FOR MOST OF THE CENTURY: TEACHING SCHOOL AT GRANITEVILLE

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.

When I had completed the 1993-34 fall and winter term at SEMO, I went right on into the summer term in order to get my B.S. degree as soon as possible.

That spring, 1934, I again applied for a school teaching position and got one. I could look forward to paying some of my further educational expenses.

The country was still in deep Depression. There were many, many applications for a school teaching position -- any old school.

At that time, to put in a serious application for a country school position, one traipsed through plowed fields, across streams, into grocery stores, mining offices, etc., to get an interview with a school board member.

You needed to look your best on these trips. Lillian had already been teaching school for several years. She secured a teaching position right out of high school, by passing a County Teachers Examination, so Lillian could afford some nice clothes. And she was generous in lending them. She had a new black spring coat which she let me borrow when I went interviewing.

A school board member I wanted to talk to was plowing a field with a team of horses. A barbed wire fence was around the field. I crawled through the strands and hooked the underneath sleeve area of Lillian's new coat on a barb which made an ugly tear. But on I went across the plowed ground to interview the board member who was kind enough to stop his plowing and listen to my pleading. The horses, grateful for a brief rest, stood patiently, tails switching flies from their backs. The sun glinted on some of the brass ornaments of their harness. It shone right into my eyes reminding me of that long ago carbide light reflector and the wonderful convictions that followed. Heartened by this reminder of His presence, I made my case and was curiously confident that I would get the position.

Back home I told Mama about the tear in the coat. She placed a finger over her lips to indicate this would be our secret.

Mama had long black hair -- black as the coat. She pulled out one of the hairs -- maybe two or three and did such a masterful job of reweaving the tear together that no one ever knew about it until years and years later when it didn't matter anymore. But it has always mattered to me.

I got the teaching position.

Graniteville was a small town that had grown up around a red granite quarry where most of the men of the families worked. There was a nearby area known as Elephant Rocks, a huge upheaval of granite boulders big as elephants, some of them balanced on the granite mountain with no more than three square feet underneath them. Most peculiar formation. At that time it was just a unique, rather wild place to go and marvel. Later it was made into a state park, especially for the blind. Trails wind around through the gargantuan rocks. Guiding ropes are beside the pathway and at intervals there are metal plaques printed in Braille, which the blind can stop to read and see with their mind's eyes what is all around them.

At Graniteville, I taught the first three grades for two years, forty-two pupils the first year, fifty-two the second, far too many. Some of my little pupils could not even afford underwear and sometimes I could see their bare skin through the worn seats of their overalls, even in the depth of winter.

We had the same type of round hooded stove as had been at Loughboro. Although Mr. Frank Phillips and a Mr. Berry who taught the other four grades successively in the adjoining room, usually got the fires started in the mornings, it was up to me to stoke the stove in my room during the day with chunks of dry wood stored behind the stove.

There was an old, beat-up piano which hadn't been tuned in possibly twenty years and of which maybe one third of the notes didn't sound at all. But, once a week, the whole school would meet in a third room which was a sort of all purpose room for coats, lunch boxes and indoor play on rainy days, and sing lustily the songs we knew, drowning out the old piano which I attempted to play.

The first year I taught school I stayed at the Tim McCabe home. They were farmers. In addition to the parents there were seven children. All but two of them were in the same school where I taught. Three of them were my pupils.

My bed was the couch in the living room. With the noisy family and my lack of privacy and the new experience of teaching at which I wanted to succeed, it was a difficult year. One night, after everyone else was asleep, my head throbbed with pain so severe I thought I would die. I never even thought then of carrying a supply of aspirins. I awakened Mrs. McCabe as gently as I could, asked her for an aspirin. She had none. Seven children in the middle of the Depression and no aspirins!

I returned to my couch in the living room, fell to my knees and asked the Lord to relieve my pain and see me through the night. In the midst of the awful pounding pain I tried to center my thoughts on that wonderful experience of feeling that God was talking back to me. Next morning I awoke, still kneeling, my head still on, resting on the couch.

I paid four dollars per week for that couch, breakfast, supper and a paper-wrapped sandwich for lunch. This sixteen dollars a month subtracted from my fifty dollars per month salary left thirty-four dollars for me to save to get on with my college degree and buy a little tin box of Bayer's aspirins!

As soon as school was out in the spring I immediately entered SEMO for the spring and summer terms. I was getting closer.

All the time since meeting Edward, we were dating. During the Christmas holidays of 1934, we became engaged to be married and made plans for a future together in Cape Girardeau.

Edward was still working at the Southeast Missourian Printing Company. The newspaper publishing company and the printing company were in the same building at 301 Broadway, a handsome Spanish style building. Both companies were owned at the time by George and Fred Naeter. Much later the printing company moved to a building on William Street.

We did not move quickly, Edward and I. I was saving part of my meager school teacher's money and he was saving his meager pressman's money so that we could buy a lot where we would, some day, build a home.

My second year of teaching at Graniteville was a bit easier. With a year-end bonus I made sixty dollars per month. This teaching year I stayed at the home of Ethel and Edward Sheahan, co-owners of the local Sheahan Granite Quarry. I had a lovely, comfortable bedroom and had learned to carry a supply of aspirins!

As soon as school was out in the spring, Edward and I were to be married and would build a new home. I paid eight dollars a week for room and board which, deducted from my now sixty dollars per month salary left even less money to save than my first year. But the wonderful private bedroom was worth it. Also, it was closer to the school.

With our small savings Edward and I were able to buy a lot soon after we were married. Lot 6, Block 3 of the Rodney Vista subdivision owned by Mrs. Iska Carmack became ours for $400. Full of corn stubble, no trees, gravel road in front, we knew it would take much work and planning to make it an attractive place to live.

The subdivision was originally part of a Spanish Land Grant given to Don Louis Lorimier, founder of Cape Girardeau, but was long known at the time of our purchase as the Old Haman Farm. The French Creole style house on this farm, constructed of brick made by slave labor, on the spot, was built in 1842. Renovated, it still stands about three hundred yards from where, in 1936, we chose to build our home. At the time, the Aven Kinder family occupied the gracious old home. They were our nearest neighbors.

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