Out of the past 9/20/06

25 years ago: Sept. 20, 1981

Despite unseasonably cool temperatures, fairgoers turned out in record numbers at the 126th edition of the SEMO District Fair last week; fair board president Earl James estimates that about 90,000 people jammed the fairgrounds during the week.

BG's Ice Cream Parlor has been sold by Gary Helwege to Jim Harlan of Poplar Bluff, Mo., who will move the business to Poplar Bluff and operate it in connection with a drug store he owns there; the location in Cape Girardeau, 205 S. Plaza Way, is closed in preparation for expansion of BG's Old Time Deli and Saloon.

50 years ago: Sept. 20, 1956

The rising cost of municipal operations is reflected in the 1956 to 1957 budget presented by Mayor Walter H. Ford and adopted by the Cape Girardeau City Council this week; every year since the end of World War II, the budget has increased -- with the exception of one when the city operated without a budget -- and this year is at the highest level in history.

Homer Cooper, a contractor, is chosen by the Democratic County Committee as the party candidate for representative in the legislature; he will fill the place vacated by the withdrawal of Brian B. Mullen.

75 years ago: Sept. 20, 1931

Edward H. Winter, lieutenant governor of Missouri and editor of the Jefferson City Post-Tribune, speaks to the Men's Class of Centenary Methodist Church in the morning; Mr. and Mrs. Winter are in Cape Girardeau visiting friends.

Lt. Creighton K. Lankford, one of three men killed last week while they were flying medical supplies to Belize, British Honduras, from the Canal Zone, was a nephew of Mrs. C.H. Morton of Cape Girardeau; Lankford's home was at Plattsburg, Mo., and he was co-pilot on the plane.

100 years ago: Sept. 20, 1906

Leslie M. Shaw, the secretary of the treasury and one of the greatest orators in the United States, will speak in Cape Girardeau from the back end of the train at the Frisco depot tomorrow, shortly after noon.

The residents of Jackson are celebrating the cornerstone-laying for the new county courthouse, with fully 1,000 people in attendance; Dr. Kuhn, superintendent of the insane asylum at Farmington, Mo., who was delegated to represent the grand master of the Masonic order, formally lays the cornerstone, and immediately following, Richard Hines makes the main address.

-- Sharon K. Sanders