Edna Liggin
The Bernice News-Journal

Do you need help canning, pickling or preserving? Do you need new stories, prayers, or handwork ideas for Vacation Bible School? Do you lack ideas for flower arrangements or a back yard patio? Are you a P.T.A. leader and want to serve to the best of your ability? Do you have a knotty farm or cattle problem?

There are answers to these questions in books and the service of your parish bookmobile as it browses these long summer days and goes from the main highway to serve you at your community store, church or home. Investigate and you may be surprised to learn that the bookmobile comes near you. While we were on vacation last week the voice of a small boy on the phone inquired as to where he could meet the bookmobile . He was surprised to learn that we stopped less than a mile from his home.

We have already made several new stops this summer and these include a loop road above Dean at the Ross home, Mt. Ararat Church, Jarmon’s Store, Kelley’s home near Albritton Store site of old Paron Church near Spencer, Salem Church and others.

Working for his dad and reading four or five books a week is making the summer go by in a satisfying was for Larry Gresham, a young man who hasn’t been in Marion too long, having previously lived on four continents when his father was in the armed services. Larry like books slanted toward the different branches of our armed forces. To the adult readers at Marion last week went books on 3-D photography (also magazines on photography), the Civil War, “Compulsion” by Levin, and Keyes “Blue Camellia”. Every Tuesday we stop here both morning and afternoon.

In other places boys and girls are happily planning a summer combination of working and reading, as young Bob Buckley at Linville who, for two weeks in overalls and straw hat, says he’s helping dad with the hay but finds time to come to the bookmobile. “I love to work,” said one girl. “Where are the books on cooking and sewing?” So can adults be helped along with their work, for example, as Mr. Lane checked out a book on making furniture to a man in the Linville area. In their talk discovered they were contemporary school bus drivers over 20 years ago.

We are glad to have books on gardens and flower arrangements for members of the Bernice garden club, while we understand the Marion HDC is undertaking to convert the old CCC camp into a park as their special project. We were happy to learn that the Downsville Boy Scouts plan to meet there at the time the bookmobile stops so as to make it easier for them to get books.

While the bookmobile takes stories in book form to people (never enough it seems of horse, mystery or adventure stories of human interest as they meet us in cars, bicycles, on horseback and small children trudge down dusty lanes barefoot. We carried then 6,860 books in April, borrowing many we could not supply from the state library, and in turn were enriched by glimpses into the lives of our readers. We hear about interesting things such as the twin boys so identical no one could tell them apart, but later they they married and were thereafter identifies and referred to by their wives’ first name.

A very interesting stop is at Grey’s Shop where we saw their beautiful peacocks and listened to their strange cry. Mrs. Grey is finding the books of Leland Kordel very interesting especially “Eat Your Troubles Away”.

Among the new special request were a volume of the works of James Joyce; books on Southern genealogy, “The Great Plantation” by Clifford Dowdey, “Nine Man – Eaters and One Rouge” by Andersen, “The Fabulous Democrat” by Cohn, and “The Scarlet Pimpernel” by Baroness Orezy, a fascinating romantic adventure with a historical background of the French Revolution. Some of our adult readers (as they are busier and the weather warmer) say “I just want at light, easy novel.”

As the bookmobile tries to include your community in its schedule, won’t you included a visit to the bookmobile as part of your regular summer schedule?

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