Shortly after Road Warriorette Shari and I photographed Luther’s Chapel Cemetery in Perry County’s Union Township, we turned into Apple Creek to explore St. Joseph Catholic Church Cemetery.
Click on the photos to make them larger.
Town originally called Schnurbusch
Apple Creek was originally named after a prominent family in the area, and there is a stone expressing appreciation to W. Joseph Schnurbusch for donating the land for the church.
German Catholic immigrants built the first St. Joseph church in 1828; the log structure was used for 12 years, then was replaced by the “Rock Church.” The present brick building was constructed between 1881-1884.
It’s a peaceful place
The grounds are full of crosses and the usual statuary.
The rules are pretty clear
The Joint Parish Council is pretty clear about what it will and won’t allow in the cemetery.
If you don’t follow the rules, you might be hauled into the Parish Office, where knuckle-rapping might be on the list of punishments meted out. (A convent was added to the church in 1917.)
I was framing a group of crosses
I was trying to frame a photo of the crosses in the background when my eye was drawn to something beside me off to the right.
What’s with the red rope?
A stone marking the final resting place of what I think was a long-dead priest held a wrapping of red rope. When I looked closer, it wasn’t just wrapped around the stone, part of it was going up into the tree.
This didn’t exactly break any rules, but it sure seemed odd.
A decoy?
The rope was looped around a tree branch, and hanging from the end of it, swinging in the breeze, was something that looked like a duck or goose decoy. There was no good way to get a shot of it short of climbing the tree, and y’all don’t pay me enough to exert that much energy.
The stone was old, and the rope had faded enough that it had been there a relatively long time. I’d love to know the story behind this.
We missed the most interesting part
When I got back to talking with my Jackson and Altenburg museum friends, they said we had missed the most beautiful and unusual part of the church grounds. They were right. I’ll publish photos from that area soon.
Road Warriorette Shari and I headed up Hwy 61 to check out some antique stores. After finding a couple of likely prospects closed, we started driving roads at random until stumbled across this interesting cemetery at the intersection of Perry county roads 510 and 520. (On Google Maps, it’s at the intersection of Bethany Road and Luther Chapel Road.)
Info from Find A Grave
If I can’t find information anywhere else, I turn to the Find A Grave website. Here’s what it had to say about our graveyard after I plugged in some names from tombstones.
Located between Longtown and Biehle in Perry County. Also called “Hart’s Cemetery” because of it’s proximity to the Hart residence.
Jacob Wills 1843 – 1870
One of the organizers (Elizabeth Ann Welker Knox) of the American Lutheran Congregation at Harts, was said to have been the only living member of the original group to retain any authority over the affairs of the church property. The church itself (in 1937) had not been used as a place of worship for more than a generation and the cemetery had been used as a burial ground only at rare intervals.
The cemetery was often described as being in the “Eddleman Settlement”.
In December of 1984, the old Luther (Hart) Cemetery was accepted by Sargents Chapel Congregation for incorporation with their cemetery association for perpetual care.
Well-maintained
The cemetery was well-maintained, and some of the graves had decorations, so someone still remembers the people who are buried here. As always, you may click on any photo to make it larger.
Road Warriorette Shari came down from St. Louis for a few days to see her mother and to attend a ceremony recognizing her late grandmother’s work on the Capaha Park Rose Garden.
While we were cruising town looking at all the changes, it dawned on me that I had never been in the McDonald’s on Broadway near Central High School. We wondered if McDonald’s was this generation’s version of our Wimpy’s Drive-In with teenage drivers making an endless loop of cars between the long-gone burger joint and Pfisters. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)
Lines, but no looping
There was a steady stream of cars pulling into the parking lot, but they usually just queued up at the drive-in window, picked up their orders and took off. There weren’t any cars full of teenagers checking out each other or sitting and talking. Maybe they were all on social media.
The first Broadway McDonald’s was built in 1967 by Jerry Davis, who owned several landmark Cape eateries. He and flight instructor Kenneth Krongos were killed when the small plane they were in crashed in bad weather in 2003.
My perfect record is intact. I still haven’t been inside the store. That’s not to knock the business; it’s just that there are too many other places I’d rather eat in the area.
I’ve been dragging my feet putting this post up, because I’m not exactly sure why I didn’t feel more emotion at my visit to the Central High School Gymnasium Saturday, the last public viewing before it’s torn down sometime during this month and March.
Here, by the way is a panorama shot from the top of the south bleachers looking to the north. Click on it to make it larger.
Maybe I didn’t connect because all of the spirit signs, the Tiger logos, the baseball brag board and the Alma Mater had all been removed from the walls. My knees didn’t like the bleachers that we were made to run up and down in P.E.
It was the noise that was missing
It was too quiet. There were no basketballs bouncing off the shiny floor. No coaches blowing their whistles and bellowing at lackadaisical students like me. There was no hollering nor the SPLAT! of one of those red rubber dodgeballs leaving an equally red mark on some slow-to-move freshman.
No fond memories
I can’t think of any fond memories I had about that room. I hated physical education class with a purple passion. I had neither the skills nor the desire to play sports.
I attended tens of dances and proms, but, with few exceptions, my job was to wait until this queen or that queen was crowned, then head home to process my film for The Missourian, The Tiger or The Girardot.
First high school girlfriend Shari found out I wasn’t fibbing when I told her I didn’t know how to dance, and last high school girlfriend Wife Lila will confirm that I never got any better.
I thought the showers were bigger
When I journeyed to the locker room and showers, I was astounded at how small the shower room was. It’s hard to believe that you could cram a dozen or more guys in there at one time, even considering that I was half the size I am today.
I stand by a description I wrote in 2013: “We guys were herded into gang showers where earsplitting hoots and hollers echoed off the tile walls like a bad prison movie. At least once during this session (which I tried to complete as quickly as possible), there would be something that sounded like a space shuttle lifting off, followed by a sulfurous cloud of methane gas that rolled off the tiles in a green cloud, prompting another Neanderthal to try to best the earlier contribution.”
If the dodgeballs went “SPLAT!” the snapping of wet towels sounded like a wild bunch of cowboys trying to get the herd moving by cracking their bullwhips.
Bleacher and floor signup sheet
There was a signup sheet near the entrance where people could leave their names if they were interested in getting pieces of the bleachers or floor when the building is being torn down. I talked with Coach Terry Kitchen Monday to get details, but he said the administration hadn’t made a decision yet on what will happen with the salvage. He asked me to check back later this week to see what was going to happen. When I hear, I’ll post an update.
I have to admit I wouldn’t mind having a chunk of bleacher.
A moment with Terry Crass
On my way out, I stopped to chat with a man wearing an orange shirt. It turned out to be Terry Crass, probably one of the nicest guys who ever walked the halls of Central High School. As team manager of just about every sport except Chess, he kept players patched up, and he’s doing much the same work today at the Veterans Home.
After a few minutes of chit-chat, Terry said, “On the afternoon JFK got killed, I was in Mr. Ford’s algebra class. The weather was bad. It was a lousy-looking day. Mr. Wilferth came on the PA and said the president had been shot. We didn’t know anything.
“The bell rings and I hit out to the study hall. Nobody was saying anything. Everybody was crying. There was a big black and white TV in there. That’s when Walter Cronkite looked up at the clock over his shoulder and said, “From Dallas, Texas, the FLASH, apparently official, President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time, 2 o’clock Eastern Standard Time, some 38 minutes ago.” [I inserted the actual quote, but Terry pretty much nailed it from memory.]
I had a flashback
I flashed back to another TV on that day. One that was sitting in the gym with shocked students staring at it. “All you could hear was breathing,” I told The Missourian when I rushed my photo to the paper to make my first EXTRA edition.
Suddenly, I must have swallowed a marble because I couldn’t say anything, and there was a lot of dust in the air that caused my eyes to water.
I guess I DID leave a little piece of myself in that old gym.
Last Day photo gallery
Here are some random photos of folks saying goodbye to the old building. Click on any picture to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move around.
Shortly after Road Warriorette Shari and I photographed Luther’s Chapel Cemetery in Perry County’s Union Township, we turned into Apple Creek to explore St. Joseph Catholic Church Cemetery.
Apple Creek was originally named after a prominent family in the area, and there is a stone expressing appreciation to W. Joseph Schnurbusch for donating the land for the church.
The grounds are full of crosses and the usual statuary.
The Joint Parish Council is pretty clear about what it will and won’t allow in the cemetery.
I was trying to frame a photo of the crosses in the background when my eye was drawn to something beside me off to the right.
A stone marking the final resting place of what I think was a long-dead priest held a wrapping of red rope. When I looked closer, it wasn’t just wrapped around the stone, part of it was going up into the tree.
The rope was looped around a tree branch, and hanging from the end of it, swinging in the breeze, was something that looked like a duck or goose decoy. There was no good way to get a shot of it short of climbing the tree, and y’all don’t pay me enough to exert that much energy.
When I got back to talking with my Jackson and Altenburg museum friends, they said we had missed the most beautiful and unusual part of the church grounds. They were right. I’ll publish photos from that area soon.
