Out of the past: Dec. 14

1998

Move aside, Elmo; Furby has taken center stage as this year's hot holiday toy, and by all accounts, the Furby frenzy has outpaced Elmo, a red furry Muppet who lives on "Sesame Street"; Furby, an interactive, gremlin-like plush animal, has parents camping out in the middle of the night waiting for stores to open; on the secondary market, the little critter is selling for two or three times its regular $30 price.

New owners now occupy the former Ratliff's Grocery Store at 1007 S. Sprigg St.; the name has changed, but the service remains the same at "The New Store," which was opened more than a week ago by Walter and Rosetta Jackson-White; Ratliff's Grocery provided necessities to people in Cape Girardeau for more than four decades; but the store closed earlier this year when Juanita Ratliff, owner since 1950, gave up its operations because of health reasons.

1973

Longtime fire chief Carl Lewis, who wrote Cape Girardeau's first electrical code and, in 1948, fought for a city building code to prevent "houses that were built to burn," will retire Feb. 7 after 37 years with the department, 33 as chief; Lewis recalls when he started with the department it was an eight-man force and its equipment consisted of "an old '36 Dodge, a '31 American LaFrance, and an old Robinson ladder truck that ran like a crippled dog, kind of sideways down the street."

For 450 Cape Girardeau children this Christmas, Santa Claus will arrive three days early in a motorized sled with eight cylinders taking the place of his eight tiny reindeer; Santa, aided by the Cape Girardeau Jaycees, will deliver Christmas gift to 450 children in 145 less-fortunate families in the hours after dark Dec. 21 as part of the Jaycees' annual Operation Santa Claus.

1948

State College is back to where it started in its effort to secure suitable bids for a new physical education and health building; the Board of Regents yesterday rejected all bids previously offered and threw the field open again; in rejecting the bids, all above the $500,000 appropriated by the Legislature, the college also ordered the architects, Wischmeyer & Lorenz of St. Louis, to revise the specifications.

Field work for a proposed new sewer district in the Monticello Addition, connecting link with another proposed district in Marble City Heights, has been finished; city engineer John R. Walther says details should be completed by spring, when bids on the combined projects, costing in excess of $100,000, can be accepted; the Monticello Addition to be served by the proposed line includes, roughly, an area north of New Madrid Street, south of Butler Street, east of Perryville Road and west of State College farm.

1923

A.R. Zoelsmann, head of the traffic committee of the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce, reports a new time card will improve train service for Cape Girardeau on the Frisco Railroad within a short time; the St. Mary's accommodation train, now operating between St. Louis and Cape Girardeau, will be extended to Memphis, Tennessee, giving a local train for all stops between those two cities; the present main line trains will be converted into real "through" trains and will likely make stops only at Crystal City, Missouri, Cape Girardeau, Chaffee, Missouri, and Blytheville, Arkansas, on the run between St. Louis and Memphis.

Members of the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce met last night in the Elks Building to outline plans for the coming year; projects include promoting cotton growing in Cape Girardeau County, securing additional ferry service, promoting the Strawberry Growers Association, an anti-mosquito campaign and establishing a state fish hatchery here.

-- Sharon K. Sanders