The one boy, dressed in overalls and carrying a guitar, said,
‘The bond that holds us together in this group is our faith in
Jesus Christ. We go from school to school, and church to church,
giving a three-act play based on morals and faith in the classroom.
I accompany the performance with my guitar.’
‘Sometimes we wonder if we’ll make it to the next town,
our old bus breaks down so often,’ he continued. ‘But we
travel on faith, and the Lord always provides. Before we finish an
engagement in one place, the churches and businessmen of the next
community along the way are sending us invitations and backing to
perform there.’
As the Old Year passes away, and the New Year of 1971
approaches, there are other significant developments that
portend improvement. Cigarette commercials on television are
to be no more. Rapid progress in education and planning is being
programmed for the cleaning up of our countryside and waterways.
People are becoming aware of the dangers which have been besetting
us and are seeing the light. We have just read in Life Magazine
where Natural and Health Foods are becoming more popular, and the
youth are doing much of the promoting. Several huge Health Food
Stores are being operated by young men and women in California.
Their vegetables and fruits are raised in gardens fertilized by
manure and compost heaps, just like Grandpa did it, and no toxic
sprays or plant foods are used whatever. The article goes on to
state that young people are no longer accepting the ‘junk
foods’ that have been promoted by false advertising and unsafe
methods of production.
While there is much to deplore in this modern age, there are
shafts of truth and light already appearing through the dark
clouds. And youth is marching in the front lines along with those
of their elders who are aware that improvements must be made if
mankind is to survive.
In a recent visit to a large Natural Food Store, we came away
with quite a few purchases – such as Cabbage Juice, Roasted
Sunflower Seeds, Natural Vitamins of Potassium and Iodine, a
package of Golden Seal Tea, and the like – all from Nature’s
garden and storehouses, designed for better health.
I once had a fine old friend, Frank Robbins – one who had been a
blacksmith for many years, as well as an old-time fiddler. Frank
used to come to my place to make fiddlin’ records, and while he
was around I also took some pictures of him and wrote him up in the
Dayton Paper. He told me he could work twelve hours a day in his
blacksmith shop, then he’d drive to the county seat in an old
buggy in the coldest winter weather and fiddle into the wee hours
of the morning. Afterward he’d drive back through a blizzard,
sleep four hours, and be up at the crack of dawn to work another
day at blacksmithing.
Frank Robbins was an avid hunter of wild herbs in Nature’s
fields and woods. He’d sally forth and gather Sweet Bugle Weed,
Ginseng, Golden Seal and whatever he could find, tie the herbs into
neat bundles and then deliver them to the local drug store. His
cellar was well-hung with herbs all drying in bundles for use in
medicine.
More than once Frank told me, ‘Joe, Golden Seal is the
finest tonic in the world for any kind of stomach trouble. Not only
that, but Golden Seal is good for almost anything that ails a human
being.’
Picking up a recent herbalist almanac, I read almost the same
words, praising Golden Seal. Another book I also read, concerning
herbs, made the same claims.
At the Natural Food Store I bought a box of Golden Seal Tea,
which I brewed in my cup before retiring. I found it wonderful for
the stomach and the entire toning of the body. The same can be
obtained in almost any Health Food Store, or by sending to an
herb-garden supply house, like The Indiana Botanic Gardens, Box 5,
Hammond, Indiana. Naturally I cannot tell everyone where they can
obtain herbs in their particular localities, but if one is
sufficiently interested they will surely locate a source in their
area.
There are ways that have been provided for man to better himself
both physically and morally. The old-time homeopathic doctors
always had a rule that, you treat a poison by using a minute
portion of that very same poison to overcome it. Western rangers
have used this method many years, fighting fire with fire, by
starting a smaller fire to stop a larger fire. Modern medicine is
based on similar measures in the fighting of epidemics. By
vaccinating with a small dose of cow-pox, we have learned how to
eradicate the vicious menace of small-pox.
In the very disease and poison we suffer from, lies also the
remedy. The filth of pornography run rampant, the pollution of our
streams and wildlife by wastes and poisons – the desecration of our
campuses and our established religious faith has now awakened the
multitudes to the point of being sick of it all and wanting to do
something about it.
Like the threshermen who decided to do something to save what
remained of their beloved steam engines, before they were all
scrapped, by establishing the steam threshing reunions – so the
public is up in arms about saving our health, our wildlife and the
faith which made our nation great.
May our health – and our faith in our nation and the God whose
Son came to show us how to live, and then died because we
wouldn’t listen, help us now in our struggle to overcome these
human evils.
‘I have come that ye might have life, and have it more
abundantly,’ He said. And on the cross, His last words were,
‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.’
