Out of the past 1/26/13

1988

A race has developed for second district associate commissioner of the Cape Girardeau County Commission with the filing of Republican E.C. Younghouse; he, along with Don Strohmeyer, Melvin Gateley and Bob Hahn, are interested in being appointed to that seat when it becomes vacant in February.

Officials of the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway Co. of Jackson say the planned renovation of the railroad's latest acquisition -- a steam locomotive from Paragould, Ark. -- will depend on an inspection of the locomotive's boiler system later this spring; the 1924 locomotive was brought to Jackson over the weekend.

1963

The Mississippi River is as near dry at Cape Girardeau as it has been in many years; no one can recall when only one of the bridge's five piers remained in water; a sandbar from the Illinois side has projected itself well toward the Missouri shore; the river stage is at 3.8 feet on the Cape Girardeau gauge.

Earl W. Stovall Jr., a junior partner of the Jackson Oil Co., is the Jackson Jaycees' Man of the Year; his name will be submitted for the Missouri Jaycees' Man of the Year contest at the state meeting.

1938

Seven mysterious, ghost-like taps on his arm as he walks through historic Old Lorimier Cemetery in the cold gray dawn recently are reported by a man who has been using a path through the graveyard to his work place on Broadway; he can offer no explanation for the phantom blows.

Until the recent severe weather intervened yesterday, work had progressed steadily by WPA workers on construction of the auditorium-gymnasium at John S. Cobb School; most of the brick-laying is done, and some of the massive steel girders for the roof have been placed.

1913

Dr. J.C. Maple is greeted by a fine crowd at First Baptist Church in the morning; they come out to hear him preach his first sermon, delivered 60 years ago when he was 19 years old; Maple came to Cape Girardeau in 1857, having completed his college studies; he preached and taught school here and at Jackson for seven or more years; he is now engaged in writing a history of Missouri Baptists with Professor R.P. Rider of St. Louis.

S.M. McAtee, the enterprising High Street merchant of Jackson, has bought out all the stockholders in the Priest & Behrens Mercantile Co., and is now sole proprietor of that popular establishment.

-- Sharon K. Sanders