Category: Ken’s Ramblings

Mother and I took a cruise around the area on some roads neither she nor I had ever gone down. There aren’t many of those, so it’s always fun to take off down some lane without having a clue where the road is going to take us.

This old house is one of only a couple of structures left standing in the old German community of Wittenberg, MO. When I photographed the town in the 60s, there was still a store and a number of families there.

Four decades of Mississippi River floods have pretty much erased all traces of the town.

Great persimmons

Mother always likes to go down to the Tower Rock Nature Area where there are three persimmon trees that produce prodigious amounts of fruit. We thought it would be too early to eat any since there hasn’t been a frost, but the ground was littered with seeds and squashed persimmons.

Mother fought off the bugs and the bees to eat her fill

Anybody who has eaten a not-quite-ripe persimmon will never forget the way they’ll flat turn your mouth inside out. She’s had enough practice to be able to pick out the good ones.

Not sure if the mantis is praying or preying

This praying mantis didn’t appear to be stalking anything, but they have a deserved reputation as an ambush predator. Larger versions will go after animals as big as rodents. Fortunately, this guy was of a milder flavor.

Busy as a bee or butterfly

The bees and butterflies must sense that warm weather is just about over.

Almost every flowering plant alongside the road was being visited by bees and butterflies.

I overheard talk in a store that we might see frost any night now, but the official weather forecast is still calling for the low 40s.

I’m kinda easing into this cold weather thing before hopping on the bike. That sounds crazy, but you have to remember that the heat index was 100 when we left Florida a few days ago.

I learned at a very early age NOT to jump into the swimming pool before about July. You don’t want to take a chance on having your heart stop.

First of order of business today was getting the van (mostly) empty. The main drag in Cape Girardeau was shut down for the university’s Homecoming Parade, so that caused some delay. After we dropped off the boxes of magazines at Annie Laurie’s Antiques, which has a new web page, by the way, the van was much happier.

My Surly Long Haul Trucker breathed a sigh of relief, too, when it was freed from its tight quarters. The racks did a good job of keeping it from getting squeezed.

Marty Riley doing pastels at Conservation Center

Our next stop was the Cape Girardeau Conservation Nature Center, where Wife Lila’s sister was doing pastels as part of a Participating Artisans program.

I confessed last week that I was no artist, so my admiration of folks who can translate imagination to ink, paint, paper or stone is boundless.

In addition to traditional artists, there was a man demonstrating flint knapping, a woman doing wood burnings and some guys doing chain saw carvings.

Cape Girardeau Conservation Center is a great use of tax money

I’m not sure that I had ever been to the Conservation center, even though it’s probably only about three miles from the house where I grew up. If you’re in the area, particularly if you have kids with you, it’s well worth a stop. They have an interesting mix of stuff going on all the time. Check their web site.

Almost every exhibit has some kind of hands-on activity, and the folks staffing the place are friendly and knowledgeable. (My mother said she was going to ask someone there if squirrels blinked, because she had never seen one do it. The answer, she found, was that, yes, squirrels blink.)

You can’t miss with cute kids and violins

On the way out the door, we spotted little kids (like maybe six years old) carrying tiny violins.

They were from the Southeast Missouri Music Academy Suzuki Strings. The little kids were deadly serious about their playing, as you can tell from the expressions if you click the photo to make it larger.

The kids put on a nice musical performance less than 75 feet from the fellow doing the chain saw carvings, aquariums holding a hovering gar and a huge Alligator snapping turtle. Not exactly what you would expect from a conservation center, but it shows the variety of activities it supports.

Wife Lila and I made it into Cape Girardeau tonight. The trip was fairly uneventful except for some killer rain around Nashville.

There wasn’t any chance that we were going to get blown around. Our Honda Odyssey was loaded about as full as you could pack it and still have the wheels turn.

In addition to the Surly Long Haul Trucker snuggled in the middle, we had big steamer truck that some elderly neighbors gave us 30+ years ago. It’s headed to Bro Mark in St. Louis.

Then there was eight or 10 boxes of old magazines – Life, Time, Saturday Evening Post and computer – dating back to the 1960s or earlier that are going to Wife Lila’s niece’s antique shop, Annie Laurie’s.

Mark’s Sears Spyder is headed back to St. Louis. Son Matt hauled it down to Florida to see if I could restore it, but it turned out a to be a bigger – read expensive – project than I could tackle. We wrapped the banana seat with shrink wrap to keep it from suffering any more wind damage.

We’ve just about finished loading the stage coach for our annual trip back to Cape Girardeau, MO, to get in some cool bike riding, recharge our spiritual batteries and to celebrate my mother’s Birthday Season.

I’m also going to be shooting After Pictures of scenes around Cape to go with historical photos for a web site I’m launching. I just started scanning prints and negatives going back to my high school freshman year. Since I worked for the school yearbook and newspaper all four years of high school, and for the tw0 of the local papers through high school and until I left for Ohio University in 1967, I have a pretty good snapshot of the era.

Debate road trip

Here’s a sample. Here’s the A Team of the Debate Squad getting ready for a road trip. (I’m the serious-looking guy second from right. My debate partner, John Muller, far right, and I were undefeated my freshman year.)

The 1960s Class Reunion is going to be held next summer, so I have to get working to make it in time. Wow, I remember laying out newspaper pages with class reunion pictures and saying, “Look at all those old farts.” Be careful of what you say when you’re young.

None of these majorettes dated me

Hey, what did you expect? I was on the debate team and a school photographer. I was a nerd before nerds had a name. (Confession: I actually had and used a pocket protector.)

I DID go to kindergarten with the gal top left, if that scores me any points.

Gonna be a slow few days

I’m sure I’ll have fresh content once we get settled in back home, but things may be a little slow while we’re on the road.

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