THREE BUCKETS OF DAYLIGHT

Once more Branscum takes us back to an Arkansas of poverty and innocence, where a bee-tree find delights the entire family, where Jimmy Jay, Jackie Lee, Grandma, and Grandpa near to fade away on thin pea soup after their onions and potatoes freeze, where Grandpa marvels at the Wards' catalogue, the boys wear flour-sack shirts, the sheriff beats the bush for moonshiners, and there's no sign of food stamps or TV. Depression days? Apparently not, for one day ""news came by visiting kin who had radios that men had walked on the moon a few months before!"" Anyway, the old-timey doings concern the two boys' efforts to ward off the horns and tail some old women have laid on them in a curse; this involves the near-impossible task of finding food for another old lady who promises counter-magic (the boys feel sorry for her anyway), and their fear even prompts Jackie Lee to get himself saved in church so the Lord will be lined up on their side. But it turns out that the sisters the boys took for witches are really the big-time moonshiners, and the sheriff is so grateful for theft capture that he gives the boys a big sack of confiscated cornmeal and promises to distribute the sugar throughout the community. Routine Branscum, but still perky.