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A Columbia County Boy's Recollections and Memories of Columbia County Florida (2012) Lenvil H. Dicks

A TERRIBLE TRAGEDY

First of all, I need to confess that none ofthe subjects I am about to tell is a pail of my own personal
memories. The reason that I am including this in this book of my recollections is because I remember
being told about it when I was quite young, probably between the age of 5 and 10 years old, and it really
stuck in my memory. Also, this is probably the first time anything has ever been put down on paper
about this particular episode in life, and I would seriously doubt that there is any person still alive today
who would have a personal memory of this occurrence. I really think, from what I have been told, that
this terrible thing probably occurred sometime between 1910 and 1920.

Except for our family, most of the farmers in the community would grind cane and make syrup only two
or three days a year. Most of them made syrup for their own family consumption, where we made a lot
of syrup with the intention of selling it, as 1 discuss in more detail in another place in this book.

One ofthe prominent families in our rural neighborhood was the Pearce Family, and patriarch of that
family was Mr. Charley Pearce, who had two daughters and five sons. I know that one of the daughters
was name Eunice and she married a man named Frank Axman, and the boys were (not necessarily in
this order) Edward, Ralph, Carl, Allison, and Fred. Fred was the youngest member of old man Charley
Pearce’s family, and he is the subject that I am telling about here.

When a family would grind cane and make syrup, most ofthe time a few ofthe neighbors would come
over and they would sort of make a party out of it one night, and everyone would get an opportunity to
get a bottle of freshly made syrup, and a good drink of cane juice.

When the youngest member of the family, Fred, whose age at that time was apparently between 3 and 5
years old, according to what my daddy has told me about this episode is that he had on shoes that were
worn out at the toes, as was the case with many country children in the days between 1910 and 1940,
and the children who were around the cane grinding and syrup cooking would run around and play as is
the habit with all small children, and it is said that little Fred Pearce had a stick or a root that entered the
toe of his shoe and causing him to stumble, and he fell into the tremendously hot boiling cane syrup in
the sugar boiler.

This is an unimaginably horrible thing to have to happen to anyone, much less a small child, and is the
only case 1 ever heard of where this happened.

When some calamity or death befell a family back in those days, the neighbors would all come over to
visit and pay their respects, and to make their friendship be known, and their concern would be an
evidence to whatever family they were visiting. When my daddy told me this story when I was a young
boy, I was horrified at the concept, because 1 was well familiar with the cooking of cane syrup, and I
was well aware of what a horribly hot solution is contained in that sugar boiler, particularly just before
the syrup gets through being cooked. My dad told me that he and mama went over to Mr. Charley
Pearce’s place that night, after the child had fallen in the hot syrup, and 1 asked him what the condition
of the child was.

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