FOR MOST OF THE CENTURY: ON TO HIGH SCHOOL, BASKETBALL (PART 23)

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 September, 1927, I felt very gown up as I left the "little kids" downstairs and climbed one of the wide stairways to settle in as a freshman in high school. Three classrooms, library, and a study hall! Each of the ensuing years I got to move closer and closer to the windows. By my senior year I was right beside them. Things hadn't changed much, except that in high school there was movement. No staying in the same room all day. Thus, on one day I could still see if Mrs. Ratley was hanging out her clothes and, moving to an opposite room, see whether Mrs. Burch was washing her clothes the same day.

In addition to the required courses, by the time I was a junior, the high school had introduced a business course into its curriculum--typing, shorthand, accounting, bookkeeping. While learning to type to the music of "Stars and Stripes Forever," it never occurred to me how large this new discipline would loom in my later life.

It was girls' basketball that interested me the most. High school enrollment was so small that it didn't take a lot of athletic ability to make the team. Most anyone who wanted to play could be on the roster. I was fast and quick, having been honed for such by those snakes, hysterical chickens, the mythical black panther and cows that didn't want to conform with the rest of the herd when being driven hone out of the hills.

Basketball widened the scope of my life physically and socially. We went to compete with all the schools in the Lead Belt in addition to DeSoto, Herculaneum and Ste. Genevieve. I became acquainted with girls and boys beyond my own schoolmates. I was most impressed when the girls at Ste. Genevieve served us hot chocolate and doughnuts after the game. I think it was my first realization that social graces extended even beyond hard fought games.

We didn't win very many games, since all the other schools were much larger in enrollment, hence more to choose from. At that time, the girls' court was divided into three equal sections. The jumping center and receiving center, as they were called, played in the middle section, the forwards and guards in the end sections. Only the forwards could shoot for the goals.

My initiation to basketball was at the exact time when girls' basketball players were moving from black bloomers and white middies as sports costumes to the sleeveless, jersey tops that tucked into flannel shorts. Scandalous, some thought. The first two years of my basketball career the outfits were white trimmed with blue; the second two years, we had blue suits trimmed in white, blue and white being our school colors. My number throughout the four years was seven, and I've always considered that my lucky number.

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