FOR MOST OF THE CENTURY: LEAVIANG LOUGHBORO PROVES BOTH SAD AND HAPPY TIME (PART 20)

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.

Our halcyon days at the Loughboro School ended in the spring of 1925 when Lou finished all the grades there. Lillian, having finished two years earlier had gone to Doe Run High School for her freshman year, then on to Fredericktown to stay with Grandma Casey, then a widow, to finish high school.

At Fredericktown Lillian was only a short walking distance from the high school, while on the farm she had to walk about a mile to the nearest neighbor and catch a ride or drive herself back and forth from the farm in the horse-drawn buggy. It was much easier for her at Fredericktown, but we missed her.

Making the change from the Loughboro School to that at Doe Run was a sad-happy time for me. I liked permanency, roots, familiar surroundings, yet realized that circumstances sometimes demanded that you move on. There still was the family, the farm, the brown speckled eggs and the hay loft -- anchors to cling to -- and I knew that God was everywhere, ready to talk back to me through his handiwork, particularly through the shimmering of every drop of sun-struck dew, the call of every bird and the fall of every leaf.

But, entering this new school, I felt like a new child in a new family. Most of my Loughboro Schoolmates would go to Elvins High School. I don't remember why. Maybe high school districts were different from grade school districts at that time.

The old closeness of knowing everyone, their homes, barns, cellars, dogs, cats, cows, horses, goats, who made thick biscuits and who made thin, had to be started all over, or, possibly never again.

Whereas at Loughboro, my friends who lived on scattered farms had last names of McFarland, Russell, Stacy, Ritter, Aldrich, Britt and Gillman, now all was new: Schmidt, Zimer, Henrich, Zolman, Haynes, Hughes, Cromer, Hahn, Burch, Williams, Wichman, Kassabaum, Matthews, Wallace, etc.

Doe Run had a population of about four hundred, counting the outlying families. It had a post office, three general stores and five churches.

I was in a classroom almost as large as the whole Loughboro School itself, and it had only two grades, fifth and sixth. There was unfamiliar slate for blackboard, Unfamiliar water fountains. No pull-down maps, no big hooded stove, no smell of wood smoke and Lifebuoy Soap. There was a coal furnace in some underneath region and strange, noisy, hot water registers in every room. Windows were on one side of the room only. They had tan colored shades that could be lowered from the top to the center or raised from the bottom to the center. They never seemed to be lined up neatly.

I -- who always liked to see what was going on outside -- was in the sixth grade, the farthest row from the windows. Coats were hung in a hallway separating the four downstairs classrooms, and lunch packages brought by those, like us, who lived too far away to go home at noon, were deposited on shelves built for that purpose.

The way to school lost some of its charm. There were no trains with friendly engineers to wave to us, no hoboes to wonder about, no swinging bridge nor footlogs to cross, no goat pastures to pass and no wild strawberry patches.

We still had a mile to walk. The road, part dirt, part gravel, wound around between two steep hills. At an appointed place we met someone Dad had hired to drive us back and forth to school for one dollar a day. We had agreed to walk the mile because the road descending to our house was 50 rocky and rough. These drivers were Freeman Zimmer and Leemon Gillman, a boy also making the school change and who had a rickety Ford he could drive. Others, from time to time were Mike Thurman and Chester Boswell, men from Doe Run.

At this time we changed the location of our mailbox since it was along our new school route and we could easily pick up the mail each school day. It no longer stood at the shady fork in the road, under a spreading white oak tree, next to Alexander's companion box. At this new mailbox location is where we waited for our rides. There was no nearby murmuring river to listen to, but there were two hills rearing up behind us, thickly wooded, and here lived wild turkeys, squirrels, chipmunks and all manner of Missouri wildlife. Maybe even a black panther! In front of us stretched Zimmers' and Schmidts' broad fields where horses and cows roamed. I didn't know their names.

The journey to school in the wintertime was almost as cold as the long trek to Loughboro since we still had the mile to walk and maybe a long wait for the car to come. There were no heaters in the cars. If some of them had canvas side curtains with rising glass windows, no one bothered to put them on for they weren't easily attached. Little movable long metal buttons had to go through just the right slots and then be turned crossways to fasten. Quite often the curtains came open and flapped in the wind, rain, snow or sleet. To be wrapped in an old blanket was just about as effective as the canvas side curtains.

Sixth grade was a blur for me. I suppose I learned whatever it was I was supposed to learn. I always made good grades, always wanted to make good grades. Mama and Dad insisted on thorough homework and spent time helping us. If anything, those of us coming from the Loughboro School were scholastically ahead of those at Doe Run. After all, we had those wonderful Books of Knowledge at Loughboro.

The next year I moved across the hall to the seventh and eighth grade classroom. Things were beginning to get a little more interesting, although my seat was next to the wall again, away from the windows. By this time I knew everyone -- even those in the four high school classes upstairs -- and the whole physical layout of the school, including where the furnace was, and how the separate well house, run by a Delco system, could get the water into those strange inside fountains.

The wide stairways, one at the front and one at the rear of the first floor hallway, led to the three classrooms study hall and library/office upstairs.

Doe Run was going "up town."

A new gymnasium was underway. There would be an indoor basketball and volley ball court, bleachers on one side, a raised stage with dressing rooms and showers on each side. On the playground there were three swings, one see-saw, a dirt basketball court, a baseball diamond and, later on, a girls' softball diamond.

When I finally moved to the eighth grade side of the room, I was closer to the windows, but still one row of seats away. However, I had a wider view of what was going on outside.

Not much. No neighbors' hogs rummaging around, no woods to fill up with snow. There were woods beyond the baseball diamond and a row of houses. I could tell whether Mrs. Ratley washed clothes on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. If her laundry wasn't flapping on the line by the middle of the, week, someone wentby to see if someone was sick. Nearly every family washed on Monday, ironed on Tuesday, mended on Wednesday and so on, as the old cross stitched samplers advised.

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