Out of the past: March 22

1999

A Mississippi timber hauler escapes injuries after the cab of his truck becomes impaled by logs on Jackson Boulevard in Jackson; the driver of the truck, David Mooneyham of Randolph, Mississippi, is following another loaded timber truck when a vehicle pulls into the path of the lead truck; as the lead truck comes to a sudden stop, Mooneyham can’t avoid striking it and the timber it’s carrying; the driver ducks just in time to avoid being struck by logs coming through his windshield.

Dennis Seabaugh, a package delivery driver for United Parcel Service, was honored recently for completing 25 years with the company; Seabaugh of Jackson works out of the UPS facility at Cape Girardeau.

1974

Last night’s frost was a blessing and a curse to fruit growers in Southeast Missouri and Southern Illinois; most growers are hesitant about placing a damage estimate on their crop, after the temperature sank to 25 degrees at the airport Thursday night; the frost did bring some good to the orchards, as it was nature’s way of thinning out buds on the trees, which were overloaded because of last year’s bad growing season.

Cape Girardeau County’s proposed law enforcement complex came under fire again yesterday by a group of Allenville residents who want the farm-to-market road from Route N below Allenville to Route A west of Dutchtown improved, including replacement of an unsafe Diversion Channel bridge; a delegation to the County Court suggested it cut the cost of the proposed jail complex and use the money for the road improvements and replacing the long bridge.

1949

A wild foot chase and a fusillade of bullets brought capture near Wyatt at 2:30 yesterday afternoon of a 36-year-old Mississippi County tenant farmer, wanted in the shooting of Edward A. Hartel of Jackson and Roger Reed of Charleston, agents for the Missouri Conservation Commission; law enforcement officers, following the trail of a 16-gauge double barreled shotgun, made the arrest as the man sought to flee from a sharecropper’s cabin after more than a dozen officers had surrounded the place and were closing in for the capture.

JEFFERSON CITY — A new Missouri policy — to let some Blacks attend state-supported white schools — was approved unanimously by a House committee last night; the bill would let Blacks into white schools when the courses they seek aren’t offered at Lincoln University here; the bill now goes to the House for debate; the committee turned down the sponsor’s recommendation that any Black be allowed to attend any school he wants at any time; author of the measure is Rep. Howard Elliott, Republican of St. Louis County.

1924

State Rep. George W. Cross is the president of the Cape Girardeau Radio Listeners’ League, organized last night at a meeting of 40 “fans” in the auditorium of the public library; other officers are George Bolz, vice president, Leon Bahn, secretary, and Oscar Hirsch, treasurer; the organization was formed primarily for the purpose of “clearing the air” of local interference, which is presumed to be caused by leakage from high power electric transmission lines, and by experiments by amateurs with spark coil generative sets.

Creditors of the Cape Girardeau Northern Railway believe sale of the road, probably divided into three sections, is the only hope they have of obtaining the minimum price of $750,000 fixed on the property by Judge John A. Snider in ordering the sale of the railroad in foreclosure proceedings; that division could be along the lines of the Missouri Pacific taking the part from Ancell to Cape Girardeau and to Jackson; the Frisco taking the line from Perryville east to Perryville Junction, and the Bonne Terre Railroad taking the Saline Valley branch, north from Perryville to Farmington.

Southeast Missourian librarian Sharon Sanders compiles the information for the daily Out of the Past column. She also writes a blog called “From the Morgue” that showcases interesting historical stories from the newspaper. Check out her blog at www.semissourian.com/history.