FOR MOST OF THE CENTURY: GRANDPA DIES

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.

In the midst of all the war turmoil, Grandpa died. He had lived alone for about ten years after Grandma's death, in the little house in Doe Run about a quarter of a mile from us. I'm sure he missed the farm fields and his fox hunting, but he maintained a great garden until the end of his life. He spent more and more time with his daughter, Luzena Bell Bryan, at Bonne Terre, the town where he had first lived when coming to Missouri from Virginia.

When Grandpa became terminally ill, Dad went to stay with him at Aunt Luzena's, for Grandpa was still a strong man at the age of 85 and it was hard for Aunt Luzena to manage him. He died Nov. 19, 1942 of chronic Myocarditis and broncho pneumonia at Aunt Luzena's home and was buried alongside Grandma at the Bonne Terre Cemetery.

At the funeral site, a chill November rain was pouring. Many people had to sit in their cars. My thoughts at the bleak scene went back to the time he had tried to comfort me when Grandma was dying. I remembered he had said, "It's all right," meaning that death, however sad, is the order of things. It's all right. Go on.

I don't remember what songs were sung at the funeral, but I wouldn't have found it altogether improper if one of them had been, "Oh, Susanna." That was the only song I'd ever heard Grandpa sing. He particularly liked the nonsensical parody, "It rained all day the day I died, the weather was cool and dry. The sun, it shone so very hot, I thought that I would die."

I don't remember Grandpa when he was Captain at the St. Joe Lead Company mines, only when he was a farmer and a fox hunter. My mental picture of him is a strong, well built man with white hair and flowing white mustache, dressed in a faded blue denim shirt and blue bib overalls with a big silver watch in the bib pocket that always sagged from the weight of it.

Sometimes when he felt the need or thought I felt the need, he would take the watch out, remove the leather thong fastener, pry off the back lid with his pocket knife and show me all the busily turning big and little cog wheels.

This usually took place when I'd taken Grandpa a bucket of cool well water to where he would be working in some far field. I was usually barefoot and would be as thirsty as he was when I arrived. Many times he would be way over on the far side of the field when I arrived, but I always waited until he came around before I would take a drink. He'd drive the horses into the closest shade and we'd find a shady place ourselves to sit and drink, long and thirstily, always ending with long "Aaahhhs."

I never tired of seeing the insides of the watch. There seemed to be such a maze of those big and little wheels, all circulating at different speeds and in different directions. I think there were some we couldn't see, way down in the watch but which we knew were there.

"Where's the belts?" I once asked, being used to belts running some of the farm machinery.

"No belts. Just needs a spring to start unwinding to set one little wheel turning and that little wheel starts all the others and if even one of them doesn't work, all the rest lay down on the job."

"Even if that little one down there quits?" I asked, pointing to the smallest one I could see.

"Each one is of equal importance, no matter its size. If it didn't turn, the one its cogs fit into wouldn't turn and if that one didn't turn, the one its cogs fit into wouldn't turn and so on and on."

"What a cog?"

"See those little teeth-like things at the edge of the wheel? Those are called cogs."

I wanted to test by sticking a timothy stalk into a turning cog to see if it really would stop the whole works, but knew better.

"Don't they ever stop?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, you have to wind the watch every now and then." I'd seen him do that many times but didn't know exactly what he was doing.

"You're a cog wheel," Grandpa said, patting my head."If you didn't bring me this water, I'd plum run down."

"And the horses would stop?"

"Yep."

"And there would be no corn?"

"Yep."

We went on and on, laughingly, from corncob to pigs and chickens, groceries to money for the mortgage, whatever that was.

Finally, we either tired of the game, or Grandpa, having to go back to work, summed it all up, "We're all cog wheels and we'd better do our part."

For a long time after that he called me Little Cog and I called him Big Wheel. No one in the rest of the family ever knew the source of our affectionate nicknames.

The watch and a garnet ring, which he seldom wore, plus his clothes seemed to be his only personal possessions. I don't remember him having even a wallet. He wore long underwear summer and winter. There was some theory about it being cooler that way.

Like a kaleidoscope of ever-changing scenes, I can see Grandpa guiding the horse-drawn plow down long furrows, riding the cultivator, the hay rake, the reaper, the corn planter, the big wagon. Especially can I remember him driving the big wagon when it was loaded with hay. Having loaded it to capacity, he would help Lou and me up to the top of the fragrant hay, position his pitchfork safely, then, "Giddyup," we'd be off to the barn, all of us singing, "Oh Susanna."

Perhaps the clearest picture of Grandpa I have is when he was preparing to go fox hunting. He would fill the hand-carried lantern, maybe put a cornbread and sausage sandwich in his pocket, take his hunting horn from the peg on the back porch and give a couple of short toots. This would announce to the fox hounds that he was going hunting and they would respond with eager barks.

If he was going a far way up into the mountains he would saddle a horse and ride. Other times he would walk. Dad, too, went along on many of these chases. There was a usual meeting place in the hills for other hunters who enjoyed listening to the chase.

In warm weather, Grandpa always took a bar of soap to the river and did his bathing there. Except for the 1918 flu and his final illness I don't remember him ever being sick.

One tender remembrance I have is the time I was sick with something or other, had completely lost my appetite, refused to eat anything and was ready to die, dramatically. In the middle of an afternoon he brought to my bed some toasted, buttered crackers, tied with a bright string as one would a package. I ate every one of them and decided to live!

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