FOR MOST OF THE CENTURY: COLLEGE LIFE BRINGS NEW EXPERIENCES (PART 24)

Sometimes, after most of a century has passed before you, you can look back and see turning points in your life, some big or little thing that determined the road you would take.

The first and dominant one for me was that moment when I realized that God was talking back to me in a manner I chose to believe. Another one happened in high school. The Depression was gathering force. I knew that my chances of going on to college would depend upon a partial scholarship, gained by being valedictorian of my graduating class. Flat River Junior College offered such scholarships to local graduates. Although I was always a good student, Birdie Matthews continually nipped at my heels scholastically.

I had to figure out some way to inch ahead in grades and stay there. In an English class we had come to that section on, "Giving a Speech." Fortunately many of the students, including Birdie, gave their speeches before I did. Everyone used notes. Aha, I thought. I'll give my speech without notes.

My subject matter was inconsequential. It was about a haunted house somewhere in California. Certainly not a dissertation nor a thesis, but given without notes and with eye contact with my fellow classmates, made it effective.

The speech put a plus sign after my grade. And the thin, hanging-by-a-thread plus held up and made me valedictorian.

I entered Flat River Junior College, September, 1931.

The scholarship meant I could work in Dean Wesley Deneke's office, typing this, that and the other for part of my tuition. Also, I could work in the school's cafeteria during the lunch hour and then, when everyone was served, get a free lunch myself.

The MR & BT Railroad had a terminal spur at Doe Run. Often, after spending the weekend at home, I took that train to Flat River, about a twenty mile ride. Along with enough clean clothes for the week went a sack of potatoes from Mama's garden (Mama always and always had a garden), some slices of bacon, ham and cold fried chicken, a jar of kraut, some apples and my purse containing a one dollar bill and lipstick! Yes, by this time I could use lipstick, purchased at Woolworth's. If I was careful with my lipstick money, I could occasionally buy a tiny bottle of Radio Girl perfume or Mavis talcum powder. I juggled these things down Cochran Street and up Field Street to the home of the Upchurch family where I rented a tiny room and had the privilege of using the kitchen after that family was through with it for the day.

Essie Waltman Upchurch, the mother of this family, was a daughter of the Waltman family, our nearest neighbors in Doe Run. So I had a sort of "in" with them. We all helped each other as best we could to get through the Depression which grew worse and worse.

Although I was invited to mingle with the family in the evenings, I seldom did so. The two Upchurch sons, Clelle and Byron, had homework to do. David was just a baby. Mr. Upchurch, a teacher, had papers to grade and lesson plans to make. Essie tended the baby or leafed endlessly through the Sears Roebuck catalog.

Flat River, now incorporated with other Lead Belt towns, the whole of them known as Park Hills, is a very hilly town and my walk of about a mile from where I stayed wasn't as easy as going down that old railroad track beside the murmuring river.

My free hours were mostly spent in the Dean's office, typing. If there was nothing to do there, I joined my new friends in the girls' lounge where we played auction bridge, a forerunner to contract bridge.

The Scholastic Honorary Society at Flat River Junior College was Phi Theta Kappa. Such societies were new to me and I didn't give it much thought, but when the first semester's grades came out, there were three S's and an M+ on my card. We graded by Excellent, Superior, Medium, Inferior and Failing. The M+ was in the class taught by Wesley Deneke, the Dean for whom I worked. Perhaps he was afraid he would have shown favoritism if he'd given me a better grade since I was his office girl.

A boy whose last name was Stracky, sat next to me in this particular class. He had seen all my test scores and heard my class performance. He "hit the ceiling" when he learned of the M+ and advised me to "take it up with the Dean." I was too timid.

Besides, I might lose my job. "Well," said Stracky, "I'm going to." And he did.

Dean Deneke never changed my grade but he did mumble some sort of apology that he thought my responses were too "memorized" and not thought out."

That M+ haunted me for two years. Thereafter my grades were all Superior and Excellent except for another M+ in Introduction to Art. But now, instead of a Birdie Matthews nipping at my scholastic heels it was a Helen Estes, and the Estes and Deneke families were good friends.

Once again I was faced with the fact that if I couldn't be valedictorian and earn a partial scholarship to Southeast Missouri State College, my formal education might come to a sudden halt.

There's always a way out if you think hard enough. I knew that if I could "overload", that is, take more five hour classes my last semester and make E's in all of them, I could beat Helen. I did.

Still, the talk on campus around graduation time was that Helen was going to be valedictorian.

After the last semester's grades were posted I walked into the Dean's office and requested him to compare the grade point average of the two of us.

Wonderingly, he did so as I sat nearby watching. When he was through adding and dividing, he looked at me, stunned.

"I'm valedictorian, aren't I?"

"By six tenths," he replied.

To be continued Jan. 18.

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.