Rerun: Santa Mystery Solved

Shopper eyes Santa Claus in Cape Girardeau (actually Jackson)As promised, I’m taking a short break over the holidays and offering up rerun links to older posts.

This story about Christmas shoppers from December 9, 2009, was one of my earliest posts. I made some guesses about where they might have been taken in Cape.

It set the tone for all my posts to follow:

  1. I got most of the facts wrong
  2. My readers went to great lengths to prove I was wrong and to provide the correct information.

By December 12,  Brother Mark, Bill Hopkins, Chuck Blitstein, Jesse James and Brenda Bone Lapp chimed in with opinions, speculation and photographs, but it took The Missourian team of Fred Lynch and Cathy Hancock to determine the photos were taken in Jackson, not Cape.

Hey, close is good enough in horseshoes, hand grenades and nuclear war; I mean I was only seven miles off, give or take?

We know where this is

Rexall Drugs in Jackson, MOBy December 14, the Fred and Cathy team helped figure out where in Jackson these photos were taken, too. Jim Vangilder filled in more blanks.

After that, I wasn’t afraid to post mystery photos. With few exceptions, someone always stepped up to the plate to provide the (maybe) correct information.

This is one of those exceptions: nobody has come up with who these cheerleader-looking types are.

 

 

Lynch Finds Santa – in JACKSON

Shopper eyes Santa Claus in Cape Girardeau (actually Jackson)Hillary wrote that it takes a village. She got that right. It took a village of CHS readers to find a town – Jackson.

To recap: I posted a gallery of Christmas shopping pictures on Wednesday and confessed that I didn’t know where they were taken. Since one of them showed the inside of a Rexall Drugs store, I jumped to the conclusion that it had to be Unnerstall’s on Good Hope and that Santa would be nearby.

Santa drew guesses

My brother, Mark, missed the target completely. He thought it was taken from Shivelbine’s on Broadway.

Missourian photographer Fred Lynch keyed in on the telephone pole in the picture and convinced himself (and me) that it was taken on Good Hope near my original guess.

He sent me pictures that seemed to confirm it and I posted an update here. He followed it up with some pictures later taken from almost the same angle as mine that sure made it look like we had found the correct spot.

Fred Lynch Haarig photo looking southBill Hopkins chimes in

Emails with pictures attached start flowing in from Bill Hopkins, none of which are even close.

Blitstein sees problem

Chuck Blitstein posted a great description of Good Hope from the days when he worked at Cape Cut rate, but then he questioned our findings:

The location of your Santa photo presents a real conundrum, and the several ‘clues’ exacerbate the problem rather than lead to its resolve; e.g., the shoes in the window tend to make one think of a Men’s Clothing Store; in the 60s the shopping areas were Main Street, Broadway and Good Hope.  Sides-Miller was in the 600 block of Broadway, Irvin’s and Ross Young were on Main but I do not remember a cafe/bar across from them.  Al’s Mid-Town Lounge at 627 Good Hope might  have had a Stag Beer sign, but the word Cafe doesn’t seem to fit and the location seems wrong for the picture.  Hirsch’s might have sold shoes but again, the cafe/bar across the street?  Then, there is the car, ’62 Dodge Dart?  It looks like it is parked at an angle?  I thought all on-street parking was parallel, but maybe not.  Oh, well, a senior moment, I guess.

Hopkins questions Lynch

Building across the street closeupBill Hopkins: Fred, take a look at the door in the Santa photo; it has a transom (is that the correct term?) above it and then a window offset slightly to the viewer’s right. In the photo of the building you propose as the correct one, that door (if it’s the same door) does not have such a window above it. In fact, the building you took a photo of shows those star thingies; they were connected to rods and helped support the building. My deceased pal Floyd Runnels (father of Jeanie Runnels Eddleman, the artist who draws historical buildings) was a bricklayer and explained that to me once. Of course I don’t remember what he said.

One more thing I noticed: the Santa building has drainage over the top windows; the suspect building does not.

Larry Saddler agrees with Blitstein

Larry Sadler: Chuck Blitstein points out that the car looks like it is angle parked.  I agree with him.  The sign on the window looks like it says Palace Cafe to me.  I don’t remember the Palace Cafe in Cape Girardeau.  Could this possibly be a picture taken in Jackson.  I believe they used angle parking extensively in Jackson.  The mystery continues.

So does Jesse James

Jesse James: Doesn’t look like the Santa picture is in Cape, notice the car is parked at an angle and not parallel. Don’t remember any places that was done in Cape, maybe Jackson?

Brenda Bone Lapp piles on

Brenda Bone Lapp: I  agree with Jesse that the photo of the boy with the Santa in the storefront is taken in Jackson.  I think it is somewhere in the area of the Square.  It may be close to that store (I think it was a feed store) where they had the stuffed horse in the window.  Remember that?

[Editor’s note: I sure do remember it. It was next door to The Jackson Pioneer, where I worked.]

Fred sends a flash bulletin

Fred Lynch: Flash! Santa mystery photo solved! Details to follow. (I have a day job.)
Clue: The utility pole is gone.

Fred discovers Santa in Jackson

[Here’s the complete account. Fred doesn’t normally talk about himself in the third person. He was trying to make it easy for me by making it look like I had actually written this, but I want to make sure he gets full credit for running around for two days and enlisting the help of a co-worker. I think we should make him an honorary member of Central High School 1960s’ Decade]

GD Fronabarger shooting parade in front of Southeast MissourianFred Lynch: When photojournalist Fred Lynch is not taking pictures for The Southeast Missourian, a daily newspaper in Cape Girardeau, Mo., he can be found driving around looking at buildings to identify for Ken Steinhoff’s blog. Ken was Fred’s predecessor in the late 1960s at the Missourian.

Fred is always up for a challenge, more so since starting his own blog, F/8 and Be There. Fred shares old photos of Cape Girardeau and their background with readers on the web site. Some of the pictures date back to the 1920s and earlier. Many have been taken by G.D. Fronabarger from the 30s to the 60s. Frony was Ken’s predecessor at the newspaper.

With an eye for detail, Fred checked a photo that Ken took of a child standing outside a store window that had a Santa Claus in it. Ken didn’t remember where it was taken, so he invited blog readers to help.

Looking for clues

Using two different frames of the photo that Ken provided, Fred found these clues:

  • Utility pole
  • Parking meter
  • Two women walking across the street
  • Automobile angle-parked
  • Store across the street with Palace Cafe on the window
  • The two-story building with distinctive second-floor windows, building trim
    above the windows
  • A glass case with a movie poster inside.

Fred first thought the scene was the 600 block of Good Hope. He even took pictures to support the theory. The pole was there and the windows were there, or so he thought. In the end, Fred could not fit the square peg into the round hole.

Wrong street. And wrong town.

The mystery Santa photo was not taken in Cape Girardeau. It was in Jackson.

Old Palace Theater and cafe in Jackson, MOFred began his quest with a call to Cathy Hancock at the Jackson office of The Southeast Missourian. She grew up in Jackson. Fred learned from Cathy that Rozier’s department store had a Santa in their window back in the 1960s
when Ken took the photo.

[Editor’s note: I was working for The Jackson Pioneer at the time, so it’s likely that I shot these pictures for it, and not The Missourian.]

Fred learned from Cathy that Jackson had a movie theater at the time, the Palace Theater. Cathy contacted a friend who confirmed there was a Palace Cafe next door to the theater.

Buildings change over decades. The utility poles on High Street are gone, as well as the parking meters. Rozier’s is now High Street Center, an office building. The theater is no more, but one can imagine it was there from the
front. Now it has a church and a beauty salon. The Palace Cafe is now Lloyd’s of Jackson, a bar. And so it goes with progress in Jackson.
.

[Thanks to Fred and Cathy at The Missourian and thanks to all of you who pulled out magnifying glasses to help solve this mystery.]