JOY ALONG THE WAY: LANTERNS LIGHT UP FEELING OF NOSTALGIA

In addition to mums, pumpkins, gourds and colored corn, in autumn, I think of lanterns, the old-fashioned kind that you filled with kerosene, stuck a match to its wick and carried by an arched bail. These preceded flashlights, and before all the old barns were torn, blown or fallen down, one could sometimes find such an old abandoned lantern hanging, uselessly, on some nail inside the barn.

Collector's items now, they are. Some crafty people like to decorate them, painting daisies chasing each other around the oil container tank. I like them just as they come, rescued from old barns or sheds, a bit worn looking, still faintly smelling of kerosene, the wick well burned.

An early lesson for me was, "Never touch that lantern" which, when not in use, hung on a back porch wall just outside the kitchen. No reason was given then. Just instructions to "not touch" was sufficient.

Gradually I learned it was the fire hazard feature of it that prompted the severe warning. The result of a lighted, turned over lantern in a neighbor's barn was told and retold all up and down the river valley. And when the story of Mrs. O'Leary's kicking cow combined with a lighted lantern reached my ears I, for sure, never touched that lantern.

However, I have a nostalgic love for lantern light. Somehow I got the feeling that if one walked in the circle of light created by the lantern, one was safe from harm. No harmful creature, especially the rumored black panther, would dare to enter that intangible fence at the edge of the light, I know now it wasn't the light. It was the fact that Dad or Grandpa held me by the hand.

So, when later I read the Psalmist' words, "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path," I needed no explanation.

Sometimes on a dark winter night we could look out the north windows and tell if some 'coon hunter was traveling up and down the river bank. Or, Dad might have studied a moving light coming across the field and announce that Tom Alexander or Jim Stacy must be coming. This would prompt Mama or Grandma to slip some gingerbread into the warming oven and push the coffeepot over onto a warmer stove plate.

I wish I could say I have our old farm lantern, but I suppose it went the way of the hay rake, cultivator, cream separator and McCormick reaper, probably rusted out at the bottom by this time, or a little pile of rust at the bottom of some trash pile. But I have a lantern, purchased at an old farm store. When the potted mums are in bloom, the pumpkins turn orange and a hank of colored corn hangs on my porch post, there is the lantern, too, lighted at twilight, hanging far away from any combustible material with instructions for any little one who comes, "Don't touch that lantern."

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime columnist for the Southeast Missourian.