FOR MOST OF THE CENTURY: GOODBYE TO THE CHICKENS

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.

Had we looked more closely, I suppose we could have had a better notion of what was coming in the incredible sixties, but there was always the day-to-day living, the taking charge, the moving forward on the home front.

After being taken into the city limits, it seemed that the first "country" things to go were the chickens. I hated that, for it was still pleasant to spread the fresh, summer-smelling straw on the floor, to gather the eggs, to just sit on a bale of straw in the hideaway of the chicken house and think about sundry things while the querulous hens clucked and the roosters strutted. But chickens, pigs, horses and cows were not welcome in the city, and the city was "swallowing" us. Along the horseshoe-shaped drive of East and West Rodney where there had been only five houses, the lots were being snatched up and homes built. There are 86 houses now facing these drives and more along Chrysler and Adeline streets, which had been cut through the interior of the "horseshoe." Little private drives branching off outward from East and West Rodney afford room for other houses. A cow could not now find its way around on the old Haman Farm.

Thinking the price of real estate had peaked, we sold the south part of our lot to Keith Miller. We sold it with the provision that only one house be built there and so placed that it would not obstruct our view to the south. Such a house was built, but I'm not sure our original stipulations could hold up anymore.

~The second chicken house that we had built was demolished first. The first chicken house stood for a long time thereafter. Stephen and friends, having removed the roosts and the row of nests, used it as a clubhouse.

At one time the inside walls were nearly covered with baseball cards. "If only we hadn't tacked them," Stephen lamented in later years when "good condition" baseball cards became very valuable.

The woven wire fence around the chicken yard and the south part of our lot came down, except that which ran alongside our driveway. For many more years thereafter it served as a support for the row of luxuriant Paul's Scarlet roses that we had planted there, 100 feet of them.

A cindered path, bordered by old-fashioned purple irises, led from the south side of the garage alongside the roses to a seat under an apple tree. When the roses and irises were in bloom at the same time it was a pleasant little path to travel.

I never gave up my gardening, although the plot grew smaller and smaller, and the days were over ~when, upon hearing a team of horses pulling a wagon down the street, I could go out and hail it to ask the driver if he'd plow my garden. However, I still managed to get the soil turned up and over in the spring. Garden tillers had come into vogue for "city" gardeners, although in my opinion they were not nearly so effective as the old plowshare that went much deeper and laid the soil over in shiny brown furrows.

A great joy of my life has been to put seeds into the ground and watch for their sprouting. The bean seed pushed the soil into, a little brown, cracked hummock as if some minuscule mole had come near the surface. Soon a pale green stem, still crooked, could be seen through the crack in the hummock if I got down low enough to look, which I did. The next day the crinkled green beginning of a leaf would break through. By the third day the whole bean plant would be there, ready to begin its life cycle. I would touch the little leaves tenderly. All seeds manifested their sprouting differently. I loved them all, and the whole ambiance of the garden -- the warm spring sunshine, the songs of the returning birds, the breezes in my hair, the feeling that I was doing something worthwhile. Perplexing things always became clearer to me in my garden.

"You've made a rare day today, God," I would whisper. In answer, an apple blossom drifting from a nearby, tree might land in my bean row, or a robin, following along behind my hoe or trowel, would cock his head and seemingly wink at me.

I have pleasant recurring dreams, no two the same, wherein I have returned to a long neglected garden, maybe years, and find thin~ leaves still pushing up through the soil. I try to interpret thes~e dreams. Have I neglected something? Is something I once planted, maybe in my mind or someone else's still there? Do I need to get on with some sort of "cultivation" or loving care?

In spite of my thought that such dreams may be reminders of something I'm neglecting, they are good dreams for at least the sprouted things are still there, green and healthy. I always awake refreshed.

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