FOR MOST OF THE CENTURY: LIFE AT THE FARM HOUSE (PART 2)

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.

The farm was known for many years as the Billy Wilbourn Place since a family by that name had homesteaded it in 1860. A son of John London married a Wilbourn girl and it then became known for many years as the old London Place. After that it was ours. After we left, a family by the name of Watson owned it and then, here in the last decade of the 20th century, the last known owner, at this writing, is Harry Lynn Peterson. He has added much more acreage to the original farm.

The original erection of the farmhouse is lost in history, but it could readily be observed that the back part of the house was once a log cabin. The great, hand-hewn logs were put together in the saddle-notched style, chinked with a gray-colored plaster reinforced with some sort of black bristles. A brick and sandstone chimney was at one end. At some point in time there must have been a partition in the cabin because there were two doors close together on each side, not needed unless there had been a partition between them, making two rooms, or, indeed, maybe a two-family cabin. Before we arrived the partition had been removed, leaving those funny four doors leading to the outside from one room.

Maybe it was at the same time when the partition was removed that the east side of the cabin was also removed and a two-story, wood-sided, four-room addition was added with stairs leading up from the four-doored cabin room which was now our kitchen. The addition made an ell-shaped house, with a roofed back porch partially filling in the lower part of the ell. The upper floor of the room attached to the older cabin part was two steps higher than the original floor of the cabin loft. So, leading out of this upper room was about a six-foot platform with two steps down to the loft floor. The inside walls of this cabin loft, or what we called the attic, were the exposed logs. Many pleasant childhood hours were spent in this attic area, cutting out paper dolls, playing with real dolls, playing house with some of Mama's furniture that was stored there when the two families' furniture was combined. There was always a pile of rags, saved for making rag rugs. This was a good place to nestle into with a good book to read.

The place was kept fairly warm in winter as the warm bricks of the fireplace chimney coming up from the kitchen were also exposed. There were two small casement windows on either side of the chimney. These windows were kept open in summer, and in winter, although closed, an unreplaced broken window pane allowed Tabby Cat to enter at will by way of the lean-to pantry roof, to have her family of kittens or just to keep warm if she wasn't already behind the kitchen stove downstairs.

When the two-story addition was made it is thought that the outside cabin logs were then covered with wood siding same as the new front. In the beginning and maybe some time thereafter, the house was painted white with bright green louvered shutters at all the new windows. But by the time we arrived, it was a faded gray and the shutters not so green. That's the way it remained all during our occupancy.

To the left of the stairs, going up, was a place we called the catch-all. It was the space created by that six-foot platform leading out of the new upper room and the two steps down to the original cabin loft floor. This catch-all was left open on the side facing the stairs. It was a handy place to hide things quickly or store things seldom used. It was dark and rather scary back in the far corners. Grandpa's and Dad's shotguns were kept in the catch-all, and whenever old ragdoll Betsy was lost she could usually be found in the catch-all.

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime columnist for the Southeast Missourian.