Postcards illuminating the past

Feb. 17, 2005

Dear Patty,

Dr. Frank Nickell was a high school football and basketball coach before throwing in his lot with history. He didn't grow up in Southeast Missouri, but he almost certainly knows more about Southeast Missouri history than anyone alive. He's good at imparting that knowledge, although he says, "I have discovered in 60 years that the hardest things to do are climb a wall leaning toward you, kiss a girl leaning away from you and talk to people about their history."

Thankfully, he doesn't let that stop him.

He spoke at a dinner held by DC's church last weekend. His mission was to tell the assemblage about the 24 panels in the historical mural painted on our floodwall last year. Nickell was a member of the group who chose the events in city history memorialized on the wall.

Some of those discussions must have resembled the "Andy Griffith Show" episode where the town finds out that a Revolutionary War hero getting an award is the ancestor of Otis Campbell, the town drunk. The stories in the panels that couldn't make the cut might be just as interesting.

Still, much Nickell said was a revelation to me even though I've been following the murals' progress closely. The artist, Tom Melvin, didn't just paint some pretty scenes from the city's history, although each one could stand as a postcard on its own. Melvin created scenes that meant something to the city and still do.

One surprise to me was Panel 16: "The Great Fire of 1916." What great fire? I wondered. I had never heard or read anything about a great fire. Obviously, this was no Chicago Fire, but it did destroy a hotel, a department store and the railroad depot downtown before moving on to another hotel.

Nickell talked about the legendary riverboat captain William "Buck" Leyhe as if his spirit was still roaming near the river. Leyhe's dog Toodles often traveled with him, but when that didn't happen Toodles met Leyhe at the wharf on his return. The collie recognized the whistle on Capt. Buck's boat.

Panel 18 of the mural is an image of Leyhe on one riverboat barking orders through his megaphone at workers aboard another. At the far left in the picture, barely in sight, is Toodles' snout.

Toodles was run over by a nameless streetcar in St. Louis in 1910. Capt. Buck brought him back to Cape to bury him in his back yard on North Lorimier Street.

My favorite panel is No. 19, a raucous depiction of the local band called the Melody Kings entertaining on a riverboat in 1925. The leader, Raymond "Peg" Meyer, used to repair my saxophone at Shivelbine's music store many years later. In the background is the young Jess Stacey, who grew up in Cape Girardeau and wound up becoming a jazz great playing piano with Benny Goodman.

There are recognizable faces in the panels, townspeople who served as models for the artists. Our long-haired Danish friend Frank became one of the Native Americans. The faces of a few downtown musicians have become part of history.

Panel 20 shows two men waist-deep in a Mississippi River flood trying to keep their jalopy and the two devil-may-care flappers inside from capsizing. One of the women is standing up. Like everything else in these scenes, the backside looks familiar.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.