Set in the days of small, local banks when embarrassing entrepreneurs were the one family in town who bought a new car every year--those cars everyone else called 'gunboats--and the bad guys came with black hats, this rollicking send-up of stupid criminals who even Barnie Fife could have outwitted makes for belly-laughs while reading and memories that will bring smiles to readers' faces.

Called to Serve is a biography about Gerald Austin Beasley and Clara Pauline Smith, my dad and mom. Both grew up in different rural areas of Oklahoma during the Great Depression on farms where they worked hard with their families. They met at Oklahoma A&M in Stillwater and then married after Dad was conscripted into the army. While Dad served in the European front during World War II, Mom taught school in rural southwest Oklahoma. After the war, Dad prepared for ministry; then served in churches of Christ in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, and Montana.

In the little town of Bethlehem, many years ago, a young boy lived with his mother. They lived in stables throughout the village, finding work with the innkeepers. Although they were poor and had to work hard to survive, the boy's mother had a strong faith in God. But the boy was afraid the coming Messiah she always spoke of would be unable to find them since they traveled from stable to stable. When the boy was just six years old, his mother became sick and passed away. The boy was very sad, and from that day on, he did not speak a word. For the next two years, he wandered the streets of Bethlehem, struggling to carry on. No one knew his name, so he became known simply as the Stable Boy. One evening, the Stable Boy overheard people talking about the Messiah his mother used to tell him about. He fell asleep dreaming of the King coming for him. Would the Messiah really come for The Stable Boy?

Digitally scanned version of a two-volume type-written family history. The chapters were dictated by Columbia to Orla and later typed by Orla. Also includes "Orla's addendum," which contains comments and writings of Orla Vaughan, plus family photos

I may be in the middle of nowhere, but I still have standards! Like it's not bad enough Daddy's in jail for embezzlement (he's a super-successful Hollywood agent, btw, and totally innocent), but since my fashion-model mom died when I was a baby (I'm sure you've seen the E! True Hollywood Story) I've been shipped off to Possum Grape, Arkansas, to live with relatives I've never even met. You read that right: Possum. Grape. Not only is there no Starbucks in this town, but I'm sharing a room with a six-year-old and I'm about to miss the biggest social event of the year back in L.A. I'm not sure how yet, but I will get back to civilization. Until then, I may be stuck on a farm, but no one's gonna keep me from ruling the roost!

Raised with twelve brothers in a part of the segregated South that provided no school for African American children, Sylvia Bell White went North as a teenager, dreaming of a nursing career, but in Milwaukee she and her brothers found only racial discrimination, and she had to persevere through racial rebuffs to find work. When a Milwaukee police officer killed her younger brother in 1958, the Bell family suspected a racial murder but could do nothing to prove it?until twenty years later, when one of the officers involved in the incident unexpectedly came forward. Sylvia was the driving force behind the family's four-year quest for justice through a civil rights lawsuit.