Out of the past 7/10/06

25 years ago: July 10, 1981

The Cape Girardeau Jaycees launch a drive to raise enough money to provide every officer in the Cape Girardeau Police Department with a bullet-proof vest; currently, about half of the officers own their own protective vests.

Cape Vault Co., 99 S. Louisiana Ave., has been purchased by Mike Lakamp of Ironton, Mo., who plans to move here with his family; the business was started 40 years ago by John Kurre and supplies burial vaults to funeral homes in a major portion of this section of Missouri.

50 years ago: July 10, 1956

Cape Girardeau's municipal tax rate will be increased 11 cents of the $100 assessed valuation for taxes to be collected this fall under an ordinance given first reading at a city council meeting last night; the ordinance provides for a tax levy of $1.20 per assessed valuation.

Alma Schrader is re-elected president of the Cape Girardeau Library Board; Raymond H. Vogel is elected vice president, and Mrs. Al Nenninger is re-elected secretary; the board approve an increase in salaries for librarian Ross Lloyd Crigler, for her assistant, Mary M. Kempe, and all other members of the library staff.

75 years ago: July 10, 1931

Construction of the main line pipe, which will carry water from the new plant of the Missouri Utilities Co. at Cape Rock to the city, has been started and will now be rushed, along with the building of the plant itself; men are busy, too, at the river at Cape Rock preparing the intake installation there.

Residents of the southern part of Mississippi County and the northern part of New Madrid County aren't greatly worried about the lion that is reported at large there; they aren't greatly scared since the wooded tract to which the mother lion has gone to her liberty contains 27,000 acres.

100 years ago: July 10, 1906

The Rev. E.T. Adams leaves in the morning to spend his summer vacation of a month in Kentucky and Tennessee; in his absence, there will be no services at the Cape Girardeau Methodist church, other than the usual Sunday School and Epworth League meetings.

Excitement rules in one household on Lower Broadway in the morning; an immense, 10-foot snake is discovered at the rear of the home of Mrs. J.F. Williams, 209 Broadway; several men kill the reptile, which is believed to have escaped from a tent show on a vacant lot in the neighborhood some weeks ago.

-- Sharon K. Sanders