Tag: Cape Girardeau landmarks

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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.”

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Nighttime Old Town Cape from the Common Pleas Courthouse

I have a favorite night shot of the Common Pleas Courthouse and Port Cape Girardeau taken from the Themis St. floodgate looking west, so I thought I’d see what it looked like from the other side.

This is shooting down the courthouse hill looking east down Themis St. The floodgate at the end of the street is closed because the Mississippi River is at about 36 feet.

Loose shot or tight shot?

I couldn’t decide whether or not I liked it as a wideangle or a slightly tighter photo. Electrons are cheap, so you get both.

There are some tiny smudges in the tight shot in the middle of the sky. You can calls them puffs of smoke if you like, but I think they are specular highlights from the street lights bouncing around between the lens elements. What the heck, let’s go back to calling them puffs of smoke. That sounds more interesting.

Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge from the Courthouse

While putzing around trying to get this shot composed, (for the record, I don’t care much for it) a young woman materialized from the shadows. We exchanged some pleasantries and she disappeared. There was an elderly gentleman sitting on a park bench nearby and he said, “Do you reckon we scared her off?”

Shana Gemoules, stairclimber supreme

About five minutes later, she showed up again.

“Did you just run up those courthouse stairs? Twice? On purpose?”

“Yes. It was three times.Yes. I’m training for a triathlon in Florida in April.”

When she disappeared down the hill again, the man on the park bench said, “Tell her there are 55 steps, not counting the landings.”

When she got back to the top, she was barely breathing hard and her heart rate was in the low 170s (resting is usually 52 BPM, she said.) A stint of working in a downtown restaurant where she had to hump meals up three floors prepared her for running up and down the courthouse steps, she said.

Getting ready to go car-free

Shana, who grew up in Perryville, graduated from Southeast Missouri State University and has worked at a variety of local resturaunts. She’s at Imo’s Pizza now, a place she rates highly for its employee-friendly management and good food.

Right now, she’s working to get debt-free and to sell her car to cut expenses. Cape is small enough that she feels like she can get around on foot or or her bike. Her boyfriend lives in a house with three other guys. The four of them make do with one car for those times when they go a long distance or need to carry something bulky.

When she finished her fifth climb up the hill, she said she was going to call it a night. All of the talk about food and restaurants had made her hungry.

I waited until she had run out of sight before I headed to my car. I wasn’t going to insult her or embarrass me by offering her a ride.

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Cape Bridge at Night

When I didn’t know what else to do, I’d head down to the river to try for a different shot of the bridge. This is a time exposure taken from the Illinois side looking back toward Cape.

The car and truck lights show up as streaks.

Trust me, this will NOT be the last bridge picture you see.

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Fender-Bender at Broadway and Fountain

Looking south toward the Idan-Ha Hotel

I’ve got a gazillion wreck pictures in my files, but I’m  going to run only those that are of unusual vehicles, unusual circumstances or have interesting backgrounds. This fender-bender between a car and a taxicab at the corner of Broadway and Fountain in 1966 fits the criteria. I assume the two guys in the foreground were the drivers from their universal “Oh, Bleep” pose.

The old Idan-Ha Hotel is on the corner. I spent many a lunch hour in the coffee shop there when I was working at The Missourian.

Looking north toward the Marquette Hotel

The Marquette Hotel is on the right and the H&H Building is on the left.

Officer Fred Kaempfer directs traffic

I looked at the officer directing traffic and thought I had a shot of him from another occasion. Yep. It was a portrait of a guy with sort of a soulful look in his eyes. I remembered him as being one of the nicest guys who ever wore a uniform.

Wife Lila immediately recognized him from her days working at the Rialto Theater. The only problem was that we couldn’t think of his name to save ourselves.

Fortunately, we have house guests from Cape Girardeau staying with us. Lila’s sister, Marty Perry Riley (Class of 68) and her husband, Don Riley (class of 67) are in town for Marty to do a chalk drawing in the Lake Worth Street Painting festival this weekend. Son Adam’s company, DedicatedIT has brought her down the last three years to do the drawings. (It’s chilly down here this year, but it’s generally not hard to convince her to come to Florida in February with the kind of weather Cape’s been having.)

As soon as I showed them the photo, they both said, “Fred Kaempfer.” Don had been a Cape police officer himself.

What I didn’t know about Officer Kaempfer was that he was a song writer who came up with “Keep Walking On,” sung by Ken Roberts, in 1970. Fred died in 2004, at 80. His obituary fleshed out his life. He worked at Leming Sawmill for 25 years, was a Cape policeman from 1965 to 1973, and was a Scott City policeman from 1973 until he retired in 1978.

A letter to the editor in The Missourian after his death pointed out something else. Few know that during World War II Kaempfer fought in five major campaigns: Sicily, Central Europe, Normandy, Rhineland and the invasion of France, where he was awarded the Medal of Freedom.

View to the east shows First Federal Savings and The Southeast Missourian

It was a hot day in 1966, if the temperature sign on the First Federal Savings is correct – 88 degrees. This is quite a contrast with a Frony picture taken at the same intersection during a snow storm when the temperature was 28 degrees on the sign. You can see it in Fred Lynch’s Southeast Missourian blog.

Notice the phone number on the side of the cab: ED. 5-4433. ED stood for Edgewater. Jackson was the Circle exchange.

You can see The Missourian Building and the Royal N’Orleans, but the KFVS tower hasn’t been built yet.

The Idan-Ha is gone

The Idan-Ha Hotel caught fire a couple of times and was torn down. Here’s what it looked like on Oct. 24, 2009.

The Marquette Hotel escaped the wrecking ball

The future of the Marquette Hotel was very much in doubt for many years, but it looks like it’s taken on a new life. The canopies over the doors were more interesting when the building was a hotel, but, overall, the building looks better than it has in decades.

Note the KFVS TV building sticking high up into the sky.

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