Part 2
You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And you are the one who’ll decide where to go. – Oh, The Places You Will Go! By Dr. Seuss
Ah yes, I was on my own in the wilds of Arkansas foraging for Bible lovers. My roommate would drop me off at 9 am each morning in a predetermined location. We had a map of the City of Paragould taped up on the beige, paneled wall of Number Aught indicating the places we’d been and where we would go next.
Once I got to my location, I walked. If I finished a section of town, I hitchhiked to the next hood duty bound to canvas the area, knock on every door, assess the needs of my customers and close the deal. Some folks invited me in, some slammed the door in my face. Some were nice and some sic’d their dogs on me. The door answerers were mostly women whose husbands were at work or had run off with “that whore down the street.” I was young and it surprised me how unhappy married women were. The lonely or angry women were glad to see me. They would offer me Pepsi Colas and Moon Pies and rant about how “they didn’t have nothin no more and never did noways anyhow.”
They listened to my spiel and flipped through my sample books and I impressed upon their God-fearing souls about the benefit of having more than four or five bibles, even though they said, “we is Bible poor.”
I had a beautiful, glossy, white family bible with gold leaf on the page edge, and a place in the middle to list your family as far back as the Mayflower. For an extra five dollars, I would emboss their last name on the cover. I’d throw that in for free if they bundled it with our illustrated children’s bible or my large print edition. That was a popular choice. I sold one to a pregnant mother of six who wanted me to take a small antique sewing machine in trade so her husband wouldn’t know she’d spent money. And another one to a woman who wanted her maiden name on the cover because her husband had never been saved and she didn’t want to offend Jesus.
I was happy with my sewing machine transaction until I realized I had to hitchhike back to my drop off point with it, a good five miles away. The top of the machine had a handle and created a decent balance to my sample case. For the first mile and a half, it wasn’t bad. After that, I took to bouncing them both off my legs as I walked to alleviate the strain on my arms. I walked the entire way. I guess nobody wanted to pick up a girl with that much baggage. My poor legs were so bruised and sore I got a few sympathy sales the next week.
If I knocked on the door of an ungodly house, I was prepared with a Medical Dictionary that told stay at home mommas what to do if their baby was choking or running a fever or stuck a bean up their nose. If they didn’t have a baby then I showed them the ten effective ways to ease the pain of a blistering burn or the bloat of nagging constipation. Older people loved the Medical Dictionary. They would regale me with all of their aches and pains, illnesses, symptoms, and family medical history. It slowed me down, but every time I tried to graciously cut them off, they would offer me sweet tea and a piece of buttermilk pie. That’s not something you can turn down in that part of the country.
It wasn’t all pie and sweet tea though. I ran into trouble more than a few times. Sometimes the ones who invited me in had ulterior motives.
To be continued
joettacurrie 