SOME FIND IT HARD TO LEAVE NEIGHBORHOOD

Many people who left Smelterville migrated north to South Cape Girardeau streets that the river couldn't reach. Others said they were leaving for good only to land nearby years later. And a few Smelterville residents have kept their feet stuck firmly in the Mississippi mud.

Virden Brown is one who sometimes leaves but always comes back to Smelterville. He moved here in 1927 from Gideon, hoping to help build the new Mississippi River bridge.

That didn't work out, but he did find other jobs, both on the railroad and as a welder. Brown, who is 87 now, worked in Kankakee, Ill., for 18 years, then moved back to Smelterville during the Korean War. He operated a bait shop and a small grocery store here.

Brown is not happy with how the city treats Smelterville, pointing out a clogged culvert that backs up water into his yard.

"The city doesn't do nothing down here," he said. "They take a load of gravel and fix two or three streets with it. They're stingy."

The neighborliness of days gone by in Smelterville is hard to find these days, Brown said. "Nobody bothers nobody, but nobody helps nobody."

Life has changed considerably for Brown since his wife died two years ago.

"Since I lost my wife I just run around and try to keep in a cool place," he says. "It's kind of hard to stay home; we were together 57 years."

Brown's neighbors across the street are Ike Renn, his wife Amelia-Kay and their two children. Though he grew up in Smelterville, they've only been living here this time for five months.

He'd like to leave (they did temporarily when the floodwaters began rising a few days after this interview), but can't afford to. Together, their income amounts to just over $800 per month plus food stamps.

She likes Smelterville. "To me it seems like country."

But she wishes the city would do something to control the flooding. "They ought to forget the bridge and build a levee down here for the poor people," she said.

Marks on a shed on one of Carl Ford's lots keep track of the comings and goings of the river. The top one to date is the 45-0 registered in 1973. It only takes 39 feet to reach his yard.

Ford, who has lived in the house for 26 years, was fashioning a makeshift table he hopes will keep some of his belongings above the impending high water.

When it comes, he said, he will pull his two boats to the bottom of the Sprigg Street hill and park himself there in his camper.

"I stayed there six weeks in the last flood," he said.

Ford, a retired truck driver who lives here with his wife Betty, dog Buck and cat Goldie, says the reason they stay is simple: "I can't afford to go nowhere else. Here you can own your own property."

Pete Cooper was 15 when he moved to Smelterville from Ancil. He and his wife Waneta raised a family of six girls here. Their first house consisted of four rooms with holes in the walls patched with cardboard.

He says it has always been a safe place. "I don't take my car keys out of my car or van."

She misses the days when more people lived here. "I don't know why they got rid of those houses," she said. "People were all neighbors. They helped each other."

Like most of the remaining Smelterville residents, the Coopers now live in a tidy bungalow that could be found in many other Cape Girardeau neighborhoods.

Larry Maglone, a friend of the Coopers, grew up in Smelterville but no longer lives here. Though the rents are cheap $175 gets you into the ballpark there are downsides other than the flooding.

"These old houses are not insulated. It costs so much to heat them," he said.

Though Smelterville at one time was about half black and half white, no black families currently reside here. No one seems to know why.

The community seemed more welcoming back then, residents say. "My mom would set an extra place in case a hobo would come down the tracks," Maglone said. "And blacks and whites lived side by side."

He remembers being treated for a boyhood ailment by a black woman. "She was a seventh daughter of a seventh son. She breathed in my mouth and it cleared up."

A sign in front of Alan Niswonger's house offers crappie jigs for sale. Niswonger, 35, lives in the house his grandfather built in Smelterville some 60 years ago. He'd prefer not to stay "The foundation has crumbled and the floors have dropped out" but one thing keeps him here: "cheap living."

"...If I got a chance to get out of here I'd probably take it," he said.

Not everyone feels that way. Why else would they stay in a place where the Mississippi annually threatens to evict them?

"It's home," says Joe Kitchen, who grew up in Smelterville, moved away but still operates a garage on South Sprigg Street.

"It's home," says Waneta Cooper.