FOR MOST OF THE CENTURY: DAD GOES ON TO THAT OTHER DIMENSION (PART 36)

Jean Bell Mosley's new autobiograpny, "For Most of the Century," is only available in serialized form in the Southeast Missourian. Return each week for her continuing story.

Not only did Dad experience the tragedy of losing his right arm, there were other accidents. Earlier, while working at a granite quarry about five miles north of our farm home, a boulder he was trying to maneuver into a loader slipped in some way so as to hit the end of the crowbar he was working with and drove it into his side, missing a kidney by only a fraction of an inch, so said the doctor.

Lou and I were hoeing corn that day in the fifteen acre field when we saw our wagon and horses emerge from a wooden area and come slowly down alongside the field. Perplexed at the odd hour for Dad to be coming home, and wondering "Who was that driver?" we ran toward the wagon. As we ran we jerked off our dark red, dried corn silk wigs enclosed in hair nets we were fond of wearing to lift our lives out of the humdrums.

The driver, another quarry workman, gestured for us to stand back. "Your dad has been hurt," he said. Even now I can recall the fear with which we followed the wagon home, wanting to cry out, "How bad?" but fearing to do so, lest we learn.

Our horses pulled the wagon ever so slowly along the lanes, across the gravely river bed. Barefooted, we softly followed. On a bank where the wagon tilted upward a little we saw the blood and Dad's ashen face.

"Lucky," the doctor later said to the group of us huddled in the kitchen, awaiting the report. "Went right between vital organs."

There was a common sigh of relief, but I was somewhat puzzled. What were vital organs? I thought everything inside was vital.

The bruising, swelling and, no doubt, pain was awful. It took a long time to heal. Dad never worked at the quarry again.

I soon learned what vital organs were and that the heart was at the top of the list. When it stopped, "Taps."

In 1930 Dad had his first heart attack. From there it was trouble. Not frequent at first but from time to time he was hospitalized at the Bonne Terre Hospital, the nearest one in our county. No by-pass surgery then. No transplants.

In 1959 he could not make it back from his last attack. He died February 9, 1959 at the Bonne Terry Hospital. Dad, who was always there for us, making plans, making big plans, was gone.

On hot, humid summer evenings as we lay on quilts in the front yard, trying to catch any stray breeze, he would often say to us, "See that hill in front of us?" It was his way of pulling us up from lethargy. Of course we could see that tree covered hill in front of us, rising up from a creek not over a hundred yards away. "Some day we might make a sheep pasture there," he would plan. "Imagine that hill all a green pasture with five thousand white sheep grazing." Not fifty, nor five hundred but five thousand. Why not?

Another evening he would present a mind's eye picture of it becoming a vineyard or an apple orchard, or maybe a range for Arabian horses.

He had a thing about light, too. He was the first in the community to bring home a Coleman lamp. He rigged up the carbide light system for the farm home., When we moved to Doe Run, which was still in the kerosene lamp stage, he and a partner formed the Doe Run and Delassus Light and Power Company which brought electricity to our little village.

When I was called to "Come home, Dad has died," I found Mama in the kitchen, he head on the table, encircled by her arms. I put my hand on her shoulder and said, "It's all right, Mama." I wondered if she felt as I had the many years ago when Grandpa had placed his hand on my shoulder and said, "It's all right." It surely wasn't all right for our torn hearts, but we all knew and accepted that it was the nature of things to live and then die. What made it bearable was the promise that we might live again as had been demonstrated a long time ago by One who was called The Light of the World. This same One also told of a Heavenly Father who was always looking for his lost children -- lost from the past he had cleared for us.

After Dad's death I thought of Dad being a reflection of that Heaven Father looking for a lost child only on an earthly lost-from-sight basis.

Although there were six older ones to look after me, I did escape from their sight once in a while, not intentionally but being led away by some pretty flower in the yard, and then the garden, the orchard, meadow, river bank.

I've often been told of the panic that pervaded the premises when it was discovered that I, barely able to walk, was missing. All afternoon the six of them dropped what they were doing to search for me in every conceivable place they thought I might be, so I was later told. Darkness was creeping over the landscape. I'm sure it meant nothing to me. They said they called and called but I did not answer. Soon, Daddy, out of breath, running alongside the river bank to where I had strayed, snatched me up in his arms and hurried home with me, so the old story goes.

There was another time Dad came to find me. I remember it quite distinctly.

I, in about fourth grade, was coming home from school. Lou had gone on ahead because I had stayed to dust the erasers or do some little chore about the school to help the teacher. The sun was getting very low. I decided to take a little-used short-cut through a fallow field that hugged the river bank. I hadn't take this short-cut all year.

First, there was this over-loaded cocklebur bush. It stopped me momentarily, snatching at my cotton dress, my long cotton stockings, my shoe laces, my hair. Oh, yes, my hair. Cockleburs grow tall in rich river bottom land. But what was one cocklebur bush to a country girl. I stomped it down and proceeded, unaware that perhaps thirty cockleburs were attacked to me like barnacles. They reached out with their spiny hooks to embrace other nearby cockleburs like long lost sisters and brothers.

Shadows gathered in the low places. Evening river sounds became more pronounced -- bull frogs, tree frogs, crickets. I must hurry. They'd be worried about me at home. And there were my chores. I decided to run, not give the cockleburs a chance to grab. It was a grievous mistake. Sturdy, vibrant specimens of cocklebur bushes awaited my passage, a veritable sea of them. They came at me from all sides, overhead, underneath. They stuck to new places and to the cockleburs that were already on me, two and three deep. If I pushed one bush aside, another sprang at me. I could see the bloody scratches on my hands. No doubt they were on my face too. I tasted blood.

I'll go back, I thought, and take the long way around. But, looking back, I saw the cocklebur bushes had closed ranks behind em. I was in a living trap.

I discarded my books and lunch box to put up a more worthy fight. But fighting a rich patch of cockleburs growing on fertile land is a lost cause. Soon I saw that I was almost literally covered with the hateful things. I had become a cocklebur-baby.

Faintly I heard someone call my name. An owl? There was an old Indian legend ... But I answered. If it was Daddy, I remembered he's always told me that if I got lost to not wander around but stay in one place, he'd find me.

I kept answering and soon Daddy loomed before me. I guessed it was Daddy. He was wearing cocklebur clothing but his face looked familiar. He picked me up and carried me out of that awful place. I put my arms around his neck, but dropped them quickly when I saw him flinch. I cried and he laughed. He cried and I laughed.

When we got home, after dark, every living thing who saw us laughed or barked or mooed or meowed. Mama gave me a haircut. It started a new fashion called the Cocklebur Tangle!

"Cockleburs will getcha if you don't watch out," Southeast Missourian, Oct. 13, 1991

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