Have you ever been really and truly poor at some point in your life? Well, I have, a long time ago, and it’s no fun. More on this a bit later. Believe it or not, we still have poverty here in Arkansas, and I’m sure in other parts of the country as well. The reason I know this is true is because each summer a Little Rock television station conducts a “cereal drive” to collect boxes of cereal during the summer months to feed children when they are out of school. One in five of these children have food insecurity in their home. The school feeds these children free of charge when school is in session, but not when they are out of school during the summer months. For the past several years, this station, Channel 11 in Little Rock, has conducted a cereal drive. In 2024 they collected more than a half million boxes they gave to the Arkansas Food Bank for this cause. If not for this, one in five of our children would go hungry during the summer months. 

What brought this thinking to mind was one day Janis and I were driving down the street in Conway on a street that has a row of beautiful Crepe Myrtle trees. A couple of guys that looked to be in their 30s were trimming them up to make them uniform and safe for the traffic to pass. I commented to Janis that these guys did not have a lot of education, or they would not be doing this kind of work. While someone needs to do it, to be sure they were making minimum wage, and in today’s times it’s hard to feed a family on this kind of income. 

I was born on May 1, 1938, in White County, Arkansas, and soon afterwards, we moved to Gould in southeast Arkansas. I don’t know how it came about, but for a while we lived in a northern governor’s retreat mansion in the country out from Gould. This mansion had 36 rooms (I counted them), and we had all our furniture in two of them. When I was in the third grade, I rode a horse three miles each day to catch a school bus at the Douglas store. I would tie up the horse to a hitching rail, get on the school bus and go to school. In the evening, I would reverse the process and go back home. Sometime later I remember that a family in Gould took us in and we lived in two rooms in their home. Somehow my parents got enough backing to open a café in Gould, and the rest is history. They were good, hard-working people, and we never looked back. My point is that we were poor, so I do know what it’s like.  

My point for this column is simple. If you want to avoid being poor, get a good education. This all begins with reading. I recommend keeping a good book close by. I guess that is why I have spent most of my life trying to inspire my fellow Americans to see the value of education. Without a good education, low-income children are the ones who will wind up on the street trimming trees. The “Bookcase for Every Child” project is truly making a difference. It’s the children from low-income families that need help the most.

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(Jim Davidson is an author, public speaker, syndicated columnist, and Founder of the Bookcase for Every Child project. For a personalized copy of “Keep Your Fork” send $25, which includes postage and handling and tax, to Jim Davidson, 2 Bentley Drive, Conway, AR 72034.)