Out of the past 8/13/06

25 years ago: Aug. 13, 1981

The Marquette Cement Co. plans to spend about a half-million dollars late next month to correct an engineering problem which causes clouds of a light, dust-like material to emit from the smokestack of its new plant; several residents and businesses in South Cape Girardeau have been plagued by the lime-based substance which has been spreading from Marquette's cooling tower ever since the firm fired up its $103-million factory on South Sprigg Street last spring.

Cape Girardeau County Auditor H. Weldon Macke reports that monthly county sales-tax revenue has increased an average of 15 percent as a result of the opening of West Park Mall.

50 years ago: Aug. 13, 1956

Enforcement of the special sesquicentennial traffic patterns, scheduled to go into effect today, has been postponed until tomorrow evening; police officers tonight will uncover the directional signs that have been installed along the routes.

Mr. and Mrs. Jack Kinder and their three children have moved to Cape Girardeau from Malden, Mo.; they purchased the home formerly owned by the T.C. Hill family at 2040 Broadway, who moved to 25 N. Sunset Blvd.

75 years ago: Aug. 13, 1931

Southeast Missouri has begun the harvest of its greatest peach crop in history; smiled upon by the weather to make fruit-growing conditions ideal, the district has begun picking from orchards, large and small, thousands of bushels of peaches.

Mrs. Sophonia Gladish, who has resided on a farm on Highway 61 west of Jackson, is moving to the former Dr. George H. Bellas property on North Street in Cape Girardeau; she recently purchased the property through Deevers & Braun Real Estate Co., from Bellas, who has moved to San Antonio, Texas; Gladish recently sold her farm to Otto Overbeck.

100 years ago: Aug. 13, 1906

Dr. P.H. McRaven of McClure, Ill., is in Cape Girardeau shopping with his wife; he was recently selected as a delegate from Alexander County to the state convention in Illinois.

Charles Hopps, the 8-year-old son of Mr. and Mrs. C.W. Hopps, has disappeared and is assumed drowned from the family's houseboat on the Mississippi River side of Cairo, Ill.; the Hopps family is well-known in Cape Girardeau; C.W. Hopps was here a year ago with his houseboat and carried on a good business as a photographer.

-- Sharon K. Sanders