Three kinds of ladders to climb

When one is young and full of idealism, there is no reason for anything that smacks of the trite. Everything is bright and new and shiny. So it is with the high school graduating classes this year.

When I reflected upon my class motto, "We build the ladder by which we climb," I thought there were never more meaningful words. There it was, in blue letters, on white paper, forever stamped in our memory.

I had been taught that when confronted with something new to dissect it and approach it from all angles. When it came to our class motto, I found three interpretations of those words. The first was a step ladder. The second was Jacob's ladder. And the third, all important to me, was the big ladder that led to the barn loft.

The step ladder was only used when we wanted to be just a little bit higher than we already were. It was always lost. Those who used it just let it stand in place when finished with it.

The second ladder was not really a ladder, but a climbing staircase, so called by Jacob's dream of a ladder to heaven. This ladder seems of particular importance to those of us raised in the so-called Bible Belt, though the Bible often had drawings of a staircase rather than a ladder. However, the word used in the Bible in connection with the word Jacob's was ladder. Children were taught little twine string games of how to make Jacob's ladder with their fingers.

The third ladder and the one most meaningful to me was the ladder to the hayloft. Occasionally, Britt's bull was brought to our barn lot to try to keep the bloodlines as pure as we could. This ladder was straight up and down, the side pieces being made from same sized hickory limbs, as were the rungs. During the many years it was servicing us, the side pieces and the rungs became slick and glossy from use.

The side pieces extended about 3 feet above the loft floor so as to give one easy access to it. No nails, chains or anything else ever had to be added in order to strengthen the ladder. Like our class motto, our barn's ladder was never in need of change or modification.

If unaware that Britt's bull was there upon entering the barn, one could round the right angle of the wall and climb a ladder to the loft. The first rung of this ladder taught me to be alert. If the bull was there, one could leap three rungs up the ladder and escape from this bodaciously big, brindled, bovine bull's wrath by being alert enough to rise above his ire and spit in his face.

The barn's loft had various modes of escape so one wouldn't have to wait there all day for Britt's bull to go away. Thus, being able to climb a ladder at a moment's notice honed my ability to be alert.

When a speaker came to give the high school graduation address, he had a ready-made outline for himself, naming rungs of life he thought important to climb -- love, compassion, understanding, and so forth.

But, to me the most important rung in the ladder of life was to always be alert, not only to ward off Britt's bull, but other imagined or real problems as well.

REJOICE!

Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime Cape Girardeau resident.