FOR MOST OF THE CENTURY: MAKING A HOME ON OUR OWN (PART 30)

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.

April 11, 1936

I arose early, bathed, ate breakfast, helped Mama with the refreshments which were to be served at our home after our marriage ceremony. I noticed some tears in Mama's eyes which she surreptitiously tried to wipe away. Her last child was moving out.

I dressed with care -- a gray suit, trimmed with fur on the upper arms, the style of the day. My blouse was gray, hat, shoes and purse navy blue. I limped a little. The last week of school I had sprained an ankle while playing with the children at recess.

Edward arrived, dressed in a gray suit with a shadow check in it; a gray hat and new shoes.

Mama, Dad, Lillian, Edward and I started to Farmington about 10:30 a.m. It was about a five mile drive. The ceremony was to be at 11:00 a.m. Lucille was pregnant and chose not to go.

We were married at the Methodist minister's home in Farmington. Edward's brother, Juel, was best man. Lillian was my matron of honor. Juel's wife, Clara, was also present.

The ceremony was brief and we were soon on our way back to Doe Run.

After the reception, Edward and I departed in a Model A Ford roadster for St. Louis for one of the shortest honeymoons ever. Some of Edward's pals had seen fit to put a skunk in the back area of the roadster. It had been removed, of course, and Edward had done his best to scrub and spray and douse with perfume. But...

We stayed overnight at the Mayfair Hotel, went to see Charlie Chaplin in the movie "Modern Times."

The next morning was Easter Sunday. I awoke to the sound of what seemed like a bunch of hogs grunting. Briefly, I thought I was back on the farm and this marriage bit was all a dream. But, walking to the window and looking down three stories, there was a truckload of hogs. I supposed they called them swine in the city.

My school had been out on Friday. We were married on Saturday, returned from St. Louis on Sunday, and I enrolled at SEMO on Monday for the spring and summer terms, the last legs of my B.S. degree.

That summer of 1936 was one of the hottest of the century. I was again doing practice teaching, this time at the SEMO's Training School. Ninth grade. My supervisor was a Mr. Boucher. He was very ill at the time. About mid-term, "Cyclone" Jones took over. It was upsetting to me.

I was also writing my required thesis, the title of which was, "The Social Effect of Addison and Steele." Edward and I stayed in a hot upstairs bedroom at the Mosley residence at 501 Themis St., now the site of a car wash.

The bright spot of the summer was that Edward and I had secured an FHA loan and our house was going up at what one day would be 703 Rodney Drive, but then, outside the city limits, our address was merely known as Rodney Vista.

It was so nice after school to come out at evenings and sit in the rooms that were, so far, only divided by two by fours. Sometimes a late evening breeze came through the skeleton house. I sat looking out of all the walls and windows to be, embroidering a luncheon cloth -- colorful lazy daisy motifs on unbleached muslin. All the perplexities and complications of Boucher, Jones, Addison and Steele slipped away. Even the war events going on in faraway places didn't occupy a lot of my thoughts, although, on the backroads of my mind, I knew they were going on. Mentally placing the stove here, the table there, the bed yonder was more pleasant to think about than what was going on in Manchuria, Ethiopia and the Rhineland. I felt as if I had suddenly matriculated from the fence corner playhouse of my childhood directly to this place. Life had been simple, basic and good in that fence corner with wagon wheel hub chairs, wagon wheel hub tables, wagon wheel hub stove. I expected life to be simple, basic and good in this new home with real tables, chairs and stove.

It was still Depression days. Would they never end? Talk about Uncle Remus' Tar Baby! Or Scheherazade's unending stories!

Edward's father, Edgar Scott Mosley, was a carpenter and he, along with out-of-work son-in-law Oliver Hope, built the house. That is, they did the carpentry work. Sub-contracts were let to Lear Brothers for excavation, Stovall and Co. for the brick and concrete work, Drury for the plastering, A.E. Birk for plumbing, Missouri Utilities for wiring and fixtures.

It is a sturdily built house. No one was in a hurry to finish a job, for there was seldom another one in sight. Sometimes three nails were used when one would have done. There are two layers of brick for the walls with dead air space in between. The builders said it would be the best of insulations, but twenty-two windows seem to defeat that theory.

I, being a farm girl, and Edward, probably always wanting to live on a farm, had a very large garden. I loved that garden. Setting out the tomato and pepper plants in spring, and the long row of onion sets, planting the lettuce, radish, bean and corn seed made me feel like a magician, for I knew what those little green plants and dry, brown seeds could become. With April's blue skies above, wind in my hair, a cat rubbing against my legs, all the birds singing and an ongoing conversation with God, it was good to be in that place. "You did good with seeds, God."

Very soon a big chicken house went up, and then another one. I still loved to gather those eggs, especially the brown speckled ones. As in the days when Mama and I took the eggs to Langdon's Store and exchanged them for groceries, I took eggs to Horn's Grocery Store and exchanged them for sugar, flour, coffee and other staples.

We constructed a budget box so that we could "make it" financially. This was a shoe box, divided into compartments labeled: House Loan Payment, Electricity, Furniture payments, Groceries, Insurance, Coal, Gasoline and Entertainment.

The Entertainment section was always very empty.

We were subsisting and very happy with our new home in the corn field. But it soon became apparent that, say, if we wanted to go to St. Louis to see a major league baseball game or to a home town movie, we needed more money.

I applied for a teaching position at several local schools, without luck. I did substitute teaching at Central High School. Then there appeared in the paper an ad stating that a secretary was needed by the Equitable Life Insurance Company, headquartered in the Himmelberger-Harrison building, commonly called the H & H Building.

I made a navy blue dotted Swiss dress, the white dots being in the shape of small butterflies. I bought a turned-back-brimmed navy straw hat and, with my navy purse and wedding shoes intact, I went to the H & H Building, got in the elevator at the end of the long marble-floored hall and traveled upward, determined, but with more butterflies in my stomach than in the dotted Swiss.

I got the job!

Although I had my B.S. in Education degree with a major in English, the only formal office training I had was that high school course in typing, shorthand and bookkeeping and a summer term at a private business school in Farmington, but with a resume stating that I had taught school for two years and had worked in the dean's office as a typist at both Flat River Junior College and SEMO, I got the job! It was 1938.

We were able to go to Jones' Coney Island Hot Dog Parlor on Broadway about once a week in addition to a picture show. A small increase was made on our church pledge. I had moved my church membership from Doe Run Methodist Church to Centenary United Methodist Church in 1937. Edward was already a member of the congregation.

A real treat for us was to board the Frisco train at the depot on Water Street at 4:00 a.m., arrive in St. Louis some hours later and walk down to the Forum to get waffles with maple syrup for breakfast. We would ramble around through Stix, Baer and Fuller and Famous-Barr department stores, then catch a street car to Sportsman's Park to see a Cardinal baseball game. Late night we would arrive back in Cape, by train, and get into our car, a Chevrolet by that time, and come home. We could have left that car parked there for a month or more and no one would have ever touched it.

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