WHERE WE LIVE: BELL CITY, MO.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Savannah Holman, five months, looked out the window of the Bell City Post Office while his parents, Jason and Karen Holman, talked with postmaster Ron Gisi. The Holmans recently moved to Bell City.

Melvin Allen of Bell City had a problem with mice, so he stopped at the Bell City Store to buy some mouse poison.

Lifelong Bell City resident Lena Freeman cleared leaves from her house and a neighbor's alongside the railroad tracks in Bell City. "My dad was a railroad man," she said, so the frequent trains which pass by her house don't bother her.

Richard Johnson shot a game of billiards at Red's Place in Bell City.

Gary Green, left, maintenance supervisor for the city of Bell City, selected the bolts he needed for the town's sickle mower from Max Bollinger at the Bell City Store. Bollinger and his wife, L. Jane, have operated the hardware store for 55 years. Green also wears the hat of fire chief "and dog catcher too," he said.

Joe Brown is old enough to remember clanging cow bells in teh Bell City area -- but not the cow bells from which the town purportedly took its name."The old bells that caused the town to be named were before my time," said Brown, 78. "That came from the days when they had free range out here and the hill people were running cattle in the old swamp."

That was around the time of the city's founding. Civil War veteran Giles Jasper Nations built a store and home alongside the St. Louis, Arkansas, and Texas Railroad in 1889 in what soon became Bell City

Other stories have emerged as to the town's naming, but Brown is convinced that his version is the correct one.

Today the sound of the cow bell has been replaced by the familiar cry of the locomotive whistle. About every 15 minutes another train barrels through Bell City. They don't stop here anymore. Their presence, though, continues to be felt as they rumble through the town of 449 people.

Bell City has neither grown nor declined during the 20th century. It has remained a quiet town of neighbors who pretty well know each other's business.

Finding the lifeblood of the community is not difficult. The town is sleepy and silent at 2 p.m. on a warm weekday. The Bell City Cafe has just closed and The Chuck Wagon will not be open until the next day, having been closed Monday and Tuesday. For a late lunch, the only option is the Bell City Kwik Mart. There, the cashier will happily step to the rear of the aging store and whip up a sandwich for a patron.

Outside, an occasional customer stops at the Bell City Post Office across the street or beseeches Max Bollinger for a needed item at the Bell City Store, a hardware store Bollinger has operated since 1945. Poor Boy's U-Pump is open, with its one pump ready to serve all the gassing up needs of residents. Also open is the "liar's bench" in front of Poor Boy's.

At 3 p.m., school lets out and children begin hitting the streets. A few appear first on bicycles. A Bell City R-2 school bus rolls through town, taking students home to odd corners of the district's large area of service. High school students in their own cars began hitting the streets: Bell City's version of the rush hour.

There was a school here even before there was a recognized town. The school continues to galvanize the small community.

Keeping the community together

"It holds the community together that and your churches," said Carl Ritter, who retired last year after 24 years at the school, 17 years as boys basketball coach and seven years as high school principal. He still coaches volleyball and substitute teaches. "They're the backbone of a community especially in a small community like this."

"The center of town is the school, I think there's little doubt about that," Brown said. "If the school wasn't there, Bell City would probably disappear eventually."

"It's a pretty nice school, like one big family," Ritter said. "You know each kid by their first names and know just about every parent. Just because it's small doesn't mean anything. I think a student can get just as good an education as he or she can at a bigger school."

Of course the down side to life in Bell City includes a lack of places to shop and things to do outside of school activities. This required a major adjustment by Pauline Pikey and her family when they moved here from St. Louis 24 years ago.

"You had to travel to get to anything. We were used to going around the block to a big grocery store," she said. "Back then, 30 minutes seemed like a million miles. Now it doesn't; we're used to it. There's not as many things to do here."

Change comes slowly

"It's more modern looking, but essentially the same," said Brown, a 1939 Bell City High School graduate. "It's lost a lot of its stores and shops. As far as a place to live -- except houses looking a little more modern, generally it hasn't changed all that much. The streets are a little better than in the thirties."

The city marked its 100th anniversary in 1989 with a Centennial celebration.

"During the 100th celebration, we found an ancient sewing machine the kind that used one thread and sewed a chain stitch," Brown said. "It was a cute little thing, but it didn't have any belt and my sister wanted to demonstrate it. I went up to Max and asked where I might be able to get a belt. He said 'Why, I've got 'em here.' "

Brown considers the Bell City Store second only to the school in importance.

"You can go in there and ask for some obscure item. He'll go putter around in there and find it," Brown said. "It's amazing what he has in there."

Again, in the evening, activity picks up. Bell City High School is hosting a Class 1A district volleyball tournament. Bell City did not have an outstanding sports tradition before Ritter arrived in 1976. Then, Bell City Cubs won three consecutive Stoddard County Activities Association championships and took third place in state in 1981.

The town has held its ground for over a century. A tight-knit community of people whose parents and grandparents lived here and went to school in the historic 1932 brick high school, the town isn't likely to either mushroom in growth or disappear any time soon.

"The town's probably going to go on about like it is. People will improve it a little here, lose a little there," Brown said. "I believe it will drift on like it has. I think it'll continue to be a living place just a place where people live and carry on kind of a community. Most of them will work somewhere else.

"If gas gets too high and the automobile goes out, that may change things. The railroad goes through there, but there's no place to load anything anymore. There's no freight traffic or anything. It's kind of a quiet place. Generally speaking, I think people kind of like it."