First Chapter, First Paragraph & Tuesday Teaser: Billy Graham by John Pollock

First Chapter, First Paragraph, is a meme hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea.  Anyone can play — just copy the first paragraph of the first chapter (or prologue) and include a picture of the book cover. Leave your link at Bibliophile by the Sea.  Here’s the opening from John Pollock‘s 1966 biography of Billy Graham:

Sunshine in the South

Crook Graham, a Confederate veteran with a bullet in his leg, who died in 1910, had a patriarchal beard and a large family, but nothing else Biblical about him. ‘He’d get drunk and he’d stay drunk pretty much over Sunday,’ tells a son-in-law.  ‘He would abuse his family, but I don’t hardly think he ran his farm.’  He would not pay his debts, swore lustily, and had a habit of shooting fowling pieces in the general direction of his daughters’ young men.

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Books and a Beat.
Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here’s mine from the same book:

As the weeks wore on, Billy Graham put less and less force into his closing invitation; there was no need to press when so many were waiting to accept Christ as soon as he stopped preaching.  He would move to the front of the rostrum, and they came.

I well remember as a teenager in the early 60s, watching Billy Graham crusades on the television and seeing the hundreds of people pouring down the aisles to accept Christ as their saviour.  I never knew the story behind it until I read this book from my father’s bookshelf and finally realized what a miracle the crusades were, how they were prayed over in the planning, organized in the follow-up, and how wide-spread was the effect of Rev. Graham’s crusades.  This book is old, but it is still in print and many of the crusades are available on youtube.  Watch for my full review.  Would you read it?  Share a teaser from your book.

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