WHERE WE LIVE; ADVANCE

Ashley Hess filled a customer's order at the drive-through window of Sam's Restaurant & Quick Shop in Advance.

Steven Williams,12, left, played a loose game of football after school with friends Dustin Umfleet, 9, center, and Hunter Umfleet, 5.

Advance Police Chief Donnie Bohnsack, right, met outside City Hall at the shift change with Patrolman Billy J. Thorne Sr.

The annual Knights of Columbus consignment auction draws hundreds of farmers from five states to the KC grounds just north of Advance on Highway 91.

Four drivers shared conversation at Sturdivant Ave. and Elm St. across from Maberry Park in Advance.

Bill Ward has operated Ward's Bet-R-Valu Food Market in Advance across from Maberry Park since 1959. He often receives special orders by telephone which customers pick up or have shipped. "A lot of people come by when they are in town visiting relatives," he said. He and his wife, Joy, do it all these days, but they employed up to 14 people when the local Inland Shoe Company was at its peak in the early 1980's.

Joe Prather of Bloomfield has dismantled much of the old Advance High School building which was abandoned after the new school was built. His demolition project has stretched over several months as he recycles the materials he takes.

Advance High School head coach Jim Hall discussed a play with his Hornets basketball team during the homecoming game against the Delta Bobcats.

Advance.

In Southeast Missouri dialect, the accent is on the first syllable (say ADD-vance), but the name is appropriate for the town that Louis Houck built.

Webster's defines it: "To move forward, to make progress, to rise in importance."

In the late 1800s, Houck needed a terminal for his Cape Girardeau Railway Company that would extend southwest to the Arkansas line. He was able to buy wilderness land in "Swampeast Missouri" for $10 an acre from Joshua Maberry, where a town was platted and the railroad was established in 1881. Two years later, the town was incorporated as New Lakeville. It was renamed Advance in 1897.

Today the railroad is gone, having ceased operation in 1965, as automobiles replaced the need for commuting by rail. Yet Advance continues to make progress.

With a 1990 census of 1,139 residents, the community has international ties.

Playpower employs 70 people who manufacture indoor soft play equipment which is shipped to customers worldwide including McDonald's and other fast-food restaurants.

The business district draws a workforce from the surrounding area.

"The lifeblood of Advance has always been to the west," said Bill Ward, owner of Ward's Bet-R-Valu Food Market.

"Zalma, McGee, Greenbriar, Sturdivant, Brownwood, even Puxico. Those people are really loyal to this community."

Ward has operated the grocery and clothing store since 1959 across the street from Maberry Park.

The park is older than the town itself, about 50 years older. That's because it is a graveyard for the Maberry family.

The business district sprang up around the cemetery, which didn't seem to bother the residents back then. That is, until the early 1920s, when on a summer night, all the gravestones disappeared.

Today, the Advance Military Memorial graces the park.

For years until the middle 1980s, the Inland Shoe Company was the backbone of the Advance economy. The factory employed 580 workers at its peak, but when it closed due to increasing imports of shoes from overseas, the lifestyle of those workers altered.

"You should have seen the cars parked up and down the street out here on Fridays and Saturdays," Ward recalled, as he looked out his store window toward the park.

But times change. More often today, people who commute to their jobs in Cape Girardeau or Dexter tend to do much of their shopping there too.

Town and Country opened a supermarket at the east edge of Advance on Highway 25 which helps keep grocery dollars in the local economy.

While traffic at Ward's is not what it used to be, he and his wife, Joy, still keep busy. They even deliver groceries to long-time customers who are no longer able to get out.

Mayor James Harnes and the town's board of aldermen volunteer their time for the betterment of Advance.

"There's always something to do," said the retired Harnes, a life-long resident of Advance who has kept hours at City Hall most every day since his 1995 election.

"Whether it's somebody wanting a dog picked up or that a cat's been getting on their car and ruining the paint, and various other things."

He gets calls at any time of day or night from some people who want a policeman.

"We are not big enough to have 24-hour police protection, but we always have men on call when needed. I usually call the Stoddard County Sheriff when they call me, and the county can get hold one of our police officers or send a deputy over here."

City Hall still has the two jail cells built in the 1940s which are no longer used.

"The main occupants were people who came into town on weekends, had too much to drink and got into fights," Harnes said.

But in 1963, when a tornado touched down on the outskirts of town, "There were about 75 people crowded into the concrete cell block, packed in like sardines, for about an hour," he said.

The Advance Public School is well-supported by the community.

In the last decade, voters approved the building of a new high school onto the elementary school which opened in November, 1997 along Highway 91.

Of the 144 high school students enrolled this year, 84 of them make up the Marching Hornets band along with nine other advanced junior high musicians.

With the success this year of the Advance Hornets basketball team, local corporate benefactors showed their appreciation for the team, and also for the band, by chartering three motorcoaches which took the students to Three Rivers Community College at Poplar Bluff for the team's game with South Iron.

Advance may be small in some ways, but depending on one's perspective, it's also big.