Zion Read Free

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    Most people in Zion and southwest Baxter Parish, as well as southeast Louisburg Parish were of Scotch-Irish extraction. The exceptions were small enclaves of French and Germans in Milltown, the Hungarians in Kilgore, the Sicilians up in Liberty City, and the sections of blacks scattered across the region in their settlements. But these were all minority populations. The Scotch-Irish residents were predominantly Protestant, typically Baptists or Methodists, and their frontier religion was keenly anti-intellectual and clannish, often bigoted, and fearful of those outside their kith and kin.
    Tom, however, saw little truth in the common notions of white supremacy or other obsessions taken up by the racists in the newly formed White Citizens’ Council in Pickleyville. He had been influenced early in his life by Methodism’s key doctrines of sanctification and Christian perfection, the teachings of John Wesley from the 1700s. Tom worked hard to live an upright and pious life, and he spent no time looking down on other races of people. Yet he, too, could be cautious around outsiders and somewhat distrustful. This was practiced in general and not necessarily along racial lines. The pine tree war was causing him more than casual concern, especially after being accused of arson by the marshal, and there were times when he was somewhat paranoid about the conflict in his community.
    But Tom was a different sort of man because he was one of Pickleyville Public Library’s best patrons. He had been the salutatorian of Milltown High in 1941. As a boy, he’d read the works of Zane Grey and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as The Iliad and The Odyssey . In recent years, he’d read Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird twice. Each week, he would pick up a few books from the library and read them during the late evenings when he wasn’t hunting or doing small carpentry projects. Tom planned to vote for Lyndon Johnson on November 3rd when many of his neighbors were voting for Barry Goldwater, most casting a Republican ballot for the first time in their lives.
    Over the years, men had made snide comments about Tom’s peculiar ways, his reading habits, and his weekly forays into the public library collection. Some called him “Little Einstein” behind his back because of his regular library patronage, but he never worried much about what people thought.
    Sara also read widely and regularly. Wesley, too, was an early and voracious reader. In the years prior to meeting Tom, Sara had studied at Newcomb College, the women’s college at Tulane University in New Orleans, where she earned a liberal arts degree. Tom had met her soon after she’d started working as a clerk at the public library in downtown Pickleyville following her graduation from Newcomb.
    When World War II ended, Tom studied at the junior college in Pickleyville, enduring several part-time semesters on the GI Bill of Rights, and he considered becoming a history teacher. However, the parish public schools were run by a semi-literate mob of fraternity boys, Delta Tau Deltas and Kappa Alphas, local men he did not care for, the likes of which also ran the timber companies. The idea of teaching school for these stooges gave him pause about furthering his formal education.
    Dealing with naturally corrupt folks discouraged him, so he left the college without earning a two-year degree. Instead of becoming a high school history teacher, he lived as a subsistence farmer on a patch of family land and raised hogs and cattle in the open range, working jobs locally—at the brickyard, over at the creosote plant for a time, and at the bag factory during different periods. For several years, he milked cows at a friend’s dairy until the farm finally went under. Sometimes he remodeled houses and undertook small carpentry jobs for neighbors, but the earnings were paltry at best. Tom was the peculiar embodiment of a man with a strong work ethic but very little ambition. He believed that