My father was a Methodist circuit rider in 1954/1955. He was stationed in the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee outside of Cosby. At that time, Cosby was the moonshine capital of East Tennessee and has been said to have been the inspiration for the movie Thunder Road. I have seen many whiskey tankers (hotrod Fords with tanks built into the trunk and back seat and rear springs from a truck) and some model A's moving stills strapped to the roof.

While cleaning the church for Sunday meeting, I found a stack of old Sunday School books. I thumbed through several of them and found a rubbing of a Shield Nickel in one. Since no member of the church could remember when the books were last used, I was given permission to keep the books.

There are about twenty of them. The books are 3 3/8ths inches wide by 5 3/8ths inches high by 1/4 inch thick and contain about 60 pages. Each book contains a Bible lesson. Also, the book with the rubbing contained a ticket to a religious meeting in, I think, Knoxville, TN. The ticket is dated December 8, 1901.

This book was entered into the Library of Congress in 1848. I do not know when this particular book was printed or placed into service. It is well used but the binding is still intact. The covers are a thick paper board of some kind with a paper covering.