Sugar in a Shoebox

Sugar in a Shoebox by Joyce McFarland

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have known Joyce McFarland since our sons were good friends in middle school. She was always a person who could light up a room with her smiles and laughter.

In her book Sugar in a Shoebox she tells stories of growing up poor in rural North Carolina in the 1950's. She was born three months prematurely to teenaged parents, then raised by her Grandmother who became Mama. She was so tiny the doctor sent her home to die. Mama had other plans for the tiny baby. She fashioned a home-made incubator out of a shoebox with a mason jar filled with hot water which she changed every hour.

That baby in a shoebox grew up in a house full of family, full of love. Even in hard times she could remember a humorous episode. At the end of each story she has a list of humorous adages.

* * *
If you get a whipping for something you didn't do, take it in stride. You more than likely deserve it for something you had already done.

What is a freak? What is a human oddity? SOMEBODY'S CHILD.

When the "saints go marching in," some of them will have switch marks on them.

And my favorite:

And on the sixth day God created bacon; let us rejoice and be glad in it.



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