mrs. Porter Stubbs in 1955. The store hours – shocking – were 8 a.m. until 8:30 p.m. every day including – double shocking – Sundays and holidays.

A trip to the Twilight Zone

I wanted a photo of the old Donut Drive-in, but I wasn’t exactly sure which shop it was in. I heard music coming from a small bar a couple of doors down, so I figured somebody there might be able to help me out.

I don’t spend a whole lot of time in bars. I HAVE had occasion to step into one from time to time when I’m riding my bicycle. It doesn’t matter if it’s a redneck bar, a biker bar or just a coffee shop full of regulars, as soon as you step through the door wearing bike shorts and a glow-in-the-dark jersey, conversation stops and all eyes focus on you.

How to survive wearing Lycra

At that point, I’ve found your odds of survival go up if you glance around the room, pause a couple of beats and then say in a loud voice, “Y’all sure do dress funny around here.” Before long, people are asking how far you’ve come, how far are you going, what have you seen along the way, and are offering to buy you drinks or a meal.

There was a man holding a beer in the doorway. “Come on in. There’s plenty of room,” he said with a smile.

“You’ve got enough gray hair that you can probably help me,” I said, handing him a business card.

“Are you Kenny Steinhoff?”

I’ve been running from that nickname since 1967, but I had to admit that – in Cape – I was “Kenny Steinhoff.”

“I’m Jerry Schweain,” he said, extending his hand and smiling wider.

Turns out he was a truck-driving friend and former neighbor of my brother-in-law, John Perry. He posed with a friendly woman from behind the bar, then said, “I’ve got something to show you that you probably never thought you’d see again.”

He reached for his wallet, fumbled around for a bit, then pulled out a worn and faded Palm Beach Post-Times business card with my home phone number scrawled on it. “You told me to give you a call if I ever got down to your neck of the woods. I never got closer than around Tampa, so I never called you.”

I gave him that card in 1977 or 1978.

Only in Cape Girardeau would someone hold onto your business card for 30-plus years and then run into you in a neighborhood bar 1,100 miles from where you live.

Donut Drive-in

With Jerry’s help, I was able to locate the Donut Drive-in. The building still had the serving windows. It was a big deal to pull up to the window on Sunday morning on the way home from church to pick up some fresh donuts or Long Johns, jelly-filled donut pastries so sweet they’d find a cavity faster than a dentist.

Earl Kirchoff opened the doughnut stand in 1952. The ad in the 1964 Girardot had the slogan “Tote a Poke Home.”

March 31, 2010February 8, 2024

Elmwood Dates to Spain and 1797

I knew there was supposed to be a large house located down the gated lane off Bloomfield Rd. past Mt. Tabor as you were heading toward Dutchtown. The property used to be set off with white fences.

When my mother and I were on our way down to see how far the Diversion Channel had backed up, she remarked, “I haven’t been down there in years.”

I confessed that the only time I had been down the road was when I was riding with a deputy sheriff one night. We were cruising around more or less aimlessly when he said, “We’ve been having reports of trespassers down there, let’s take a drive by.”

Right after we cleared the gate, he pointed his spotlight across the grass and said, “Hey! I think that’s a fox. Let’s see if we can catch him,” and went in full pursuit of the animal. Before he had time to get anywhere close, the dispatcher broadcast that the resident of the property thought the trespassers might have come back and asked if any unit was close.

My friend acknowledged the call and said, “XYZ is in the vicinity. We’ll handle.” The dispatcher never knew just HOW much in the vicinity he was.

There weren’t any posted signs

Mother tends to be a little nervous about my sightseeing. “What will you say if anyone stops you?”

I didn’t see a problem

The gate was open.
The property wasn’t posted.
The road is marked on my GPS with a street name.
I have Florida tags on the car and a bumper stick that says, “When I retire, I’m going to go up north and drive real slow.” (OK, the bumper sticker part is a joke. I’m still looking for one.)
We weren’t chasing any foxes.

Elmwood is impressive

After going down a lane so long that we thought we were on a water haul (fire department term for a false alarm because all you did was haul water), Elmwood came into view.

“Wow,” was all I could say. There are bigger homes in Cape County, but none that look like this one.

The Southeast Missourian published a Bicentennial feature on Elmwood’s history Nov. 1, 1975. It’s worth following the link.

The families of Alexander Giboney and Andrew Ramsay settled in this area when Kentucky became “overcrowded,” the feature explained. Giboney and his wife, Rebecca Ramsey settled on the land now known as Elmwood. The King of Spain granted them title to the land in 1797.

Some time around 1808, plans were drawn up for a permanent home, which was built by slaves. Some were stone masons, some skilled carpenters and wood workers, others were brick makers. The house was modeled after the Ramsay family castle in Scotland, Dalhousie.

900 acres become Dalhousie Golf Club

Ray Owen wrote in November 2005 that about 900 acres of the original land grant had been sold to create the Dalhousie Golf Club. At that time, Pat Evans, a son of Robert Evans and descendant of Rebecca Ramsey, still lived in the mansion and maintained about 70 acres of the property.

Interesting historical Elmwood links

I stumbled across several news stories with historical factoids about people connected with Elmwood.

June 8, 1942: Mrs. Patrick Frissell announced the marriage of her daughter, Mary Giboney Frissell to Capt. Robert Evans.

Aug. 2, 1954: Rebecca Ramsay Houck Frissell died at the family home. Good obit with lots of history. Even though she opposed the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, she became active politically after it passed.

June 26, 1963: William G. Evans, 17, took off at the same field where his mother, Mrs. Robert C. Evans, flew her solo exactly 24 years before, June 22, 1939. She was the first woman in Southeast Missouri to fly by herself. The flight took place at the old Consolidated School of Aviation field, which later became the headquarters for R.B. Potashnick Construction Co.

March 30, 2010March 30, 2010

Moon Over Cape Girardeau

I work out of a Domke shooting vest instead of a camera bag. I find it puts everything where I can find it by feel, distributes weight better than a bag, is easier to maneuver in tight spaces and is less likely to get stolen than a bag you set down “just for a minute.” A digital camera with a zoom lens has cut back on the amount of gear I hump around. I used to carry at least three camera bodies and five lenses, plus about 20 rolls of various types of film, not including all the small accessories.

My vest holds my Canon FS-100 video camera; a strobe; a polarizing filter (or UV filter, depending on what I’m using that day); some business cards; a digital tape recorder and lapel mike; spare batteries; a can of pepper spray; a lens cleaning cloth; a small LED flashlight and a few other odds and ends depending on the kind of shooting I plan to do.

On the way out to dinner with Mother Monday night, I grabbed my Nikon D-40 DSLR camera, but forgot to pick up the vest. I shrugged it off. I wasn’t really planning on shooting video anyway and the camera has a small flash built in.

WOW! Look at that moon!

When we came out of Ruby Tuesday and turned east on William, the first thing we saw was a monster moon.

I’ve got a thing for shooting moon pictures. I even lead bicycle Full Moon Rides on the Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail where the moonlight is so bright that we don’t even need headlights to see our way (no motor vehicles allowed and there’s nobody there but us, the gators and the mosquitoes).

Something strange always happen. Sometimes a rider does the Frog Dance; on another trip, I thought I’d have to perform a buttectomy.

Even Wife Lila is moonstruck. She tries to make it to the beach for the Lake Worth Full Moon Drum Circle every month. Even when it rains, it’s good.

Oh, no, I don’t have the video camera

When I pulled off the road to shoot the moon photo above, I realized that I didn’t have my video camera. The FS-100 has a longer effective zoom lens than my still camera. It was going to take that extra magnification to bring the moon in closer to my surroundings.

I banged off a few frames with some restaurant signs in the foreground, then made a mad dash for some downtown landmarks.

You can’t outrun Motorola or the moon

Cops used to have a saying, “You can’t outrun Motorola,” their two-way radios. I learned in high school that you can’t outrun the moon, either.

One night I spotted a moon like this one just cracking the horizon. I KNEW if I got to Cape Rock there would be a great photo. Good thing there weren’t any cops on the road that night. I bent every speed law between here and there, but still got to Cape Rock too late to catch the shot I really wanted.

I knew the same thing was going to happen to me again, but I had to give it a try.

Moon rising over Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge

I KNOW I promised a moratorium on photos of the bridge, but this was the only landmark I could find that I could get in the foreground with the moon before it got so high it became a tiny dot. As it is, it looks like something made by an undernourished paper punch.

Sorry.

March 29, 2010November 20, 2011

Don’t Stare at My Mother’s Arm

Liberty with the truth warning: there may be some parts of what you read next that might not exactly be lies, but they stretch the truth to the point of snapping. [The story was originally written to promote the Convention Bureau’s Storytelling Festival.]

What’s the matter with her arm?

Mother couldn’t figure out why my brother Mark’s friends always looked at her funny. They’d appear to be staring, then glance away quickly when she looked at them.

She found out later that Mark had told them, “Don’t stare at my mother’s arm, she’s self-conscious about it.”

“What’s the matter with your mother’s arm,” they’d ask.

It’s a long story

Here’s how he tells it in (mostly) his own words:

After Dad died and all of us boys scattered all over the country, Mother got a little lonely. She was okay financially, but she wanted to do something a little different to keep busy, something that would let her see the sights, be around other people and make herself feel useful.

She was a cook on a riverboat

She decided to work as a cook on a towboat, The Robert Kilpatrick. She worked 20 days on and got 20 days off.

She had her own small utility boat that was kept on the barge on a hoist. When she ran low on supplies, she would have the captain radio ahead to the nearest town and give them the “grocery list.” As they came close to the town, they would lower her boat into the water. She would take off, load up the supplies (the store would meet her at the river with them), and then she’d floor it to catch up with the tow.

One day as the tow was being broken up and put into the lock and dam (modern day tows now “push” as many as 30 barges at a time and dams/locks were not designed to accommodate more than eight at a time, two abreast), she decided she wouldn’t launch her own boat, she’d stay with the tow. She was getting ready to climb a steel ladder from the the barge to the top of the lock so she could board a waiting cab to go into town for the supplies when something went terribly wrong.

Tragic accident took her arm

Suddenly the barges shifted in the lock and her arm was caught between the edge of the barge and the concrete dam wall. It pinched it clean off at the elbow.

Tragic, yes, but not enough to keep our mother down. No sir. In fact, some of the guys in the machine shop – the burly guys who ate steak for breakfast and kept the massive engines working down below – fashioned her a couple of custom “snap on” tools that were a little more functional than the basic hook that was all insurance would cover.

One was a spatula that could easily turn extra large omelets (and used to scrape the grill to keep food from sticking to it); the other was a meat fork with three tines. Two tines faced the the same direction so she could pick up meat from the grill, and one tine was bent 90 degrees in the other direction, so she could open and close the oven doors with it.

OSHA said somebody’s gonna get an eye poked out

OSHA thought the custom tools created a hazard to workers who might get impaled if the boat hit rough water and caused her to stumble, so she quit rather than kowtow to bureaucrats.

She became a Happy Hooker

Her next job was working for the city of Cape Girardeau as a wrecker driver. She drove a tow truck all over town looking for scofflaws who had outstanding parking tickets so she could impound their vehicle. Nobody ever tried to stop her after she raised her artificial arm and clicked her custom tool fingers at them like mad magpies.

Prosthetic technology progressed to the point where she decided to give up the hook and custom attachments for an arm that was covered in soft plastic that was almost lifelike. The doctors did a great job of matching her skin tone, too.

She got so she’d play along

When Mark’s friends threw him a surprise 50th birthday party, Mother, Son Adam and I showed up. When she noticed some of the guests giving her arm a quick glance, she pulled her hand up into her sleeve so it looked like she had left her prosthesis at home.

“You can’t take that slot machine”

Storytelling is in our genes.

My mother’s family owned several businesses in Advance at one time or another. One was a tavern that had a few slot machines to bring in some extra (if illegal) income. Her parents had to leave one afternoon and left her in charge. She was all of about 13 years old.

It must have been an election year, because the place suddenly filled with law enforcement officers who were going to confiscate the slot machines as being illegal gambling devices. Mother knew that one of the machines was full of money, so she stood up to the sheriff and said, “You can’t take that one. It’s broken. If it doesn’t work, it’s no more a gambling machine than that bar stool.”

They left it behind.

Don’t forget the Storytelling Festival

If you made it all the way down here, you must appreciate tall tales. When this story was first published, you could click on the photo below, which would take you to the Convention Bureau’s Storytelling Festival website. I had optimistically written, “It’ll help me convince the convention bureau folks that this would be a great place to advertise, and it’ll set you up for a weekend that sounds like a lot of fun.” It might have done the latter, but the former never happened.