Bette Cox

Elizabeth G. "Bette" Cox grew up in Florence, in the heart of South Carolina's Pee Dee region. She attended the University of South Carolina at Florence, now Francis Marion University, and in 2006 received a Certificate as Oral Historian from UCLA-Davis. This site is dedicated to her first love, writing.

Contents

• About Bette Cox
• The Tim Cox Story
• Family Memories Newspaper Columns
• Esther's Petition
• The Simsville Inheritance
• Short Stories
• Harold Motte's Website, beautiful photos

Esther's Petition

Esther's Petition has its own blogsite and current entries appear there.  Here's a recent one.

Seed corn: don't eat it, plant it. Back when most people grew their own food, that didn't have to be explained.

When I was a little girl spending my summers on my grandparents' farm, I learned that you didn't eat the seed corn. I helped my grandmother pick over a big basket of seed corn that was being put aside for the next year, cleaning the trash and dead bugs out of it.

A seed has life built in, no matter whether it's corn, or butterbeans, or sunflowers. It doesn't have to wonder what to do, it "knows" to grow. The faith for growing is entertwined in the life...

But there is something else about seeds. They need stuff. Like soil, food, water, fertilizer, and protection from pests. Today, vegetable and flower seeds are sold in stores with a coating of plant food and/or bug killer surrounding them, so you have a head start on getting a good crop. Smart idea.

Jesus told his disciples, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you can tell this mountain to be removed and be cast into the sea, and it would obey you. (See Matt. 17:20) Now, a mustard seed is really small. And Jesus was saying they didn't have even that miniscule amount of faith.

They could have, though. It was offered to them as a gift when Jesus said, "Have the faith of God." It took Jesus making a gift of it to get it back then, and it still does. That's how we get saved, born again, in the first place (Eph. 2:8). And that seed of faith Jesus gives us contains life, just as seed corn contains life.

But some people leave it like that, tiny, encapsulated and dormant, and then they wonder why no mountain ever moves for them. Mark 4:14-20 explains part of it. Seeds have to be nurtured and cultivated. No self-respecting farmer would plant corn in an uncultivated field full of rocks and briars. Seeds have to be planted in good soil, soil deep enough to allow for roots to get a good start. And weeds need to be weeded, rocks removed, and critters prevented from getting in.

When my children were small we lived on a mini-farm outside of town, and one summer we planted lots of field peas and corn at a distance from the house. When it was time to pick them, we discovered the raccoons had taken a bite - just one bite - out of every ear of corn. And the deer had made a good meal out of the field peas! The critters won that round and we learned a good lesson. Electric fencing solved that problem the next year.

II Peter 1:5-8 continues the explanation. Faith seeds also need to be fed, watered, and fertilized with virtue, knowledge, self-control, patience, godliness, kindness and love. Well, all that takes work.

Continued...

To contact Bette Cox:

1231-1 Via Ponticello
Florence, SC 29501
(843) 665-7620
E-mail bettecox@bellsouth.net

Bette's Blogs

• Talk With Bette - Information, ideas and opinions. If it interests me, it'll interest you.


• Bette's Journal - Thoughts from Bette's heart following Tim's death December 15, 2006.


• Esther's Petition - Bible studies and meditations from Scripture.

Family Memories Columns

Glimpses of life growing up in the Pee Dee Region of South Carolina in the 1930's, 40's, 50's and 60's, give or take a decade or two. These columns appear regularly in The News Journal (Florence and Marion, SC).  Here's the latest edition.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Wedding

In my forty-plus years of being a church organist and pianist, I've been privileged to play for many weddings. Most were normal. But there were a few occasions when things didn't go quite as planned or rehearsed...

In the 1970's down at Parkwood Presbyterian on the Pamplico Highway, the bride was ready, the bridesmaids were ready, the flower girl and ring bearer were ready. The music was simple and elegant, mostly traditional with a few interspersed classical pieces.

I had been playing softly for some minutes while friends and family of the young couple were seated by the handsome ushers. It was nearly time for me to switch gears and play the chosen piece for the mothers to be seated, when the door beside the organ opened a few inches and the pastor whispered to me. I saw a worried frown on his face.

"Keep playing, the groom's not here," he said. "I'll let you know when he gets here," he added. Okay, just a little glitch, I said to myself, flipping back to the front of my music book. But fifteen minutes later the pastor whispered again, "He's still not here, keep playing."

Oh oh, he's stood her up, I thought, expecting the next message to be "Stop playing, the wedding's off."

The Simsville Inheritance

A humorous serial mystery about Avery Alderson, a young woman who has inherited an entire town. Here's an excerpt from the current chapter.

Chapter 27 - Safe, Sound and Disgusted

I kept my own thoughts to myself while listening to everyone else's comments, questions and suggestions. Alice Gold and Jack McKenzie had finally arrived, a little tired and more than a little hungry. Greeted with relief and slaps on the back, both gratefully accepted sandwiches and mugs of coffee.

All of the town council was present including Green, having left the saloon in someone else's care for the rest of the day. As she helped Smith assemble trays of food and drinks, the rest of us gravitated into the living room, dragging dining room chairs in for extra seating.

The coffee table was soon transformed into a make-shift buffet and people who had finished a substantial lunch a few hours ago suddenly found appetites rekindled. Seated in a straight-back chair against the wall, Silver pulled out his pocket notebook and ballpoint pen. He carefully placed them on the end table beside him before sipping from his glass of iced tea, the base of the glass neatly wrapped in a paper napkin.

Jones began walking Alice and Jack through the kidnapping starting with the hour before the bank opened for business. Between bites and sips, Alice recounted the events at the bank from her point of view. Nothing had seemed unusual in the least, not even when the nondescript kid walked in.

Short Stories

Humorous short stories featuring Myrtle's unnamed friend who gets herself into peculiar predicaments. Here's an excerpt from her latest adventure:

You Missed a Real Party, Myrtle

Hey, Myrtle, how you doing? Yeah, Spring's sprung looks like. Hey, Myrtle, you missed a real party out at that old graveyard next to Second Baptist Church. Cause that's where we had the egg hunt for the church daycare this year. This year we decided to jazz it up a bit so we could get a few more grown-ups interested, what with just me and one other volunteer not being quite up to running around a graveyard with 20 four-year olds.

No, the daycare kiddies are not 24 years old, Myrtle, we had 20 of ‘em, all of them were four years old, more or less. Couple of threes, one or two fives. Jazz it up? Make it more fun, Myrtle, more fun!

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