Out of the past: May 5

1994

Fast-food establishments such as McDonald's and Burger King won't be setting up shop on the Southeast Missouri State University campus; the board of regents yesterday awarded a new food service contract to Morrison's Hospitality Group.

JEFFERSON CITY -- Legislation to send a constitutional amendment back to voters this year legalizing games of chance on riverboats apparently lacks the support in the House of Representatives to pass; Southeast Missouri legislators all agree the measure is dead for the 1994 session, and if it is to be considered by voters again this year, it will have to be put on the ballot by an initiative petition.

1969

City and Cape County Civil Defense officials, Missouri Utilities and the National Guard are reviewing the results of yesterday's mock disaster drill; residents in a 36-block area in the southwest part of Cape Girardeau were treated to police, soldiers, rescue vehicles and just plain curious citizens moving through their neighborhoods before the exercise was over; city manager Paul F. Frederick says the mock tornado drill went "too smoothly."

Members of Centenary United Methodist Church have approved a renovation and expansion proposal, which includes plans to reverse the sanctuary from facing west to east and to provide an entrance into the sanctuary from the north.

1944

Mississippi River floodwaters, fast filling the McClure, Illinois, basin across the river from Cape Girardeau, will be released into the stream's main channel with the blasting later today of a section of the levee just north of Gale, Illinois, where it was opened in the record flood last year.

Although just 15, C. Gene Ellis of Sedgewickville, Missouri, is a veteran of six months of service in the Navy, from which he has just been discharged because of his tender years; the sailor, a fireman second class, was in Cape Girardeau yesterday when it became known he had joined up again, this time with the Lloyd Dale Clippard Post of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, thereby becoming the youngest member of the post; he went into service at age 14.

1919

The most recent information provided by the War Department is that the 140th Regiment will be in Cape Girardeau on Friday; it will parade the city's streets and will be welcomed home by the citizenry.

Cape Girardeau is having the worst sand famine ever known; while the river is constantly filling up with sand, the supply for use in Cape Girardeau grows less; since F.W. Morrison quit business last summer and sold his equipment to a Caruthersville, Missouri, man, the town has depended upon Caruthersville for its sand, with the price jumping from $1.27 a load delivered to $2.75 a load; contractors are counting the days when Peter Deimund's new sand boat is put to work here.

-- Sharon K. Sanders