Firsts
Members of our ladies Bible class enjoy lunch together every Wednesday. Mother and I always join in the fun when I am in town. The ladies know about the Hometown History videos we are working on, so yesterday they told me story after story.
Yesterday Sue said that she was about 8 years old when she got her first pair of pajamas. She said that a woman came to their house with things to sell and her mother bought her and her sister each a pair of nylon pajamas. I commented that I had never heard of a woman peddler before. Sue said that she wasn’t exactly a peddler, but she went from house to house with a suitcase with things to sell inside.
As the granddaughter of two peddling grandfathers, I was familiar with peddlers. Daddy’s daddy, Daddy Leland, used to travel through the countryside near his country store selling his wares. I always loved the name of one of those communities. It was Sweet Home.
My Mama’s daddy had an old black truck, fitted up with a flat-topped roof to cover his truck bed filled with homegrown vegetables in wooden bushel (and half-bushel and peck) baskets. He drove to ladies’ houses in Springfield, Tennessee, peddling vegetables.
Granddaddy also sold from his truck in downtown Springfield — not at a farmer’s market, but simply in a parallel parking space on Main Street. Once I got to go with him all by myself. I thought the scale he hung from the roof of his truck was “something else”! The picture below is from about 25 years earlier than when I went with Granddaddy. The truck is much older and Granddaddy’s roof was permanent and had no sideboards, but the scale and the baskets are a lot like his.
Talk of peddling reminded Joan of her first bubblegum, which came from a peddler who came to their house.
Pajamas and bubblegum probably seem pretty ordinary to most of us, but they are memorable firsts to Sue and Joan. As homeschooling mamas, you are blessed to experience many firsts: first chapter book read “all by myself,” first correct math equation, first word in Spanish, first painted canvas, first Bible verse memorized, first play, first concert . . . . And you have daily opportunities to teach them what is of first importance.
But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness,
and all these things will be added to you.
Matthew 6:33