Out of the past 6/15/06

25 years ago: June 15, 1981

The Government Accounting Office's recommendation that the air traffic control tower at Cape Girardeau Municipal Airport be closed will be opposed by the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce, but it won't be very vocal opposition; chamber president Robert B. Hendrix says the group is in a quandary over the matter, because it has voted to support President Reagan's budget cuts, and closing the tower would be one of those cuts.

Local reaction to the Major League Baseball players' strike ranges from indifference to indignation and resentment of the players, some of whom earn more in one year than some people make in a lifetime.

50 years ago: June 15, 1956

Twenty-one young men leave Cape Girardeau by bus, bound for LeSeur, Minn., to work in the packing of a crop of peas; the youths, mostly college students, are being sent there by the Missouri Employment Service; they will be paid $1.02 per hour.

Rain, badly needed by crops, falls in much of the district in the afternoon; most of Scott County and some other areas receive heavy rainfalls; in Cape Girardeau the downpour is described as near ideal and of great benefit to crops and garden plots.

75 years ago: June 15, 1931

The last sector of Highway 61 between St. Louis and Memphis, Tenn., to be paved was opened to traffic yesterday, this being the section between Benton, Mo., and Morley, Mo.; the highway in either direction from Cape Girardeau is now paved.

The Cape Girardeau City Council adopts an ordinance appropriating the city revenue for the fiscal year beginning July 1; the budget is placed at $111,000, an increase of $500 above the current year.

100 years ago: June 15, 1906

The exciting appearance to Cape Girardeau yesterday of the arrested capitalists and their employees and tenants from Sikeston, Mo., and New Madrid County is still the chief topic of conversation around town; it is alleged that several prominent men from the Sikeston area held nearly 50 blacks in bondage and made them toil unceasingly for many months with only an occasional dollar for compensation.

The brick plant in the west end of Cape Girardeau is turning out thousands of bricks every week to supply the demands of other towns hereabouts; a shipment of 130,000 bricks, red pressed, was sent to Vanduser, Mo., this week for a fine school building there.

-- Sharon K. Sanders