“Great Jehoshaphat” Described

To hold the attention of your audience as you make a speech, wrap a little story around whatever it is you are trying to say.

It works. Or, it did for me in a recent lecture.

In mid April a group of clubwomen in Fordyce, Arkansas had me to come as their guest speaker, to review my novel, GREAT JEHOSHAPHAT AND GULLY DIRT!, and to talk about the importance of reading books.

“Stimulated to Read” was the title they suggested.

Here is one of the true tales and reading suggestion the Arkansas ladies liked:

“Years back, down in the southern part of the state, in the community of Three Creeks--where I did part of my growing up--there lived a man who was a plain sot! An alcoholic if ever there was one. We can call him Mr. Greene. Mr. Greene drank like a fish. Everybody in the settlement knew it and figured there was nothing to be done for Mr. Greene. Everybody, that is, except my mother, who was known as ‘Miss Nannie.’

“Miss Nannie had hopes that Mr. Greene would change his ways. So one day she asked him point blank: ‘Mr. Greene, what makes you drink all that whiskey?’

“‘Ah, Miss Nannie,’ he said, ‘my bottle helps me forget all my troubles!’

“Reading can help us forget our troubles.”

One suggestion after another I offered the ladies. They were pleased. They laughed over his tongue in cheek assertion and quotation:

“We simply have to read a variety of books to keep from being dumb, or at least to keep people from thinking we’re stupid!

“Sir Francis Bacon, the great English statesman, philosopher and essayist, said much the same thing, only in different words. The way Bacon put it was this:

“‘If a man read little, he had need have much cunning to seem to know what he doth not!’”

It took more than 30 minutes to deliver this combination speech and book review.

Apparently, the friendly, vivacious Arkansas clubwomen were convinced that reading many books is both pleasurable and profitable. They clapped their hands loud and later each vowed that the next book she reads will be GREAT JEHOSHAPHAT!

As a way of describing in 15 minutes this tale of the South which took six years to write I read excerpts that are in themselves like miniature stories.

Here is one. A black man named Ned Roberts is talking to the country storekeeper, Mister Jodie, telling him two things: how he is worried about the man f or whom he works, Ward Lawson, and how he (Ned) sort of adopted a little boy.

“I ain’t telled you the worst, Mister Jodie.”

“Yea?”

“This mornin’ Mister Ward show me how he gwine t’ start makin’ whiskey! Say I gotta help him! Say he gwine t’ put in the biggest still you ever seen. I’s plain a-fered, Mister Jodie! He say my chillens gwine to help chop and tote the wood!”

“He can’t!”

“He say he shoot me ‘tween the eyes iffen I tells hit, Mister Jodie! But Lawd, Mister Jodie, I’s got to think ‘bout my chillens. Little Stray, too. He that pitiful one what’s not mine. I calls him my chicken coop stray boy.”

“Chicken coop?”

“Yes, suh, Mister Jodie. Years back I finds that chile--one freezin’ mornin’--all scrooched up in my chicken house. He nere ‘bout starved to death and shakin’ like a leaf--he can’t talk. Me and my wife, we warms him and feeds him. And we tries to take him back to his mammy. She don’t want him. So we keeps him. That’s ‘fore I comes to Mister Ward’s place, and ...”

I would like it very much if HEDGEHOPPER readers could find themselves “Stimulated to Read” many, many books. Especially, GREAT JEHOSHAPHAT!

This whodunit, told by a five year old, just might hold your interest and help you forget your troubles!

There are copies in the Ft. Rucker Center Library. (See elsewhere on this website for availability of Great Jehoshaphat and Gully Dirt!)

Published May 1978. Click your browser’s “Back” button to return.