The Good Old Book...

Among my very earliest memories is that of Mama reading Bible stories to Jim and me. Though she worked long hours in a cotton mill as a weaver, a hard, loud, dirty job, with very low pay, she found the time to share with us her love of The Good Old Book.

Mama told me this story: One day a door-to-door salesman came to our little three-room shot gun house* on Mill Street in Koskiusko, Mississippi. It must have been on a Saturday, because Mama worked the week days and no one worked on Sunday.

Anyway, he showed up carrying a suitcase full of books. He was selling "The Book of Life." It was a set of books, less than a dozen books in the set, with stories, poems, pictures of the Holy Land and a lot of other ancient articles, maps, and information about the Bible. The first book was for small children, and the content of the subsequent books increased to adult level as one progressed through the series.

Mama had grown up loving books, especially the Bible. She listened to his sales pitch, even though she knew she would never be able to afford whatever the price was going to be. While he talked, she let me climb up on the couch beside her and look at the pictures. The salesman asked me if I liked the book.

I nodded. "Yes, and I love Jesus. I can sing about Him."

The salesman looked surprised that I spoke up so boldly. He nodded politely, and I jumped down from the couch and stood directly in front of him and began to sing. I was not shy, belting out "Jesus Loves Me" and "Jesus Loves the Little Children" and even a couple of grownup songs, like "He Will Make the Flowers Bloom" and "Heaven, Happy Home Above..." (On that last one, I sang both parts, like a one-person duet...)

Mama was a bit embarrassed, but she didn't stop me. After all, she had always sung to me at home and encouraged me to sing. In church they let me sing solos, standing me up on a chair to see over the railing.  No, I was not one bit shy.

Years later, Mama told me the salesman had tears on his face when I finally stopped. He told her the price of the books was over $50, a fortune to Mama in those days. Then he said, "Ma'am, I am not going to leave your home and take these books away from this little girl. If you can't afford them, I'll pay for them myself so she can have access to them..."

After that, besides from The Good Old Book, Mama read to Jim and me from "The Book of Life, Volume 2" which was full of stories from the Old and New Testaments, complete with real pictures of cities, articles, and landscapes in the Holy Land. When those books were published, the modern nation of Israel had not yet been formed. Captions on the pictures refer to "Palestine."

My favorite was the story of Joseph who was sold into slavery by his brothers, thrown into prison in Egypt for a crime he did not commit, and eventually saved the whole country of Egypt as well as his native Palestine from starvation by famine. It is still my favorite story in the Old Testament. I still cry when I read it, whether I read it in The Good Old Book or in the Book of Life, Volume 2, (of which my husband also has a copy.)


*A shot gun house is one that has three or more rooms, all in a row, with the doors lined up so that if they are all open you can shoot a shotgun through the front door and all the shot will go out the back door, unless some of it hits something or someone standing in one of the three doorways.