<TITLE>09. Par 36-39</TITLE>L-36 Now. So I was... The season was very hot. Squirrel hunting... As many of my fellow squirrel hunters know, they're--they--the cracking of the leaves scares the squirrels, and we... It was so dry, we had to go to a place where there was some hollows that we could get into--little ditches, to walk through the woods. My friend's name was Mr. Wood. He's setting over here to my right.
And he said, "I know a man that's got a ground of many acres." But said, "He's so hard to deal with." Said, "He's a infidel," and said, "he don't believe in God." And he said, "He makes fun of it." And he said, "But he knows me, he knows my father." And he said, "If I go ask him if we can hunt on his place..."
I said, "Let's go."

L-37 We drove way back in the country, way back on a side road, and two old men were setting under the shade of an apple tree. He said, "There he is, the one to the right."
I said, "Being a minister, I better set in the car."
So he goes out, and he said, "How do you do?"
And the man said, "Come up, set down."
He said, "My name is Wood." He said, "I wonder if you would care if we hunted awhile on your place."
He said, "What Wood are you?"
He said, "I'm Jim Wood's son."
He said, "Jim Wood is a friend of mine, and any one of his children can hunt anywhere they want to."
He said, "Thank you."
He said, "I wonder now," he said, "which one are you?"
He said, "I'm Banks." He talked to him a few moments, and Mr. Wood said, "I wonder if it'd be all right for me to take my pastor with us."
He said, "You don't mean you got so low down till you have to carry a preacher with you wherever you go?"
He said, "My pastor's out there."

L-38 I thought I'd better get out of the car. And I got out of the car, and walked over there, and I said, "How do you do?"
He said, "How do you do? So you're a preacher."
I said, "Yes, sir."
And he said, "Well," he said, "I'm supposed to be an infidel."
I said, "Well, not much to brag about, is it?"
He said, "I guess it isn't." He said, "But what I've got against you people, you're talking about something you don't know about."
"Oh," I said, "is that so?"
He said, "Yes, sir. I hear them always blowing off about this, about a God, and everything." Said, "There is no such a thing."
I said, "Uh-huh." I said, "Well, 'course you know how it is, sir," I said, "Everyone to his own thought." I was thinking in my heart, "Now, Lord, You give me something to help that man, no doubt sincere."
And he said, "I only seen one preacher in all my life I--I'd like to hear--heard of him."
And I said, "Who was that, sir?"
He said, "Here about two years ago, there was a preacher over here at a town called Acton." He said, "And old lady So-and-so up here on the hill had been laying there for two years with cancer." Said, "Me and my wife... They couldn't put her on the bedpan no more. They had to use a draw sheet." And said, "We was up there that morning," and said, "the doctor had said the day before that she wouldn't make it through the night."

L-39 "She had cancer in her stomach. She was eat up. She couldn't even drink barley water, and hadn't for weeks. They'd fed her glucose through her veins, until her veins was collapsed, and said there was nothing could be done for her."
And said, "Her sister was setting over listening to that preacher preach, and that preacher didn't know anybody here, had never been here, and told her who she was, and what her sister was, and thought about a handkerchief she had, and said put it on that woman." And said, "That night I thought they had the Salvation Army up there somewhere, of all the screaming." And said, "The next morning we went over to see if she was dead." And said, "When we got over there, she was up, cooking fried apple pies and eating them." And said, "She even does the neighbor's work." He said, "Now..."
I said, "What's so strange about that?"


<A HREF="P10">Next Page</A>