Capaha Park Lagoon Archives

I spent many an afternoon and evening shooting baseball at the ball field at Capaha Park. I’ll publish more photos when I run across them. This one from the late 60s just happened to bubble up about the time I came back from shooting what the field looks like today.

I always thought of it as the American Legion Field, but the scoreboard calls it Capaha Field today.

Ballfield, pool and lagoon

This shots shows what Capaha Field, the lagoon and the pool looked like Apr. 17, 2011. When the pool closed at the end of the 2010 season, it closed for good.

Cherry Hill is at the bottom of the frame; West End Blvd. is at the top.

Who was Ron Michel?

There was a plaque indicating “Dugouts refurbished 2002 in honor of Ron Michel.” The name didn’t ring a bell, so I did a quick search. Missourian sports writer Marty Mishow wrote a tribute to Michel, who died of a heart attack in 2001 at 57. He had pitched briefly in the minor leagues, for a long time with the Capahas, and then served as a summer coach.

Whoever put up signs around the field has this crazy idea that putting quote marks around words is the way you emphasize them. Since the field is used by SEMO, maybe that’s one of the new things being taught at the University.

Photo Gallery of Capaha Field

Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to move through the gallery. The field has gotten spiffier over the years, but it’s nice to see that it’s still possible to pull up a car and tailgate.

Treading on thin ice, literally

Four folks brave – or foolish – enough to ignore a DANGER sign walk on the ice covering the Cape Girardeau Capaha Park Lagoon in late 1967 or early 1968.

This picture was on the end of a roll of film of buildings I was shooting for The Southeast Missourian’s year-end Achievement Edition. (In internal Missourian-speak, that was called the Atomic Edition. Never did learn why.)

When I came home from Ohio University on Christmas break, editor John Blue asked if I’d drive all over Southeast Missouri taking pictures of new construction.

Guidelines

Shoot all of the new commercial buildings you can find in each town.
Shoot a handful of new or remodeled residential buildings with a value of more than $25,000. (For awhile, I thought I might have a future as a property appraiser.)
Start at the far end of the circulation area and work my way to the center so they didn’t have to pay me mileage to backtrack.

Easy money for a college student

Most of the rolls of film had a note on them that said, “Printed 1/11/68,” so I’m going to assume they were shot within a week or 10 days of that date. It was a pretty good gig. Five dollars a shot, plus mileage. I’m sure I scored a couple hundred bucks for a week’s work.

That was good money in those days. When I left The Missourian to go to school in Ohio, I think I was making about $80 or $90 a week as a reporter.

Cape Central High Photos

Ken Steinhoff, Cape Girardeau Central High School Class of 1965, spent half a century in the ink-slinging business for papers in Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida.

He retired in 2008 and has been spending time scanning hundreds of thousands of images because “photos once taken as news have grown enough whiskers that they’ve become history.”

Please comment on the articles when you see he may have left out a bit of history, forgotten a name or when your memory of a circumstance conflicts with his.

(His mother said her stories improved after all the folks who could contradict died off.)

Your information helps to make this a wonderful archive and may end up in book form.

Tag: Capaha Park Lagoon

Capaha Field