Mary Welch Steinhoff Archives

March 14, 2014March 7, 2021

Selfies Anonymous

Hi, I’m Ken, and I’ve shot selfies. It has been approximately 3-1/2 months since my last selfie.

I offer up that confession because I’ve made fun of folks who shoot them, most recently at an Ohio University football game I covered last fall. Then, while looking for a photo, I started realizing how many self-portraits I had taken over the years. I have been in serious denial.

One of the earliest I could find was my reflection on the photo print dryer in the Central High School darkroom. The dryer’s shiny metal plates that imparted a glossy surface on the print when it dried served as a great curved mirror..

Not my Budweiser towel

Early on in one of my Ohio University photo classes, we had to take some self-portraits. This was my reflection in a mirror in the Scott Quadrangle dorm room I shared with two freshmen. The Bud towel belonged to one of them. It was what passed for decoration in what was primarily a freshman dorm.

I’m shooting it with a Mamyia C33 twin lens reflex I bought used from Nowell’s Camera Shop. A serviceman coming back from Vietnam sold it and three lenses for $300. I hated the square format, but 2-1/4 x 2-1/4 was required for at least one of my classes. I sold it as quickly as I could.

Always hiding behind camera

There’s a common theme in most of these photos: I’m almost always hiding behind a camera. This was shot March 7, 1968.

Let’s climb on a rooftop

This was taken right after the precvious shot. I figured anybody could take a photo on the ground, so I climbed on top of the Beckley building in uptown Athens to get this portrait with the county courthouse in the background. If you can’t make it good, at least make it unusual. I used that vantage point a lot over the next several years.

The long arm of the photographer

This looks more like today’s selfie. My arm must have been longer in those days because I have trouble shooting them today. I know the lens was wider in 1968 and I’m wider in 2014, so the combination of those things may make it tougher. This was shot in the photo lab at The Athens Messenger.

Note the psychedelic poster on the wall. That, like the Bud towel, wasn’t my decoration. I’ll blame Bob Rogers or Jon Webb for it.

Multiple light assignment

Lots of photo class assignments were finger exercises to teach us technique. Most of them were intended to be shot in a studio, but I was lousy at studio lighting and I thought it was boring, so I’d work outside the box. I’m sure some of the instructors weren’t happy with the way I bent the rules, but they couldn’t kick the image back because I hadn’t exactly broken them.

This shot was taken in Bob Rogers’ basement apartment on November 14, 1968. (That’s Bob in the foreground.) In the pre-digital days, you didn’t know immediately if you got the shot or not, so you shot multiple exposures to hedge your bets. This picture had three or more lights that had to be balanced, so it took lots of exposures with Bob and Wife Lila being very patient. In this shot, I’m going out to assure her that we are almost done.

Trying something new

When you cover as many high school and college ball games as Bob and I did, you start looking for something different. One night we decided to go as far in as different photographic directions as possible: I set up a camera with a wideangle fisheye lens, and he shot with a 500mm telephoto. So far as I know, that was the ONLY time we ever tried that.

John J. Lopinot was the triggerman

This may not technically qualify as a selfie because my finger’s not on the trigger (or self-timer.) Chief photographer John J. Lopinot and I went on a tour of Palm Beach’s Roaring ’20s Biltmore Hotel when it looked like it might be torn down. (It’s been converted into upscale condo apartments, thankfully.)

We spotted a mirror in the hallway and Lopi took the shot. I like the interesting juxtaposition of the man on the right who shows up twice and the woman giving us the strange look.

My shot from the Biltmore

We came upon another mirror later in the walk and I took a solo portrait. I’m shooting with a 24mm wideangle lens and am carrying bodies with 105mm and 200mm lenses.

I loved curved mirrors

I was always a sucker for curved mirrors. I’ve taken some I like better but couldn’t lay my fingers on them at 2 in the morning. This mirror is in the Altenburg Foods grocery store that closed for good shortly after I photographed it.

Barbershop when I had hair

This was taken in what used to be Ed Unger’s Stylerite Barber Shop on Sprigg Street. I used to get my hair cut there when I still had some to cut.

Departure selfies

Since I’m usually leaving Cape by myself, I’ve had to start resorting to selfies to get the departure shot with Mother. This is the last one I took, and the one I mentioned in my confession above. It was taken November 25, 2013. To see some of the others, you’ll have to go to the gallery below. I need longer arms or a wider lens.

Ken’s photo gallery

Here’s a gallery of me getting older and grayer in my self-portraits. Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the gallery. Now that I am out of denial, I’ll refrain from making fun of other folks who take pictures of themselves.

February 25, 2014

Big & Friendly Morgan’s

Morgan’s Furniture Store in downtown Advance at the corner of South Ash Street and West Gabriel Avenue was the sponsor of one of the first local radio commercials I remember hearing. The appliance and furniture was always referred to in a booming radio voice as Big and Friendly Morgan’s.”

Just down the block from the furniture store was Morgan’s Funeral Home. Lloyd Morgan was the first young man from Advance to go away to learn the science of embalming.

Getting the real scoop from Mother

I called Mother and said, “I have some Advance questions: which Morgan owned Morgan’s Furniture and were all the Morgans related?”

Jack Morgan, she said, was the furniture guy. “When I was about 9 years old, I had diphtheria and people were supposed to stay away from me, but Jack was my ‘boyfriend’ and he brought me a bouquet of flowers.” In later life, he was known for his odd dressing habits: his socks were frequently mismatched and his shoes untied.

Lloyd, the undertaker, she said, liked his spirits and would come into the Welch tavern to play the piano and dance. “He was a monkey, for sure.” A small paperback book on the history of the town reported that “Lloyd always drove a good car, but he never took the key out of it. ‘One of my friends might need a car real badly sometime and not have the time to look me up.’”

Mother’s brother, Kenneth, my namesake, would go on ambulance calls with Lloyd, she said. “Times were tough back then and not everybody had money, so Lloyd would take chickens or whatever they could spare.”

January 8, 2014

1940-ish Snow Storm

I was looking through scans from Mother’s college scrapbook when I saw what must have been the snowstorm of 1940 or thereabouts. This shows the terraces south and east of Academic Hall. Click on the photos to make them larger. I looked but didn’t see anybody sledding down the hill.

Albert or Leming Hall?

This might be Leming Hall, but I’m going to let someone else make the call. A Missourian story said Albert Hall and Leming Hall were almost identical in appearance and layout. Another picture in the scrapbook labeled Albert Hall, taken at a different time, showed steps leading up to screened-in porch.

A Frony photo showing a city crew putting cinders on Normal Avenue in front of Leming Hall shows a screened-in porch and no columns.

A photo from 1960 showing students moving out of Albert Hall before it was razed shows the columns and no porch. Maybe the screening was taken down in the winter, which would explain the difference.

Unknown location

I don’t know where this photo was taken, but considering how much snow there is, I have to think it was taken around the SEMO campus. I can’t imagine Mother would have been able to make it back home to Advance given the condition of roads back then.

January 5, 2014

Reading Race Prize

Buried in a box of old newspaper clips that are crumbling bad enough that I’ve been sneezing all afternoon was my first grade Reading Race Prize.

Mrs. Kelpe, the first grade teacher every kid should have, wrote on the back, “To Kenneth, who was once again the winner of the Reading Race. I am proud of you, Kenneth.” It was dated March 25, 1954, the day after my birthday.

My “sailer” hat

My first grade scrapbook has this photo of me wearing the prize for winning an earlier Reading race.

The account of my big day

Dad’s typewriter didn’t have a spellchecker on it, so some typos crept in from time to time. The fact that he and Mother went to all the trouble to document my young life is much appreciated. As Kid Rel II, Brother David’s scrapbook was a lot shorter. Brother Rel III Mark’s book simply said, “Refer to earlier editions.”

“…Mrs. Kelpe timed up on readying (sic) today and had a prize for the fastest ones. I won as my time was only 1-1/2 minutes. It took one boy 6 minutes. The prize was a white sailer hat. A little bit [big] but I like it. Boy! I was good to win that hat. [OK, so I needed to work on humility.] I told Mrs. Kelpe she was the best teacher I ever had and I’ve had a plenty.“