The charms of country living

Copyright 2005 Leader Publications

Recently I heard a couple of radio DJs poking fun at Jefferson Countians.  The nerve of those guys!  Granted, my sister-in-law, who lives in another county, and I joke about the fact that I'm "the relative from Jefferson County," but it's all in fun.  She herself hails from family that come out of the Bootheel of southeast Missouri, real country people.

I suppose I do my share in carrying on the stereotype.  A few years back, I worked at a job with a co-worker who lived in Wildwood.  He loved to make fun on my county of residence.

I  told my co-worker about the time my smoking car finally caught fire in downtwon Cedar Hill and a nice older couple offered me a ride home.

"They had just come out of the liquor store next to the video shop," I said.

Actually, they told me that their son owned the liquor store and they were coming from a visit with him, information I also passed on to my co-worker. 

Then there was the time I was sitting at the intersection of highways 30 and W when a pickup truck caught my attention across the way.  The driver was wearing those old-time pilot's goggles, the kind I had only seen in Snoopy cartoons.  After observing for a few moments, I realized why the goggles.  The truck had no windshield!


Another time I was exiting the Cedar Hill Post Office, walking out behind a man maybe in his thirties, and his mother.  The man had on overalls with a white tee shirt underneath, a huge belly partially hidden by the overalls in front.  He walked kind of stooped over.  He had rather long thin stringy brown hair. 

His mother had on a long tee shirt covering her large belly.  She also walked hunched over at the shoulders and had long, thinner, stringy gray hair. 

As they began to exit the lobby, they stopped at looked up at the 10 Most Wanted poster.

"Yeap, he's on there," the man said, pointing to one of the pictures.

Admittedly, I said to myself, "Leave it to Jefferson County to have people looking up their friends and relatives on the 10 Most Wanted poster!"

Another time, as I left the local grocery store in Cedar Hill, being distracted, I went to the wrong car, thinking it was mine.  I opened the drivers door and found myself looking at an older country gentleman.  He had on the stereotypical overalls with white tee underneath, a huge belly in front.  He had white hair and a white beard.

Realizing my mistake, I said, "Oops.  Wrong car," and shut the door.  As I walked away, I heard the man cry out, "Eck!  I ain't never had some'in like that happen ta me bafore!"

My family and I have unwittingly contributed to the typecast of Jefferson Countians in other ways.  Over the years, we've had the stereotyped requisite pick-up trucks, backyard dogs to keep predators away from the rabbits and chickens, and cats to keep away the rodents attracted by the dog, rabbit and chicken food.

I hang my laundry out on the line and when I care for the outside pets, I wear overalls and knee-high rubber boots (and do they help when it's wet and muddy). 

Even though I may joke myself about the stereotype of Jefferson County, the way we live belies the fact that we are hapy this way.  There is nothing wrong with being "country folk."  The ones previously described resprsent a life of contented simplicity.  I believe my own family's life is less hectic than that of so many others living in more upscale communities.

There is poverty in Jefferson County, of course.  But there's also a good dose of compassion here.  There are groups like the Big River Gobblers and the High Rdige Rotary clubs that donate hundreds of turkeys to the local food pantries at holiday times.  The pantries in turn can then provide all the other fixin's for their neighbor's holiday meals.  And county resident's, many of them retired citizens, donate their time working at the pantries.

Then there are the schools in our county that are well known for their generosity in collections for all kinds of causes.

When our own kids were still in school, I remember overhearing teachers talking about buying needed clothing for some of their less fortunate students.

Living in Jefferson County also affords us the opportunity to sample small-town charms similar to those found in the old "Andy Griffith Show."  Where else could you go to get your kid's haircut and end up babysitting the beautician's grandbaby while she performed the cuts?

And where else could you fill up on gas, only to find you left your wallet and check book at home and have the cashier take money out of her own back pocket and say, "You can pay me later."

After protesting, she said, "How long have I known you?"

I didn't even know her name, but she previously had been the cashier at the Dollar General in Cedar Hill for the 20 or so years I shopped there.

Some old-timers in Jefferson County may be thought of as "hillbillies" by some, but to me that only means they're down-to-earth nice.  My longtime neighbors sosp their vehicles to chat when driving past my home if I'm out.  One neighbor regularly buys treats for my little housedog to give when I walk her past their home.  Others stop me to talk when I pass by.

We receive visits from other neighbors as well, those from the woods.  We have a barred own couple whose antics we listen to when it's cool enoguh to have the air conditioning off and the windows open.  And I've had to stop my car on the road after dark to wait for a great horned owl to make its slow ascent with its long-tailed prey hanging between its talons.  We also have a herd of about a dozen deer that bed down in winter in the tall, dried grass on the side of our house.  Their circular beds of various sizes give away how many young ones are in the herd.

We've had our share of visits from raccoons and opossums and the infrequent skunk or fox.  From time to time we'll hear the wails of coyote in the distance.  Our oldest son says he's seen bobcat in the shallow woods behind our yard.  We also have a pair of pileated woodpeckers and their younster living in our woods, something that's considered to be a rarity due to the creature's shyness of humans.

My grandpa was one who had an appreciatiuon for Jefferson County.  When raising his family in St. Louis in the 1930s and '40s, he owned a clubhouse in Cedar Hill, in "the foothills of the Ozarks," he called Jefferson County.  Years later when I moved to Cedar Hill, Grandpa was delighted.  My dad used to tell me that every time he would drop by to visit his parents, "Pop" would get out of his chair, grab his hat and say, "Are we going out to Cathy's?"

And when sitting out on my back deck on cool autumn evenings, I think of Grandpa and understand why he had such a fondness for Jefferson County.  Along with all its other quaint charms, no place tops Jefferson County for its view of the sky and rolling, wooded hills.

I was there when it happened!

This story was published and copyrighted by the Suburban Journals around 1993.  At this point in time, Missouri Conservation officials were not admitting that Missouri had a bear population. 

I just received my March issue of the Missouri Conservationist and was lazily scanning through the table of contents when an article's title caught my attention: "My Aunt Was There When It Happened," by Joel Vance.  Would it, I wondered, answer some questions that I have carried with me for fourteen years now?  I quickly turned to the article and began reading.  After just the first sentence, my hopes were raised that this article would touch on something that I had been wondering about ever since that night, fourteen years ago, when my husband Tim and I camped out in a cave along the upper Meramec.

We were on a float trip together; just the two of us.  My in-laws were keeping our young son for a few days, so we decided to float down the river, and camp out at the mouth of a much-frequented cave.  We were the only ones on the river, being a Monday.  Or so we thought.

After an adventurous float through a thunder and lightning storm which caused us to pull out for a bit and sat under our tarp, we worried whether we would make it to the cave in time to set up camp.  We finally arrived in time to cook some supper and put up the tent.  Nightfall came quickly to the gray, cloudy sky.  We were exhausted from all of the hard rowing in our hurry to reach the cave, and it didn't take long for us to begin to drift off to sleep.  But just as I was slipping from the point of consciousness into dreamy sleep, I was awakened by the almost imperceptible sound of breathing.  And it was coming from inside the cave!

I told myself that it was just Tim breathing, and that the cave was somehow causing an echo.  But the breathing became louder, and it was coupled with a kind of snorting sound, like that of a large animal.  I awakened Tim and he, too, heard it.  As we lay motionless, listening in fear, we began to hear other sounds.  We heard the unmistakable sound of a very large animal's body scraping along the side of the cave, as if it were shifting around, trying to get comfortable, grunting and snorting as it moved.  The really peculiar thing was that every time we heard the body scratching along the cave wall, a group of bats would stir and fly out.  There was no longer any doubt that were sharing our sleeping quarters with a bear!  And a big one, I gathered, at that.

Our whispers were especially soft when we spoke to one another about what to do because we didn't want it to know we were there.  I wanted to run down to our cnaoe immediately, but my husband wouldn't have it.  We would have to leave all of our camping gear if we did that, and if we took off downstream we wouldn't be able to get back to collect our things.  The cloudy, starless night made it too dark to pack up and leave until morning.

As we lay there trying to figure out what to do, visions of stories that I had read began flowing through my mind.  Stories from the Reader's Digest, stories from my own local newspaper; stories that told of hapless campers that had been mauled by bears.  My uncontrollable fear caused even more uncontrollable muscle spasms in my legs.  My leg muscles were twitching violently from my thighs down to my claves.  Try as I did to hold my legs still, fearing we'd be discovered by the bear as my shaking legs were causing noise from the sleeping bag, it was useless.  There was no stopping them.  I realized then the origin of the term knock-kneed since, had I been standing, my knees surely would have been knocking together.

Tim's answer to our dilema was to pray.  But I felt that we should do something more.  You can't just pray, I reasoned, and then sit back with your hands behind your head and expect your prayers to be answererd.  He realized that I had a point.  Finally, he told me of a cliff that we could climb up on.  It sat on the outer wall of the cave, and he had been holding off telling me about it because, given my fear of heights, he didn't think I would be able to cliimb it.  I climbed it.  It was literal rock climbing, but I dimbed it.

We sat on that narrow edge of the cliff for about three or four hours, until the sun finally came up.  The bear had obviously fallen asleep by then, since his noises had long since silenced.  I stayed up on the cliff and kept watch on the cave entrance while Tim went down and packed up our things.  As soon as he finished, I climbed down and we hurried ourselves out of there.

We tried to make something of the day we had left on the river, but with the lack of sleep and my shattered nerves, I just couldn't enjoy myself.  As we floated along, I noticed for the first time how very narrow the river was.  If a bear were along the river's edge, it could easily come into the river and reach us.  I scoured the river bank up and down, looking for any movement in the tall reeds.  When we took our lunch break, things didn't get any better, since I feared the smell of food would be attracting.

We finally reached the end of our journey, although behind schedule because we were so tired.  We were pretty happy to see Joe, the canoe rental man, waiting for us.  As we drug the canoe up to the truck, we asked Joe if there were any bears in Missouri. 

"Sure," Joe said.  "They've imported them from Kansas."

"Kansas," he went on, "didn't have any turkeys, so we sent them some turkeys and they sent us some bears."

"Well," I informed him coldly, "we had one in our cave last night."

"Oh," Joe laughed, "they're just honey bears, not much bigger than a good sized dog.  It probably came in just to get out of the storm yesterday." 

I wasn't quite sure what a honey bear was, but the name made me think of the sun bears that I had seen at the St. Louis Zoo.  They were black with an orange chests, and not you'd call large, for a bear.  Still, on their hind legs they reached about my height, and they had the claws of any bear.  With that description in mind, the name honey bear didn't ease my convictions that we had been in a precarious position that night; then again, it sounded a little less frightful than if we had been sharing our campsite with the larger-sized black bear.

For years we wondered about that night.  Was it just a harmless honey bear, whatever that was?  Or was it a big black bear?  We both felt that, based on the noises it made, it must have been quite large.  However, we both thought there weren't any black bears in Missouri anymore.

And now, after reading Joel Vance's article, I have come to find out there is no such thing as a honey bear.  So that leaves only one explanation for what was in our cave that night.  It must have been a black bear, as we feared, after all.  But in Missouri?

Well, a year or so ago I read an article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch about a black bear, called Big Red by the locals, that has been traveling back and forth between Arkansas and Missouri for years.  The article presented a map that chornicled the bear's travels.  I showed it to Tim, and he said it went directly through where our campsite was that night.  So maybe we have an answer after all these years.  Maybe we were sharing our camp that night with Big Red.

So here is yet another bear story to go down in the books for Missouri conservationists.  The only difference is, this one's true.  After I, I was there when it happened.

Worst job I ever had!

This is a story I wrote for a college class.  I returned to school after I left the below mentioned job.

Copyright Catherine Coyle Murphy 2000

Leo hung up the phone just as I was putting my fingernail file away in the CO III desk.  The CO III desk:  It took me months before I learned that it meant the desk of Computer Operator III, or the desk where we performed the paper work of the computer room.  For years all of the office-type duties had been assigned to Leo because the other day shift operator, Mark, was too incompetent, or so he pretended to be, to do it.  But Mark was gone now, he surprised everyone by actually searching out and taking on another computer operator job.  Mark, like everyone else at the corporate headquarters of Sports Wear Manufacturers, had been miserable since Data Mergers, the corporation I was now employed by, had taken over the Information Services (IS) division.  I was Mark's replacement and I didn't mind the paper work.

"Something wrong?" I asked as Leo approached with that slow, purposeful stride that meant, "We have to talk."

"That was Roy on the phone," Leo said.  "He's in the hospital.  Thinks he had a heart attack,"  he continued, not even feigning sympathy.

"Great," I replied.  "Is he OK?" I asked, suddenly aware that I wasn't showing much sympathy either.

"He sounds fine.  It's probably just indigestion.  Have you seen what he ate last night?  A whole bag of Ripples and five Dr. Peppers," Leo said with disgust.

Leo had a habit of looking in the trashcans to see what the second and third shift guys had to eat.  It bothered him that they never re-shelved the backup tapes or did much else during their shifts except to eat.  Whenever he found packages from a take-out place, he'd say, "Looks like they had a party."  But it had been a while since that happened because second and third shift were both down to one man each, Roy on third and Little Joe on second.  Since they were alone, they couldn't leave the building.

"How long will he be out," I asked, already trying to figure how Leo, Joe and I would cover Roy's shift.  I never could understand the company allowing positions to go unfilled for as long as six months.  Their policy seemed to be to hire only once a year, during February.  Then they would institute a hiring freeze that began in March and would always last through the end of the year.  If anyone left after February, the rest of the employees had to cover the spot until the following year.

"He doesn't know yet, but a few days at least.  I'll tell you one thing, I'm scheduled for a four-day weekend and I'm not working through it," Leo said in a voice that told me he knew he could kiss his little vacation good-bye.

Poor Leo.  I had just come back from vacation, which meant Leo had been working 19 days straight already without a break.  He was really looking forward to his four days off.  Even so, I wasn't too quick to commit myself to fill in completely for Roy.  I hated that.  Just when you return from a break you have to start working literally non-stop.  The worst part, though, were the actual hours.  I always thought getting up at 4:30 in the morning wouldn't be so bad if I had regular weekends off to recover, but having to do it twelve, nineteen, or more days in a row was a bit much.

"We'll have to talk to Joe this afternoon and see what we can figure out," I told Leo.

"Yeah," Leo said as he subconsciously pressed a few keys at the main console.

"This is nothing but a sweat shop," he mumbled as he walked out the door.

A minute later Rick ran through the room while I was taking readings from the air conditioners.  Even though I was against the back wall and there wasn't anyone else to see him, he made his usual pass through the room with the index finger of his left hand held lengthwise under his nose, a gesture meant to be an imitation of Hitler's mustache.

Rick, like everyone else, hated the new executive director, the 10th in four years.  But, like everyone else, he was also scared enough of him to risk being overheard saying anything about him, thus the silent gestures.  He was saying he thought Mike was a Hitler.

Rick also developed the habit of cutting through the computer room whenever he left his cubicle to avoid passing Mike's office and risk being called in.

Leo couldn't help but laugh at Rick as they passed each other through the door.

"Did you know there's a book out called The White Collar Sweat Shop? I asked Leo upon his return.

"Let me guess, you wrote it," he said.  Leo was always making fun of me because I had written a bit in the past for a local newspaper.

"No, but I read a review of it last week," I replied.

"So, we're not alone in this?" Leo asked.

"Looks like the IS professionals are going to have to unite," I said.

"Oh sure.  We'd get a lot of support from all the Asians and Middle Easterneres that work for nothing but a green card," Leo said.

He had a point.

Our camaradereie-like conversation was interrupted by Suzie, the Oracle girl.  Suzie handled problems with Oracle software.  She was an old Sports Wear employee, too, like Leo, Roy, Rick and others who had been absorbed by Data Mergers when they came in and took over the IS department four years ago.

"Are you guys being asked to fill out a form describing your volunteer activities?" Suzie angrily asked us.  Suzie was the only one who seemed unafraid of Mike or anyone else from Data Mergers.  Maybe because her husband hd a decent enough job.  Or maybe she was hoping to be let go.

"Not yet.  Are you?" Leo replied.

"They want us to fill in a form each month describing which volunteer activity we did.  Who do they think they are dictating what we do with our own free time?"

"I know.  Mandatory volunteering.  That cracks me up," I told her.

"I already filled my form out and do you want to know what I put?" she asked.

"What?" I replied.

"I said I did yard work for my parent's neighbors, a woman in her sisties and her parents, who are in their eighties, all of whom have cancer," Suzie said with finality.

"That sounds good to me," I said.  "I'm not worried about it myself.  They know it's illegal to force people to volunteer.  They won't give trouble to anyone who resists," I added.

"I don't care if they do," Suzie said as she headed out of the room.

What the company really wanted was for its employees to spend time working on volunteer porjects within the community, projects set up by the company, so we would be volunteering under the company name, all just for a little PR for Data Mergers.  There was nothing in writing concerning the mandatory nature of the volunteerism of course, it had come down through word of mouth.

"By the way, the laser printer is down," Leo said just after Suzie left.

"OK.  I'll tell Tom when he gets in."

"You know, we're really supposed to call Waco when we need hardware repaired," Leo informed me.

"Really?  How come you never told me that before?" I asked.

"I don't know.  Guess it just seemed easier to go get Tom," he replied.

I put in a call to Data Mergers' corporate headquarters.  It was located in Waco, Texas.  Like the CO III desk, people here used to refer to Waco, never telling me whom or what they were talking about.  But now I had been here long enough that I was beginning to feel comfortable, having picked up on their different names and acronyms.

A few hours later I received a phone call.

"Hello.  This is Tom.  I'm told you have a printer down."

"Yes."

"Can you tell me where it's located," Tom said.

I began to give Tom the location of our building in Chesterfield.

"No. No.  I'm already in the building.  Can you tell me where the printer is located," Tom interrupted.

I then began to give Tom specifics as to the location of the laser printer.

"So its the laser in the copy room next to the computer room?" Tom inquired.

In sudden recognition of the voice on the other end, I said, "Is this Tom Jansen?"

"Yes," he said.

"Tom!  I was told I had to call Waco to report the printer.  I thought they were going to send someone from the outside."

"They just want you to call Waco so they can keep track of how much work we do.  Heaven forbid they end up paying for too many technicians," he said sarcastically.

"Maybe they also want to make sure you're not overworked," I said with a laugh.

"Yeah.  Right," Tom replied.

"So, Tom, I'm supposed to phone Waco, Texas every time I need something as little as a printer repaired when all I really need to do is walk ten steps to the door, open the door and call out to your cubicle, "Hey, Tom.  The laser's down.'"

"You got it," Tom said.

"This company doesn't have a problem with micro-managing, does it?" I asked.

"Not a bit," Tom replied.

"I'm just wondering on thing, Tom.  Does the satellite site in Hong Kong have to call Waco when they need a printer repaired?"

"Good question," Tom laughed.  "I'll be right over to fix your printer."

Just as I hung up the phone, Rick returned to the computer room in tears.  He was laughing so hard he was crying.

"You guys won't believe this," Rick began.  "You know those text pagers Mike introduced at the last team meeting."

"His new toy, you mean," Leo said.

"Yeah.  Well, you know the problem we had with the mainframe over the weekend?  I sent him two text pages, but he never did call us.  We figured he must not have been that worried about it.  Well, he just called me and John in and asked why he wasn't informed of the problem.  I told him I sent him two text pages and he said, "Oh, I don't carry the text pager on the weekends. Johnny said later, 'From now on, we'll send him a text page, then we'll call him on the phone to tell him we sent him a page,'" Rick said.

"That's good," Leo said.  "What an idiot, you know?" he added.

Rick walked out of the computer room laughing too hard to remember to put his finger under his nose.

As the end of our shift neared, I was again at the CO III desk fillilng out my time sheet.  Then I filled out my other time sheet.  Then I filled out my third time sheet.  One was for Data Merger's corporate headquarters.  We had to fill in how much time we spent on various duties during the day, handling problems over the phone, handling problems in person, reading our e-mail, etc.

The other on was for Sports Wear Manufacturers.  They wanted to make sure they were getting their money's worth from Data Mergers, so they wanted to know how much time we spent on various duties during the day, handling problems over the phone, handling problems in person, reading our e-mail, etc.

The thrid time sheet was just a recording of our hours worked.  It was the one used to compute our pay.

"Hey, Leo," I said as I began filling out my second time sheet for the day.  "How come they don't ask us how much time we spend filling out time sheets?"

"That's good.  That's real good," Leo said.  That was his way of giving a compliment about something witty you had said.

Little Joe, "Pup," as he was also called due to his youth and the fact he was the new kid on the block, arrived and dropped a bag of little toy army men on the CO III desk.

"For the War Room," he informed us.

He was referring to the small stock room in back of the computer room.  Mike wanted Leo and I to clean it out so they could turn it into a private work space for Rick, John and the other programmers when they had a difficult problem to work on.  Mike, in his constant quest to relive his military career, liked to refer to it as the War Room.

After a laugh, I went back to filling out my time sheets while Leo began telling Joe about Roy's heart attack, still showing no sympathy.

I had decided by then to go ahead and fill in extra so Leo could have his four days off.  Joe, too, who was a single kid of twenty, said he didn't mind the overtime.  He had just bought a new truck and moved out on his own and was beginning to feel the realities of adult responsibilities.

As far me, I was beginning to feel guilty because I knew it would be a long time before Leo got any more time off.  Little did he know I was planning on turning in my resignation that week.  I had had enough of the corporate culture and I was going to go back to school.

Back to school at 42

copyright Leader Publications 2001

I speak from experience.  Going back to school at the age of 42 is a whole lot different from returning to school at 32.  And attending a four-year university is a bit more challenging than going to the local community college.

At 32, I began attending Jefferson College.  In eight years of part-time attendance, I earned two associate's degrees.  Returning to school at that age, for the first time since high school, actually proved more difficult for my family than for me.  My husband, naturally, had his share of laundry mishaps.

I'll never forget the day I rushed to my daughter's school to see her take part in a play.  On the way there, it occurred to me for the first time that Dad had gotten the kids off to school.  Would Courtney be dressed appropriately for the play?

As the children paraded past the group of proud parents, I noticed in horror that Courtney was wearing her brother's clothes.

"Court," I whispered as she passed me by, "you're wearing J.T.'s clothes!"

"I know," she whispered back.  "It's what Dad gave me to wear."

Turns out my husband thought that just because the pants had an elastic waist, the outfit was for a girl.  Fortunately, Courtney's part was played in the dark.  She was a bat.

Now that everybody is 10 years older, my return to school at 42 is proving to be much more difficult for me than my family.

After working for more than a year in the computer field, I decided the excessive overtime required wasn't for me, took my life back and enrolled at the University of Missouri, St. Louis (UMSL).

UMSL is 42 miles northwest from my home in Cedar Hill.  If anyone thinks a distance of 40 miles doesn't have much effect on the temperature, think again.  The winter weather at that campus is a bitter, bone-chilling cold.  Of course, it didn't help matters that I started in January.

It took me two weeks to figure out how to dress to keep warm while walking from class to class.  I finally settled on a sweatshirt, sweat jacket with hood, my winter coat buttoned up to the neck with hood tied tight, gloves and winter boots.  Had I owned any long johns, they would have become a part of my ensemble as well.

Speaking of walking from class to class, that campus is so large I developed shin splints on my first day of school.  If the school's buildings had their names printed on the outside, as Jefferson College does, it might have helped.  But I had to walk long and hard to find my classrooms, carrying a heavy book bag over my shoulder.  For some reason, the UMSL administration chooses to display the names of buildings on the interior.  Once insde, you will find the name of a building printed above room numbers, on signs in the halls, just about everywhere.  That isn't a lot of help to the hapless student on the street, trying to figure out which building in a long line of similar-looking edifices is the one she wants.

During my first week, in addition to the shin splints, I came down with the flu.  It was obvious that I should have stayed home, but I didn't want to be absent so soon.  I became so sick in one of my classes that I had to go out in the hall in search of a place fot lie down.  For a time I wondered if an ambulance would be needed.  My attendance was sporadic for a few weeeks after that while recovering.

Then there was the time I got lost in the university library, a horrible experience.  I literally could not find my way out.  It happened on a day when my last class had been canceled.  It seemed a good tiem to explore the library.  In no time, however, I realized I was lost.  Actually, I had entered one library and eventually ended up in another one.  Apparently several libraries are connected together because, following UMSL's naming practice, the library names were displayed all over on the inside.  Therefore, it wasn't difficult to tell when I was in a different one. 

In my desperate attempt to find my way out, I decided to use the stairs instead of the elevator, thinking it would help me keep bettere track of my course.  This meant, of course, that I would have to carry my book bag up the stairs.

After that first awful day, I had switched to a book bag on wheels.  In no time, I was beginning to sweat under my winter ensemble and I still wasn't feeling well from the flu.  I was beginning to get clammy and shaky.  Finally, after climbing yet another set of stairs and with the certainty that I could not climb further, I came upon a woman in uniform sitting at a desk.  I stumbled up to her and asked, "How do you get out of the place?"

Shen she pointer over her shoulder and said, "Just take these staris...," my face fell, my shoulders dropped and I let out a groan  - all of which she seemed to find funny.

I finally did find my way out of that library.  Needless to say, I have never gone back.

To be honest, my first few months at UMSL were so difficult I don't think I would have stuck it out had my classes themselves not been so interesing.  Attending Jefferson College first was a good choice because the smaller campus and more personal classes gave me a good base for the challenges of a university education.

But best of all, Jefferson College has all of the buildings' names printed on the outside!