FOR MOST OF THE CENTURY: DAD'S HORRIBLE ACCIDENT

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.

Two months into the eighth grade, something happened in our family that was going to require a profound readjustment in our lives.

A few years before we made the change to the Doe Run School, Dad had gone to work at the Iron Mountain mines in the southwest part of the county to supplement our farm income and maybe, be able to put some money aside for when times got hard!

The iron ore had been quarried out at that location but much rock slag had been cast aside. Dad got an independent contract with a railroad company to supply riprap for their track beds and banks. It was still pre-depression. Financial affairs for our family were improving.

We were impressed and proud when Dad came home with some stationery that said, at the top, in bold black letter, "Wilson L. Bell, mining contractor." Furthermore, there was a black silhouette of a dump truck and a loading derrick placed like book ends around the contractor's name. Along with this bold venture came a portable Burroughs adding machine that said, in gold lettering, that it was protected by U.S. and foreign patents. You pressed on certain numbered buttons, pulled a lever and, behold, up came the numbers you had pressed, printed onto a roll of paper. Then, if you had brought up a column of numbers and wanted to add them, you pressed the button marked, "total," pulled the lever, and there it was, always and always correct. We tested it over and over by doing our own pencil and paper additions. Although we didn't understand it, we concluded that Burroughs had invented a marvelous machine.

We kept it well dusted, in between all the little buttons and around the paper roll, over the gold lettering and lever handle. Burroughs and DeLaval!

This machine was not to add up the dollars Daddy was going to make but to add numbers for payroll checks. Workers had to be employed to load the dump trucks, drive the trucks to the rock crusher, run the crushing mill, transport the riprap to delivery vehicles. The location and operation was amusedly called "The Redworm" on account of the red clay soil and the red painted buildings.

Daddy installed his little office in his and Mama's bedroom, the same room where little S.W. had died, the same room where the incubator had hatched the chicks. I got to either read out the number of hours of work for each employee while Dad operated the Burroughs Adding Machine, or vice versa. There was also an Oliver typewriter on which we pecked out necessary letters on that important looking stationery.

Rock was hauled by truck to a crusher where it was ground into suitable sized stones for the railroad's use. Great, wide, unprotected belts ran from rotating wheels to rotating wheels to operate the crusher.

Everything was going well. So, on a beautiful October day, with Monarch butterflies fluttering southward and thistle down drifting as Lou and I walked the last stretch of our way home from school things seemingly couldn't be better.

We had not been home long before there came a knock at our front door.

"Well, Mr. Holly! Come in," Mama said, surprised at this visit, but secretly maybe a little alarmed because Mr. Holly worked at the same place Dad did. He evidently had come home. Dad had not. We all crowded around.

"There's been an accident, Mrs. Bell."

"Wilson?"

"Yes."

The big, fast-moving belt at the rock crusher had caught Dad's sleeve as he was passing by and snarled his arm up into it, tearing it away below the shoulder to where it was just hanging by a few shreds of muscle.

The Iron Mountain fast train, running to St. Louis, was due to come by shortly after the accident. A "fast train" did not make stops at small towns but just whistled on through. But someone, evidently standing between the rails and waving wildly, got it to stop. As fast as it could travel, the train arrived in St. Louis and Dad was whisked away to Baptist Memorial Hospital.

Nothing could be done to save the arm. The surgeon saved as much of the shoulder stub as he could so that Dad might be able to manipulate an artificial arm by shoulder muscles and leather straps that embraced his body and encircled his other arm.

With today's technology and sufficient speed to the surgeon, completely detached arms can be restored to a certain degree of usefulness. But we were years back of such technology.

Polio in infancy before vaccine, a bean in a throat before widespread X-ray machines in rural areas, poisonous snake bite before serum, a severed arm too early for possible present day reattachment -- it was hard.

Our heritage from way back of contending with wild, dark moors of Scotland and the Irish pugnacity of facing fights, head on, prevented any knock out blows.

Life went on. Different. We had to patch the holes of grief, sew up splitting seams of sorrow. Dad's big, muscled blacksmith arm was gone.

I climbed to the hay loft. "God?" There were no shining leaves. No birdsong. Eventually I smelled the sweet, dry fragrance of fleabane and meadow daisies deep within the hay and whispered, "All right, God. All right."

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