FOR MOST OF THE CENTURY: LAST VISIT TO THE OLD FARMHOUSE (PART 53)

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.

1980-1990

Nearly every year my sisters and I, after we had established our own homes, would set aside a day to drive down the crooked, woodsy road to the farmhouse where we were reared.

Our last visit was in 1980. Tuesday, Oct. 14th to be exact. It says so in my daily journal.

The house, occupied by several families after we left, had, by that October visit, been vacant for some time and seemed lonesome, but the river, fields, mountains and meadows were still there, unchanged.

October was at its best that year. Had we known it was to be our last time to open the familiar door, climb the stairs and enter our old bedroom, we wouldn't have been so happy as we were.

The last tenant had secured carpet samples from some store and the floor of our bedroom, never carpeted while we were there, was completed covered with blocks of colorful, deep piled carpet samples, tacked together so that it looked like wall to wall carpeting.

The only piece of furniture was a rocking chair someone had left. Curtis, Lillian's husband, was with us as well as his dog, Cape, so named because he had been secured in Cape Girardeau.

We left Curtis occupy the chair. Cape lay at his feet. Lillian, Lou and I sat on the colorful floor where we could look out the window that provided a view of the barn, the meadow, the sugar maple grove. Through a fringe of bordering trees we had glimpses of the river. Beyond the river and another field, the sides of Simms Mountain rose up like a carnival of gypsies in all their fall finery. The two, sky-pointing sour gum trees that marked a legal corner of the farm, and which would have been brilliant crimson at this time, were gone, but we could see more little scarlet gum trees taking their place at the edge of the mountain. High-flying Monarch butterflies, fluttered southward in the fantastically brilliant blue sky. There were cows in the meadow which some current neighbor had rented for pasture.

We had brought a basket lunch and decided to eat it right there where the view was better than that from the kitchen. Before we laid a cloth on the carpet we took turns saying prayers. I can't remember the words of our prayers, but they had to do with thankfulness for the time we had lived there, the guidance we were given and the goodness and mercy that had followed us. I wanted to vocally end my prayer with, "Thank you, God, for letting me see that carbide light and the "light' that followed, but only God and I would have known what I meant, so I whispered it inwardly.

"The dresser was there," Lillian said, pointing to the south wall of the room. "For a while," Lou responded. "Before that, it was over there." She pointed to another wall. "I remember well, because that is where I put the boxed valentine that Leemon gave me one year." Big boxed valentines were the height of expressed sentiment then. They cost a mighty fifty cents.

"And I remember that spot so well," I told them, pointing to a place on the ceiling above the door to our room.

"Why?" came concerted, puzzled questions. Even Cape seemed to raise a lazy eyebrow.

It did seem an unlikely spot to be remembered. I tried to explain.

The lamplight from Mama's and Dad's room, across the upstairs hallway, by some mysterious architectural happenstance threw a funnel-shaped pattern there on our ceiling, after our lamplight had been blown out. I went to sleep, looking at that funnel-shaped light because it brought such a safe and comfortable feeling that all was well. Mama and Dad were just across the hall, "funneling" their love to us.

Reflected light has played such a big part in my life. I once read a devotional about reflected light. The writer told about a discarded copper skillet that hung from a nail near a basement window. When the sun's rays struck a certain spot on the skillet, it reflected a light into a dark corner where lay some old, shriveling potatoes. This meager light caused the potatoes to sprout, the lesson being that if we can only reflect a little light we may bring new life to something.

As we munched away at our sandwiches we recalled the straw ticks and feather beds and handmade quilts, unbleached muslin sheets that had a seam down the middle. If two slept together, as Lou and I did, one had better stay on her side of the seam, unless it was a cold winter night. Lillian had a bed to herself. "Right over there," she said, pointing to the exact site of her bed that never changed. Sometimes Lou and I moved our bed to a different spot just to make something new that didn't cost anything.

"Remember our scenes?" I asked Lou.

Lou gave me a frowning glance as if I had stumbled into some secret area. "Or Grandma's Passage-of-time-quilt?" she hurried to respond, slamming the door on what she must have still thought was our private territory.

At the time of our "scenes" we didn't know fancier and more precise words and phrases such as fantasizing, or conjuring up of mental visions. Perhaps we were precursors of James Thurber's Walter Mitty.

Where we came up with the word, scenes, who knows?

After we had said our nightly prayer and before falling asleep, we would imagine ourselves to be something we weren't, always doing something gloriously satisfying and stunning. One of my favorite "scenes" was being at a huge church meeting somewhere, always some place strange to me. The pianist had failed to appear and the minister had asked if there was anyone in the congregation who could play the piano. I would modestly arise, walk to the piano and play it so beautifully the congregation would be in tears. In reality, I could barely manage "The Old Rugged Cross," and the aforementioned, "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine." There was a variation on this theme, sometimes the soloist would be absent and I would substitute. I've always been told that I can't sound the true notes, but do well in the cracks between the notes.

Lou's favorite would be to drive a hitch of ten horses around the courthouse square at Farmington while onlookers applauded, especially Leemon.

We often shared with each other what our "scenes" had been and there was always mutual admiration of our mental inventions.

We never accomplished any of the grand things we imagined, but we did learn the efficacy of imagination. Lou became somewhat of an interior decorator, imaging what an empty room would look like if a chair was placed there, a sofa here, a credenza against yon wall, burgundy drapes, a plant, a lamp, etc. and then bringing it to life in either her home or someone else's.

I became somewhat of a writer, imagining what would happen if a soldier, returning late from a war, had found his house in Fish Town Row dismantled and the parts used by others.

When we left that October day, there were no backward glances. I think we felt the buildings would be there, at least as long as we were here.

Pictures of the farmhouse were taken later at the request of Mereta Williams, for the place had been put forward as a Missouri Literary Landmark.

Thank goodness the pictures were taken, for a rich man subsequently bought the farm, burned all the buildings, filled up the cellar and well and proceed to make a nature habitat of the whole place. The Belmont Branch Railroad had already been abandoned, the rails and ties removed.

The next time we went to visit, all was level, raw ground.

The only thing we found was one square nail, the kind used in the last century in erecting the front part of the dear old house.

The new owner built a log house. Who knows, maybe things are starting all over again.

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