Out of the past: July 1

1990

After more than two years of in-house study, Cape Girardeau City Hall this year will begin to implement a revised pay plan for its employees; the new plan involves salary adjustments based on a performance evaluation system, the first time such a method has been used in more than a decade.

Air traffic stalled at the Cape Girardeau Municipal Airport on Thursday, when an allegedly intoxicated woman decided to take a 20-minute joyride on the airport's runways and taxiways; how she gained access to the area is unclear.

1965

The operator of a fireworks stand on U.S. 61 South was standing behind the counter last evening, when his stock of skyrockets exploded; fireworks valued at about $2,500 were destroyed and the stand was gutted in the fire that followed; less than an hour after the blaze, Ray Conklin, the operator, had acquired a new stock from a local supplier and was back in business at a temporary stand near the Barn Drive-In.

Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., is considering the elimination of toll calls between Cape Girardeau and Jackson, and Cape Girardeau and the Illmo-Scott City area; there now is a basic toll of 10 cents for such calls.

1940

Petitions containing 6,906 names of voters in Cape Girardeau County are filed asking the County Court to purchase a site near Dutchtown for construction of an airport; it is stipulated there must be no increase in taxation.

Girardeans, like all others in the nation, begin paying for their share of the cost of national defense; new taxes levied by Congress to help pay the cost of a larger army, more airplanes and more of everything else military go into effect; there are new or increased taxes on amusement admissions, gasoline, whiskey, beer, motor oils, cigarettes, radio sets and certain other services and commodities.

1915

Loos Brothers start their wheat thresher in the morning, the first in the Jackson vicinity, so far as is known; the first crop to be threshed is that of Robert Mantz near the Jackson city limits.

Interest in the Boy Scout movement here, which had lapsed after Capt. Wilson Bain left Cape Girardeau last fall to enter a law school in the South, is renewed at a meeting at the Courthouse Park; Bain returned to the city about a week ago and at once started to work to bolster interest in the Scouting.

-- Sharon K. Sanders