Mrs. FDR spoke. What did she say?

Fifty years ago this week, Eleanor Roosevelt, widow of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and a noted humanitarian in her own right, spoke in Cape Girardeau. I was there. That night is among the top 10 events of my youth, along with getting my driver's license on my 16th birthday without ever having driven a car.

Which story do you want to hear first?

Let's start with Mrs. Roosevelt. She spoke at the annual meeting of the Southeast Missouri Teachers Association. My mother taught in one-room schools in the Ozarks over yonder. She enjoyed the meetings in Cape Girardeau and found them beneficial, particularly the vendors. How else would she have known about Warp's Review Workbooks? If you don't know about Warp's, there isn't room to explain. But if you ever used Warp's workbook, you know how helpful they would be to a teacher of eight grades in one classroom.

And they smelled good, too, fresh out of the cardboard box at the beginning of the school year.

Mrs. Roosevelt spoke at Houck Field House. I was in the eighth grade, and my mother thought it would be educational for me to see a living former first lady in the flesh. She said I could invite a friend, so I asked Bill McMurry to come along.

A couple of side notes:

1. When you are growing up on a Killough Valley farm in the 1950s with no TV, your exposure to the world at large is limited. We received the Weekly Star Farmer in the mail. My mother either bought or had a subscription to the Saturday Evening Post magazine. My classroom at school subscribed to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, and I made an arrangement to put the paper on one of those reading sticks every morning in exchange for getting to take the paper home each night. We had a radio, but we could only get the Poplar Bluff station. Unless you were keenly interested in livestock markets, the weather, the time of day and music -- which we were -- you didn't acquire much of a worldview listening to the radio. I went regularly to Saturday matinees at the movie theater in town: newsreel, cartoon, cliff-hanging serial and sometimes a double feature all for one thin dime.

The rest of my knowledge of the world came from books. I read a lot of books. Between what I read and my imagination, I thought I had a pretty good grasp of The World Out There. It has taken me half a century to fully realize how little I will ever know about what's happening on this planet.

2. Bill McMurry is a significant character in this tale for a couple of reasons. He was a good friend, and his father owned the Chevrolet dealership in my favorite hometown. It was 50 years ago this month that Ford Motor Co. introduced the Edsel, and Bill was the first person I heard say that the Edsel's styling would doom Ford's newest model. I thought at the time Bill was just sticking up for GM. But look how right he was. On the trip to Cape Girardeau to hear Mrs. Roosevelt, I teased him endlessly about the "beautiful new Edsel."

In Houck Field House, the crowd filled all the seats and the bleachers along each side. We sat high on the bleachers and had a grand view of everything.

To be honest, I do not remember was Mrs. Roosevelt had to say. I recall that she was not an eloquent speaker, but what she had to say must have appealed to the audience there that night, because we applauded over and over and over. My hands hurt by the time she was done speaking.

As I look back, I find it somewhat amazing that I remember my blistered hands, teasing Bill about the Edsel and how high we sat on the bleachers. But not what she said. That's what half a century will do for you.

And about getting my driver's license: I drove a tractor all over the farm. I was permitted to start the car on cold winter mornings so the windshield would defrost. Occasionally I put the car in gear and edged forward a few feet, then in reverse to go back where I started.

All I call say is that you didn't have to be a Boston cabbie to get your license in my favorite hometown. Not 50 years ago, anyway.

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