Southeast Missourian Archives

November 5, 2012

Cape Mattress and Triplets

It’s amazing how things in Cape are intertwined. Mother and I were driving down the de-fanged Snake Hill when I spotted a building at 1100 West Cape Rock Drive that brought back memories. It’s a nondescript building. I’ve never been in it, never took a photo of it that I know of, never so much as turned around in the parking lot. (You can click on the photos to make them larger.)

Located just west of Juden Creek

Still, I remember the building, located just before you cross the bridge eastbound over Juden Creek, as somehow always being there, a landmark of sorts. It’s pink these days, but it once was white.

Alice’s Wicker Wonderland today

Alice’s Wicker Wonderland is there today, but it was Cape Mattress in my youth. When I did a search for it, lots of standing ads in The Missourian’s Locals and Personals columns popped up from around 1944 through 1960. They generally said something like “Buy Mattresses direct from factory and save. Cape Mattress Cape Rock Drive. Phone 1486.”

The Beard Triplets

Now we’ll get to the intertwining part.

The Missourian’s front page on April 17, 1951, trumpeted the birth of triplets to Mr. and Mrs. Walter Beard of near Scopus. [Google Archives doesn’t have a link directly to the story. Scroll to the left and you’ll find it.] The family already had six children living in their four-room house. They were the first triplets born at Southeast Hospital.

Within days, the community rallied around the family, providing them with necessities, a year’s supply of milk and an additional room for their home. A May 18, 1951, story said Cape Mattress had supplied a mattress for a bed for one of the Beard Triplets.

Follow-up at 15

On April 16, 1966, I did a follow-up story on the Triplets when they were going to turn 15. It was written in a breezy and somewhat impertinent style that Editor JBlue didn’t really like. He didn’t chew me out, but he went over the story after it ran to point out the places he thought were inappropriate in a straight newspaper story. I recall I took that approach because the kids didn’t really have a lot to say and I had to stretch it. [That issue of the paper was microfilmed sideways, so I can’t give you a direct link.]

The triplets’ mother, Audrey Beard, died Oct. 6, 2006, at the age of 94. Walter Beard died March 27, 1977. Gilbert Beard, Gladys Glover and Gloria Hoxworth – the triplets – were listed as survivors in the obituary.

So, that’s how a random drive past a vaguely remembered building can twist back to a story that sorta, kinda ties in.

October 2, 2012

Paper Boys

This Missourian paperboy is in our driveway on Kingsway Drive, but I’m not sure who he is. He doesn’t look big enough to be my neighbor, Eddie Ailor. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

They were ALL paperboys back in those days. In fact, I remember seeing a condescending story in the newspaper trade magazine, Editor & Publisher,” about a GIRL who actually carried papers in some town or another. “With her interest in newspapers,” the story said,”she could grow up to be secretary to the publisher some day.” Even in the 1960s, I knew that was the wrong thing to say.

The sad thing is that there are very few “independent contractors” of a young age throwing papers these days. The switch to morning papers means that deliveries are made early, early in the morning, instead of in the afternoon when kids are out of school for the day. Paranoid parents wouldn’t want their kids out on the street after dark and knocking on the doors of strangers.

And, let’s face it, my first paper route paid me $2.50 a week as a sub working for another kid. That was for delivering six days a week and collecting for the paper on Saturday morning. Things got better when I got my own route – I made about 24 bucks a week – about half as much a week as a paperboy as I did as a Missourian reporter, but I had to have a couple of kids working for me and I still had to be out in all kinds of weather. That’s a lot of work for not much money.

Better than flipping burgers

These guys are at the gas station where we picked up our paper. I think it was a Gulf station on Kingshighway south of the Food Giant. Names come to mind, but I’ll let you tell me who they are.

I remember those canvas bags well: when I got my route at age 12, I had to carry my bag crossed across my chest like the boy on the left to keep it from dragging the ground. The piece dangling down by his leg was designed to fold over the papers on the inside of the bag to keep them dry when it was raining. On good days, you’d put one or two unfolded papers in the back of the bag, then put the rain cover over the top of them. That would give some shape to the bag and made it easier to carry.

I can’t think of any job today that a 12-year-old kid could do that would teach him (or her) that much about business. Dad made me keep a complete set of books tracking all of revenue and expenses, customer by customer. I would have been happy to count the number of receipts in my ticket book when I started collecting, count the number left when I finished and multiply the difference by 30, 35 or 40 cents to figure out how much of the money in my pocket was collection money and how much was tips. That wasn’t good enough for him.

You learned the responsibility of being on the job six days a week (or finding a kid to sub for you); when I got my own route, I learned how to sell the paper (growing my route from 90 customers to 300), and I learned how to recruit, hire and fire the kids working for me. Labor relations became very personal and important: you couldn’t mistreat your workers or they’d start thinking about how little they were being paid and quit.

The hills got steeper

You can say what you want to about erosion, but I found that the hills had gotten steeper over the 50 years between when I was riding up them on my single-speed Schwinn and when I tried it on my modern touring bike with low, low gears. It’s hard to believe that I rode up those gravel roads carrying a bag of papers that weighed about half as much as I did.

August 30, 2012

Charles Dockins as Mr. Zuss

I missed Charles Dockins‘ birthday by a day if Facebook is to be believed. I’ve been sitting on these photos of Chuck (I don’t think any of us called him “Charles’) preparing for the role of Mr. Zuss in the SEMO play J.B.

I was hoping to find other pictures of opening night, but they’re hiding. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

First production in new theater

Matt Sanders wrote an interesting look at the background of the Rose Theater in the April 19,2007, Missourian:

Construction on the theater began in 1964 as part of the Language Arts Building, which would later be named for Dr. H.O. Grauel, a longtime English professor and administrator at what was then known as State College. Two years later the Rose, originally called “The Theatre,” hosted its first production in fall 1966, “J.B.,” a drama based on the book of Job.

The last production was 42nd Street, performed in 2007. Shows since then have been performed at the River Campus.

Dockins, a Boy Scout hero

February 20, 1960, a 12-year-old Chuck Dockins rescued two girls from a burning car. Follow the link for the whole story and to see photos of him in Red Dagger plays at Central High School.

I’m going to slack off

I’m feeling pressure to get some projects done before I head back to Cape in October. I hate to break from my seven-day-a-week posting schedule, but I haven’t figured out a way to fit more than 27 hours in a day. I’m not sure what my temporary schedule will be, but sign up for the email notifications and keep an eye on Facebook to see when I have new content.

August 23, 2012

Team Mug Shots

The first time I went out to shoot a high school team’s mug shots for The Missourian, I took individual photos of each player. That was a chunk of change at five bucks a head. Unfortunately, jBlue balked at paying that much.

“Shoot the whole team in one photo. We’ll crop the individual mugs from it,” he ordered. (Click on any photo to make it larger.)

Chuck Murdoch brokered a compromise

That might have made good sense from The Missourian’s standpoint, but it meant that I had to spend an hour or more driving to the school, setting up the pictures, collecting IDs, plus another hour in the darkroom for the five bucks. The other problem was that each head was significantly smaller than a dime, which was considered the minimum size any face could be to show up clearly in the paper.

Break ’em up into fours and fives

Sports editor Chuck Murdoch, worked out a compromise: I’d break the team into groups of four or five and get paid $3 a shot for mugs. That would give Chuck faces big enough to reproduce and would make me enough money to be worthwhile. (I didn’t know in those days I could tell somebody to take a hike if I didn’t like the price.)

I got better at it

I got better and faster with experience. First off, I learned how to control the situation: I wouldn’t let a coach dictate how I was going to shoot and I wouldn’t take any guff from the players. I’D pick the location to give me the best light to work with. Then, I’d enlist the coach or someone else to help the guys write their names on a sheet of paper and line up. I’d pitch a coin on the ground or floor and say, “Kneel on the coin. I’m going to take two shots. In the first shot, hold the sheet of paper under your chin like a jailhouse booking photo. Then, drop the sheet and give me an expression that’ll make your momma proud.”

It wasn’t art

Once I realized that nobody was looking for meaningful portraits that captured the soul of the player, I could knock off a team in about 30 minutes. All the sports department wanted was a reasonably sharp photo that showed two eyes, a nose, a mouth and two ears (if the player had all those parts) that they could run 1 column by 3 inches to break up the type. (These aren’t examples of when I had my act together, by the way. I was still learning.)