FOR MOST OF THE CENTURY: EIGHTH GRADE GRADUATION

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

In the spring of 1927 there was Eighth Grade Graduation, a much looked forward to event. Right after Christmas of 1926 the girls in my class began to talk of the dresses they would wear, all made at home, of course, although times were getting better and better for everyone.

We discussed crepe de chine, georgette, voil, dimity. No two dresses were to be alike, but all would be white. Thelma Ross said, to our amazement and envy, that her dress was going to be trimmed with bugle beads. I'd never heard of them, but they sounded beautiful. When I, full of hope, relayed this information to Mama, she said there would be no bugle beads on my dress. But she did begin to finger the silks when we went to the fabric stores, or dry goods stores, as they were then called. Eventually we decided on white crepe de chine, a sort of non-shiny, crinkled silk. The yardage was brought home months in advance of the graduation ceremony so I could have the joy of anticipation. Many times I folded and unfolded it, pressed it to my cheek, decided, poetically, that it looked like moonlight on white ice.

The final pattern we chose from a picture, naturally. The dress had two box pleats from shoulder to hen, both front and back. They were sewn like big tucks and then flattened out equally over the seams and pressed. No pulling apart with these pleat/tucks. They stayed in place. A Buster Brown collar, short sleeves and the belt of self fabric to pull in a waist line formed the utter simplicity of it, contrasting sharply with the bugle beaded trim of Thelma's.

No one saw my nainsook bloomers with lace insertions about two inches above the elastic casing and the ruffle and lace trimmed slip. I was clothed more fancily underneath than on the outside. Maybe this was Mama's subtle way of saying that dressings, either in clothes or in personality, shouldn't be just a facade for what's underneath.

We had a rose bush with early blossoms, pink, very fragrant, the name of which I never discovered, so I just call it the May Rose or the Graduation Rose. It grew beside and drooped over the woven wire fence between the front yard and the garden. I made corsages of these roses for all my girl classmates.

We marched down the steps of the new gym, boys in one row, girls in the other, perfuming the air around us with this inimitable old-fashioned fragrance.

The high school graduation class shared the same ceremony, the older ones being seated across the aisle from us "upstarts."

I'm sure the speaker tried to make his message suit both classes, not over our eighth grade heads but yet not "dumbed down" to the older graduates. I don't remember any part of it, being much more interested in Thelma's bugle beads, my own crepe de chine and the heady fragrance of the old roses.

Maybe the speaker talked about opportunities and what a wonderful world it was waiting for us "out there." "Out there" didn't interest me much. The here and now was pretty wonderful for me. There were Mama and Dad, Lou and Lillian, Grandma and Grandpa, the dogs, cats, chickens, cows, horses, blue bells, wild pansies, the woods, the river, the land, a silk dress and high school coming up in the near future.

When I review what was happening nationally at that time, I think maybe the speaker might have talked about the Kellogg-Briand Pact, a pact that nations were then signing, promising they would use peaceful means instead of war to settle quarrels among themselves.

That wouldn't have interested me much either. We had already fought the war to end all wars. No more Daddy getting "shot." No more Germans coming over Simms Mountain in a red glare. No more brown biscuits.

Maybe the speaker quoted Coolidge's advice given during his administration: "Spend less than you make and make more than you spend." Since it would be several years before I would start making money, that wouldn't have impressed me either. Even if he'd added, "But people are spending more than they make," I'd probably have just readjusted my mock hox pleats and smelled the roses. "Let the good times roll," was the attitude of most everyone. Yes, sir, let 'em roll.

They did "roll" for two more years. Even longer than that for us; for we had no money in the stock market, which crashed. We read in the newspapers that in New York, financiers had jumped out of windows to their death. Mama and Grandma clucked their tongues. Dad and Grandpa read aloud in ominous tones that something bad was coming. That something was to be called the Great Depression.

If a meadow full of daisies, a nest of robin's eggs, chimney swifts diving down the chimneys had interested me more than any national or international events I could have read about, something did happen in that arena not long after eighth grade graduation that caught my attention. Not only mine, but everyone else's. Charles Augustus Lindbergh had flown an airplane, by himself, across the Atlantic Ocean! An airplane, like the ones that used to make us go outside and shout, "Airplane!" to alert everyone to the sight.

Neighbors talked about the feat at mail boxes and stores, in the fields, before and after church services. Sunday editions of the St. Louis Globe Democrat were purchased and brought home to be read. Charles Augustus Lindbergh had flown from New York to Paris, thirty-six hundred miles in thirty-three and a half hours. Alone! And the people of my state, Missouri, had bought the plane for him and named it, "The Spirit of St. Louis." How proud I was to be a citizen of Missouri.

In order to keep up with such fast moving events, we subscribed to the metropolitan daily. I kept up with Andy Gump, Mutt and Jeff, Little Orphan Annie and other comic strip characters, including Winnie Winkle, she of the pretty dresses.

The rotoraveur section interested me too. This was a chocolate brown reproduction of pictures, most especially of movie stars and actresses who were on the stage at the St. Louis Municipal Opera in Forest Park, St. Louis. Once there was a picture of Laura LaPlant. I thought she was so beautiful and tried to wave my hair to look like her's and mimic her expression. Yes, yes, I was Laura LaPlant, and after her, Janet Gaynor, Clara Bow, Billie Burke, etc. My hair style changed often but very temporarily, always falling back into the part in the middle with bangs across my forehead.

Always, somewhere in the paper there were little nagging articles about a bank failing here, there, yonder. Dad and Grandpa read these aloud as if they thought we ought to know.

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