Out of the past 7/6/13

1988

A new monthly water use fee for customers who use Scott City water -- but live outside the city of Scott City and pay no taxes to the town -- has created a storm of protest from out-of-town property owners; the Scott City Council has shown little sympathy, even in the face of 20 irate residents who came before the board last night to berate the city for the $15 monthly water use fee; those residents say the fee is too high.

City officials have turned down a request by Mayor Gene Rhodes for friendly annexation of property west of Interstate 55 because it doesn't meet the necessary legal requirements; the property adjoins the Outer Road and is north of Klaus Park, just southwest of the I-55 and Highway 61 intersection between Cape Girardeau and Jackson.

1963

The major portions of Cape Girardeau's urban Highway 61 widening project are expected to be completed by autumn, unless weather conditions are unusually bad; the road bed for the two additional lanes which will extend from one city limit to another for 3.9 miles has been fairly well established, with some portions still in process of excavation and others with the base set.

A General Service Administration study has found that Cape Girardeau would be better served, and the cost would be substantially lower, if a new federal building were erected to house all government agencies now operating in the city; this proposal won out in the GSA report over an alternate plan to convert and modernize the present post office-Federal Building.

1938

Charles L. Harrison suggests to the Cape Girardeau City Council a municipal bond issue of from $75,000 to $100,000 to supplement grants of the Works Progress Administration or the Public Works Administration in a long-range development plan for Cape Girardeau; in his capacity as secretary of the Public Library Board, Harrison suggests as the No. 1 project the construction of a $25,000 addition to the library building.

The threshing crew of William Sander, working on the F.A.J. Peetz farm near Jackson, saved a large barn from destruction by fire yesterday; about 100 bushels of wheat had been threshed out by the noon hour, when fire was noticed coming out of the blower and right into the straw pile in the barn; the crew, unable to bring water to the blaze, hitched the tractor to the thresher and pulled it away from the barn.

1913

Churches in Cape Girardeau exhibit a new enthusiasm, no doubt the result of the Rev. Lincoln McConnell's tabernacle meeting; new members are welcomed at First Baptist Church, the Presbyterian Church, and Centenary Methodist Church.

Louis Houck and attorney B.C. Hardesty, representing the Normal School, go down to Charleston, Mo., to appear in circuit court there to answer an injunction restraining Houck, as president of the board of regents, from removing the collection of Indian relics willed to the school by Col. Thomas Beckwith; Beckwith's heirs are contesting the gift.

-- Sharon K. Sanders