Out of the Past 9/7/08

25 years ago: Sept. 7, 1983

Prompted by complaints about poor reception, Cape Girardeau Mayor Howard C. Tooke is proposing that the city hire a consulting engineer to inspect the local cable company's equipment to see if it is being properly maintained in accordance with the franchise agreement.

Cape Girardeau will have to look for alternative ways to fund a survey of historic structures in the community; the city's request for a $25,000 community development block grant to finance the survey has been turned down.

50 years ago: Sept. 7, 1958

The trustees of Old McKendree Chapel have awarded Elfrink Construction Co. the contract to erect an all-metal canopy over the chapel; the canopy was designed by Truman Farrow of the River States Engineering Service.

The Rev. B.V. Wulff speaks for the first time in services at both the Third Street Methodist and Hobbs Chapel churches; the congregations here have been without a pastor since the resignation of the Rev. Rusby Slinkard a month ago.

75 years ago: Sept. 7, 1933

Notices are being sent out to contractors from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers office in St. Louis that bids will be received Sept. 14 on about $500,000 in additional dike construction projects along the Mississippi River in the area north and south of Cape Girardeau.

Raymond Mercola, 23, working in Cape Girardeau with Pioneer Auto Service Co., says he is seriously considering joining Rear Adm. Richard E. Byrd's second expedition to the South Pole; Mercola was the youngest member of Byrd's first expedition to the pole.

100 years ago: Sept. 7, 1908

Ed Abernathy of Cape Girardeau is badly injured in the evening at the Electric Park skating rink, receiving a head wound that brings about delirium for a time and sends him to bed; his second excursion on wheels ends badly, when he is bumped by another skater, sending him flying into a railing.

M.E. Leming and family returned from Michigan yesterday, where they spent the hot summer; Mrs. Leming had the misfortune the day before leaving her summer home of spraining her ankle, and she traveled with great difficulty.

-- Sharon K. Sanders