FOR MOST OF THE CENTURY: COLLEGE LIFE BRINGS HOST OF NEW EXPERIENCES, EDUCATION (PART 25)

Jean Bell Mosley's new autobiography, "For Most of the Century," is only available in serialized form in the Southeast Missourian. Return each week for her continuing story.

Continued from Jan. 11

Having earned the honor of valedictorian at Flat River Junior College, by six-tenths, I got to go on to Southeast Missouri State College with the partial scholarship.

The scholarship providing a job, again in the Dean's office, typing. The dean was Vest Myers.

Of course when I transferred to SEMO, as it was later to be called, my grades were transferred as C's, a custom I do not think entirely fair, but I understand the point.

The scholarship game was up. If there was to be more college after this third year, I'd have to pay for all of it

At the end of the first season, 1933-34 at SEMO I applied for a teaching position so that I could earn tuition money to continue my education in the summer semesters.

Before I leave Flat River Junior College days, let me tell about a few other experiences.

I fell "in love" with Henry Bolen, Joe Underwood, Ray Crabdree. I can't remember why I didn't fall in love with Stracky who went to bat for me over the M+.

At the same time I was "in love" with my high school sweetheart, Jay Wallace. He had gone off to Boliver College in the Southwest part of the state. And then there was this lad from Farmington, Lawrence Cleek.

At Christmas, 1934, I received Dubarry compacts, one each from Jay, Joe and Lawrence. I had to be careful how I switched those compacts about on various occasions.

The boys all managed to get little odd jobs at filling stations or hamburger joints to make enough money for a gallon or two of gasoline a week and enough to take their "girls" to a picture show and stop somewhere for a Coke afterwards. The "girls', cognizant of the financial situation, often pretended they really didn't want a Coke.

Still battling the Depression, it came my time to entertain Phi Theta Kappa members. (I made Phi Theta Kappa the second semester after that M+). My roommate, Mildred Mitchell, from Belleview, Missouri, was my co-hostess. This was the second year at Flat River and I had co-rented a room with her at the home of Alice Board, a home much nearer the college. However, Alice never heated her house in the wintertime unless it was a fire in her fireplace. We had a King Heater in our room, but while away at school all day, the room got miserably cold.

We decided to serve a square of Jello, cut from two 9x13 pans. Not having access to a refrigerator and it being wintertime, we set the Jello outside to jell. When we came home from classes, there was a layer of black soot on top of the Jello. Someone nearby had stoked their furnace vigorously.

We tried to blow it off. It wouldn't blow. We scraped it off as best we could but knew we couldn't serve it in such scraggly looking blocks. In a fit of temper we thrust a spoon into it and began to stir. It came out beautifully. Red whipped Jello with just a tinge of black served in the cafeteria glass dessert dishes.

Having made Phi Theta Kappa the second semester, a teacher, Miss Bloom, wanted to take some of us girls to the state convention which was going to be in her home town of Fulton, Missouri. "Now we'll all be wearing formals at the banquet," she said matter-of-factly.

A formal!

I knew my landlady, Alice, had a formal. I'd seen it hanging in her closet. Would she let me borrow it? First, would it fit? While she was away one night I slipped into her room to try it on. No full length mirror. So up onto a chair to look into a dresser mirror. The skirt was of ruffled georgette, white with red roses in it. In stepping up onto the chair I stepped on one of the ruffles and ripped it.

The undeserved M+, the darkened Jello faded into the Land of Inconsequential.

I put the formal back in the closet. This was a matter to take up with Mama. Precious Mama.

"You must tell her, of course," Mama said, and I nodded dumbly, thinking of the hog carcasses I'd seen hanging from the pole down by the maple tree.

I can get white georgette, have it picoted like the other ruffles and insert a white one alternately with the rosy ones," Mama said. Her eyes seemed to glisten with her own ingenuity.

I had to go through a whole weekend and a whole Monday before I saw Alice Board. There was no easy way to do it. "I was trying on your formal and I ripped a ruffle," I blurted. Any tears leaked were dried up instantly on my red hot face.

The dictionary defines the word, embarrassment, as to feel "ill at ease." That isn't strong enough.

I went to the convention but I did not enjoy it.

In my second year at Flat River I had "Practice Teaching." Sounds like measles or mumps, doesn't it? Those who were aiming for a sixty hour teaching certificate went to various schools in the community and taught classes under the watchful eye of the regular teacher.

I practiced teaching in the first grade at the Eugene Field School and who was in my class but Dean Wesley Deneke's little daughter! Hmmmmmm.

She was a beautiful blond, curly haired, intelligent little girl. Sometimes the afternoon sunshine, coming through the windows caught and tangled in those curls, sending off glints like those of the sunshine on the carbide light and the shiny oak leaves. I gave little Miss Deneke my best attention.

The mode of teaching reading then was by the "flash card" method. You held up a word printed in manuscript letters on a white cardboard card and the pupils learned what it was, the size, the shape, the pronunciation, the meaning, etc. No phonetics like I had at Loughboro long ago and which I still think is the best. But somehow the children learned to read and it was the method I used when two years later I began to teach the first three grades in a small town school, Graniteville.

The first floor of the college was like a long capital I. At each end were classrooms and a flight of stairs going to the second floor. Down the long hallway between the ends of the I, were the students' lockers.

When we were enrolled we were issued the number of our locker. They were metal upright affairs connected with all the others up and down the hallway so that they seemed all of one piece. We were to furnish our own locks and keys. That is, of course, if we felt it necessary. No one did, for we were still in an age of innocence and enjoyed the high moral values of the Midwest.

Nevertheless, we thought it looked "up town" to have a lock, so I used one we had around the house for a long time as a sort of novelty. It was a combination lock. One could pick a number, set the lock to open at that conbination and when the "hand" was turned backward and forward to the combination one had chosen, it would open. Innocently I set the lock to coincide with my locker number lest I forgot. Who wouldn't have guessed that? Most times locks were not snapped shut. They just hung there as a device to keep the locker door from inadvertently swinging open. We hung our coats and sweaters there, placed textbooks not in use on the top shelf, our tennis shoes on the bottom. It was a sort of micro-conbination of the old Loughboro desks and cloak room. Marijuana, cocaine, cigarettes, condoms and guns, had not come to the locker scene yet.

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