JOY ALONG THE WAY: EVERYONE KNEW THE UNWRITTEN RULES

Our family's rules were not written or posted on any doors, but we knew them. Usually they were spoken by our parents and grandparents as we sat around the supper table after some disaster or cause for rejoicing had occurred.

Grandpa, seated at the head of the table, after the first passing around of the food, would raise his arm for quiet, fork in hand like some king's scepter and proclaim, something such as, "When you go through a gate, close it behind you, always." We didn't know about underlining or italicizing words then, but we instinctively knew that that word, always, was an edict as unrecallable as an edict of King Ahasurerus to the Jews.

We lived on a farm, where we had horses, cows and pigs, all of which were confined most of the time in fenced-in areas. Fences with gates.

Grandpa's gate closing proclamation followed a disastrous event when a railroad right-of-way gate was left unlatched and our best jersey cow wandered onto the tracks and was killed by a freight train that couldn't stop in time. This edict was not meant as a threat to anyone who might have committed the indiscretion, but everyone knew the seriousness of the occasion. It was indelibly printed on our conscious behavior. It became one of our rules. Ever after that I, many times, retraced my steps several feet to see if the latch or wooden slat was, indeed, sturdily in place.

Mama had initiated the rule that when anyone dropped in, even a railroad bum, we were to serve a cup of coffee or tea in our best rose sprigged china cup and the one silver spoon we possessed. Daddy's ultimatum was to never, never take the pick and shovel out of the storm cellar without taking them back immediately after use.

Any one of us was free to propose a rule. It was kind of hard for my sisters and me, still grade-schoolers, to propose any rule in view of the four visages of authority around the table. But sometimes a pure outburst of aggravation might result in a family rule that got on the unspoken, unposted list.

There was a big, about four by three and a half feet, wooden wood box in the kitchen, sitting by the fireplace. Lou and I were responsible for keeping it full of wood chunks for the fireplace and split wood for the kitchen range firebox. We were also privileged to put a stick of wood onto the fireplace fire or into the firebox when we sensed the fire was burning low.

Grandpa chewed tobacco. Chewing tobacco requires a lot of spitting, brown, slobbery spitting which makes a splat! when it lands on anything. Several times, in the dim light of the after supper kitchen I picked up a stick of wood to poke into the firebox or toss onto the logs in the fireplace. More than several times my hands grasped a stick that had been generously soiled by brown spit which sent me, pronto, to the wash pan.

These incidents reached a critical mass one evening that resulted in an explosion of my usually calm and timid temperament. Rage engulfed me. I threw the stick of wood into the fireplace, causing a great shower of sparks, turned to face the family like an outraged Tasmanian devil, raised a brown stained, dripping hand, and said, "There'll be no more spittin' in the woodbox!"Six pairs of eyes were directed at me as if I'd tossed the cat into the fireplace. I tried to stand steady and stop any tears.

Grandpa folded the Farmington News and laid it on the table. Daddy, who had been re-soling a shoe, brought his hammer down on the iron last as if to punctuate my announcement. Grandma stopped tearing her rug-making rag strips. Lou's and Lillian's eyes widened with amazement at their little sister. Mama said, quietly, "Wash your hands."My hands were still shaking as I rubbed them with lye soap. I was pretty tired of that lye soap too.

I didn't sleep well that night. It was Grandpa that showed me Gold Mine Hollow, and let me see the inside workings of his big pocket watch, taught me the words to the song, "Oh Susanna."Next week a blue granite spittoon appeared, sitting beside the woodbox. I had made a family rule.

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