RIVER CITY JOURNAL: HOMETOWN GETS ITS FIRST-EVER STOPLIGHT

Your favorite hometown has a new stoplight. It is also the town's first stoplight. It is quite a historic development for a town that since the 1850s never figured a stoplight would make all that much difference.

When you heard about the new stoplight you were tempted to drive downtown and take a look. But your mother lives on the north end of town, and you didn't have any other reason to go downtown other than to see the light. It just didn't seem worth the effort, much less running the risk of getting caught in one of these newfangled traffic gridlocks.

When you learned the new stoplight is at the corner of Main and Fir, you immediately remembered taking piano lessons. How can a stoplight make you think of piano lessons?

Here's how.

The corner of Main and Fir was once the hub of your favorite hometown. On one corner was the old First Baptist Church with its impressive stone facade and a blue neon sign over the front door. On another corner was the Gambles store, where you could buy everything from chain saws to fishing tackle. On another corner was the Harris department store, an emporium of clothing and accessories. And on the fourth corner was the building that at one time housed both the bank and the post office.

The "new" First Baptist Church is at the south end of town. The building was constructed some 30 years ago. The old building where the stoplight is now is long gone. The Gambles building collapsed one day. It was carried away in a dump truck. The department store has been closed for years. The bank moved south quite a while ago, and then it moved even farther south. The post office moved to a new building in the early 1960s near the railroad tracks just about the time trains stopped stopping at the nearby depot. The corner of Main and Fir is a different place entirely, but traffic is controlled these days by a stoplight.

Bet you thought the piano lessons were forgotten. Not so. Mrs. Ethel Handford was the piano teacher of that era. She made time on Wednesday evenings for a young farm boy whose parents were coming to town anyway for prayer meeting and choir practice at the old stone church. Wednesday night also was the night "Seahunt" was on, and Mrs. Handford usually delayed the start of your piano lesson until it was over, because you didn't have a TV at the farm.

Mrs. Handford's house always smelled like Parker House rolls. You know, the yeasty rolls that break apart into three sections. You loved that smell, but it's hard to find anyone who makes yeast rolls any more. It wasn't until you were grown and married that you learned that Mrs. Handford and her husband smoked. Cigarettes. Right there in the house with the grand piano at one end of the living room. Before each lesson Mrs. Handford would spray something in the air to mask the tobacco smell. The combination of the spray and the tobacco smoke smelled like Parker House rolls to you. You'll never know why.

The piano lessons cost 50 cents each, and Mrs. Handford wanted to be paid in dimes. So each Wednesday you gave her five dimes, which she put in a quart milk bottle on a table in the living room. Her big-city travel agent son told her when the bottle was full of dimes she would have enough money to go to Russia. She always wanted to go to Russia for some reason. She wanted you to go to New York and play the piano at Carnegie Hall. She told that to all her students.

After the piano lesson you had to walk back downtown. Today the drive is very short, but when you are 8 or 9 years old it seems like a long way. In the dark. Past the funeral home. Past the liquor store where the blend of yeasty beer smells and thick cigarette smoke didn't remind you of Parker House rolls at all.

As you approached the intersection of Main and Fir, the blue neon sign over the door of the old stone church was a welcome sight, because it meant you were close to a safe haven -- in more ways than one.

You wonder, if the town had seen fit to put a stoplight at that intersection all those years ago, if you would have regarded the amber, red and green lights as a comforting beacon on your walk from the piano lesson to the church. Somehow the frenetic message -- Stop. Go. Stop. Go. Stop. Go -- wouldn't have been quite so welcome as the blue neon sign: "First Baptist Church. Welcome."

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.