I did not write a blog post or share an old one yesterday because I had no internet on my laptop. That is because on Sunday and Monday, January 5th and 6th, Altenburg experienced a heavy ice storm. Many folks around here continue to be without power, and the power outages caused a loss of the internet for many people like me. I was one of the fortunate ones who did not lose power throughout the whole storm, so my wife and I stayed warm. However, we were not completely spared. A tree limb fell on a power line between our utility pole and our barn, and this is now making it impossible for us to get our vehicles out of here. As some have pointed out about the photo below, I guess I now have an electric vehicle.
I began to research for today’s story yesterday. I planned to find some new people to write about, but as chance would have it, I ran across a post that was written back in 2017 after Altenburg had experienced an ice storm. It was a post that highlighted another heavy ice storm that took place on January 9th and 10th in 1930. Several photographs were taken back then and were printed as post cards. We have these photographs at our museum in our photo morgue. When I once again viewed these pictures, my mind was made up almost immediately. I knew that I wanted to share this old post today.
Not only did I think that our readers would enjoy looking at these old photos, but I also had another idea. I am hoping that some of our local people in East Perry County will share some photos of this recent ice storm with our museum. I figure that there are two ways that you can do that easily. First, you could comment on this post as it shows up on our museum Facebook page and include a photo or two that you think we might include in our museum’s collection of photos. Just make sure that you use our new Facebook page which can be found in the link below.
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61565960684574
A second way to share your photos with us is by attaching them in an email and send it to blog@lutheranmuseum.com.
One of our missions at the Lutheran Heritage Center & Museum is to not only preserve our past history, but also to document present history so that future generations can enjoy the past that is taking place now. You can contribute to that part of our mission by sharing some of your photos of this year’s ice storm. Perhaps a blog writer several years in the future will find these pics and share them with our descendants.
I have an even more specific request. Maybe some of you who recognize where the old photos were taken could reenact them by taking a photo from the same place as it looks today. We may get some sunshine in the next few days, and that should make for some really pretty pictures. If you reenact a photo, please indicate which number you are recreating. I have placed numbers under each photo in the old post.
I also noticed while looking back at this post that the very next day, I wrote a story about fences in Altenburg that was simply titled, Fences. I am sure I was inspired to write that story after seeing all the fences in the old ice storm photos.
Just a quick note: The link in the previous post to an article found in the Southeast Missourian now requires a subscription, so you might not be able to read it.
One more thing. Until I get my power line issue resolved, I will not be able to get to the museum to collect images for blog posts. I know I must be patient because there are a lot of local people who have much greater needs to get their power back. They should be serviced first.