PEDALING THE GLOBE. Pt. 5

I can relate

As a freshman in high school I learned an old Irish prayer. It seems rather fitting here:

"From ghoulies, and ghosties and long-legged beasties, and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us."

The late Jerry Clower once told a story of a hillbilly preacher who was known in his little corner of the world for excessive speed. And given the fact that he lived in the Appalachians, his parishioners were afraid that one day they’d wake up and read about a horrendous accident in which the ole boy had sailed off a mountainside. 

Well, one day Preacher Brown was navigating a local mountain, ‘going 90 to nothing’ and his young neighbor happened to be a couple hundred yards behind him.

Of course, Jim Bob was afraid for the preacher and could see he wasn’t going to successfully round the next curve. And as he expected, and without any sign of brake lights, the good minister and the antique red pickup truck he was driving bounced off the side of the cliff; finally coming to rest a hundred feet below.

Jim Bob felt an involuntary scream rising in his throat, and screeched to a stop. Jumping out of his late model Mustang, he ran down the side of the mountain. As he neared the scene of the accident, suddenly Preacher Brown’s pickup truck caught fire, and threatened to consume both him, and ‘ole Betsy.’

However, just in the nick of time the young man saw his favorite parson clamoring out of the driver’s window of the overturned pickup truck. 


Jim Bob’s voice betrayed his relief,

“Preacher, Preacher are you alright?”

To which the somewhat shaken old man replied, 

“Yes, thank you, Jim Bob, the Lord is riding with me.”

With this, James Robert smiled a toothless grin and exclaimed,

“Well, Preacher, you better let Him ride with me …before you kill Him!”

Some of my family and friends have likened me to that rather foolish old Hillbilly preacher.

By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "(Mc)Donald's Daily Diary" Vol. 49. Copyright pending

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