Thanks for the invitation.

This wasn’t supposed to be a comprehensive piece about antique stores in Cape. It was just a quick account of a day antique shopping.

I DID say that I didn’t fault a store for carrying that kind of racist vintage material. Sometimes it’s important to see just how far we’ve come.

I’ll tell you something I AM looking for: Polks City Directories for Cape between 1963 and 1967. Not phone directories (although I might be interested in those, too.)

I need those to help identify pictures that I took in that period that I’m publishing my Cape blog.

If you have any, let me know. I’ll have my Mother come by and pick them up. (Or, I’ll be back in Cape in February or March.)

I wonder if the place burned twice? When I shot it, it was after I had moved to FL and came back to town on vacation. I know it wasn’t in the middle of the night.

And she replied:

In response to your wondering if the hotel burned twice, that does sound vaguely familiar. It seems that there is a remote memory back there telling me that I remember it rekindling and starting up at a later date. I will try to find out.

My brother, sister, and I will be together Thanksgiving and I will talk to them about what kind of old shots we might have. I think that there were some interior shots of the coffee shop after a remodeling job and maybe
something in the cocktail lounge/bar, the Rainbow Room.

I appreciate your keeping an eye out for pictures of the hotel as you go through your stuff.

What elementary school did you attend? I went to Lorimier. We lived just up Lorimier hill from the N’Orleans Restaurant(the old opera house).

Do you have pictures of the old Junior High School with the infamous fire escape on the back? I’ll bet that would be a popular picture for the Tiger newsletter.

Ken, thank you so much for letting me know about this!!!! I do not remember ever seeing that picture of the hotel. It was so special to see something that was so important in my youth that I thought was gone forever except
in my memory (which isn’t always correct!!).

The other picture showing the hotel burning was sad, but I am so appreciative of being able to see it. I actually watched the hotel burn that night.

My boyfriend (husband now) was bringing me home and we saw the fire. I wonder if the time listed in the paper as the time of it being reported (1:40 a.m.) was correct. If so, I
must have been out pretty late that night as the fire was already well advanced when we saw it. I went home and woke my parents to tell them.

Daddy and I walked back down there and watched for awhile until it became too sad to watch. Mama didn’t go down there with us as she said she couldn’t bear to see it. We lived just around the corner at 315 Bellevue at that time.

Again, thank you for letting me know about this. Are you still planning topost your pics of the hotel at a later time?

Fred Lynch, Southeast Missourian photographer, had pictures of the Idan-Ha fire on his blog today.

http://www.semissourian.com/blogs/flynch/entry/30915/

You were right. It WAS Brinkhopf Howell, not Ford & Sons.

I changed the reference.

I feel dumber than usual. Darned facts and details always get in the way of a good story.

I’m sure I have pictures of the old Idan-Ha. I’m in Cape for a few more days, then I’m headed back home to try to wrap my head around how I’m going to attack the pictures from Cape.

They’ve been filed away pretty much chronologically, but usually with cryptic notes on the negative sleeves. One of the problems with newspaper photographers is that we have a short attention span (hey, our lives are divided into 1/1000ths of a second).

We shoot the assignment, slug it with something that will be meaningful for a few days, then move on to the next fire, flood, famine or Kiwanis check-passing.

Not only will I probably have pictures of the Hotel, but I may have pictures of it on fire. I vaguely remember coming into town on vacation and seeing smoke and flames and shooting pictures of it.

The only thing that might make those hard to find is that I probably had the film processed at The Missourian, so it’s not going to be filed with all my normal Cape stuff.

If I haven’t gotten back to you by the reunion, bug me again. In fact, poke at me every few months.

I really looking forward to launching the Central High site. It uses a different template than this blog, so I haven’t gotten it tweaked to look how I like it yet.

Based on the responses I’m getting on Margi’s email list and Facebook, it looks like lots of old CHS Tigers want to see what they looked like in the 60s. That’s the 1960s, NOT the age of 60s.

My parents, Eldon and Murriel Bone, owned and operated the Idan-Ha Hotel throughout my childhood. Would you happen to have any photos of that building before half of it burned in the late 60’s? It was located at the southwest corner of Broadway and Fountain. The H and H Building, the Marquette Hotel, and the Post Office were on the other three corners.

Looking forward to seeing more of your pictures. Keep up the good work!!!!!!!
A fellow CHS Tiger,
Brenda (Bone) Lapp