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

THE SCHOOL BUS WRECK

One of the very earliest memories that I have is of being on the back porch of the old farm house, sitting
on the water shelf, while Judge Julian Collins’ Mother, who was a girl of perhaps 16 or 17 al that time,
giving me a sort of a little cleaning up with a wet washcloth, since we were about to get into the old
Model-T Ford and go up to the Lake Shore Hospital where we had been told that my sister Fay had been
taken after she was somewhat injured in the school bus wreck at Mason City.

1 remember nothing about the wreck, being only perhaps less than 2 years old at the time, but I can
distinctly remember being bathed by someone that I did not know, and I couldn’t figure out why Mama
wasn’t bathing me to get ready to go to town, as she usually did. It turned out that Fay was knocked out,
but otherwise O.K. Emerald and Opal were O.K.

I remember nothing else about the entire episode except of Judge Collins’ Mother, whose maiden name
was Witt, giving me a bath so J could ride up to Lake City. At that lime Rodney was not even bom,
since he was born when I was about 3 months shy of turning 5 years old.

The facts about the Mason City school bus wreck are more fully set forth in the book that my sister
Golde wrote. Golde was almost 21 years older than I am, and she always said that 1 was supposed to
have been her child. That is because she and Eric got married in January and I was born on the
following September 10, in 1928.

But I have digressed from the school bus wreck. The school bus driver was Malon Peeler, who is the
son of an old country doctor that I do not remember, but most of the rest of my family remember Dr.
Peeler. One of Malon Peeler’s children was Carl Peeler who was about a year older than I, and who
subsequently fathered 12 or 13 children of his own, many of whom I am well acquainted with and who
are some of my good friends. The Peeler boys that I am referring to, probably leaving some of them out,
are Charles, Dale, Raymond, John, Earl, and several girls. Incidentally, Earl was later a student of mine
during the time that I was the high school Band Director at Columbia High School.

Now back to the school bus wreck. As you can see my writing a book is a good illustration of my
disorganized manner and way of living, since I tend to go off on a tangent sometime from what I am
talking about, but that is the nature of being a Dicks.

Many of the children were injured in the school bus wreck at Mason when Mr. Peeler apparently drove
out onto the highway in front of a truck who hit the bus broad side, and pretty well wrecked it. It was an
old Model A truck, with a homemade wooden body on it with wooden benches inside, which the
children sat on to be transported to and from school. My uncle Trammel, known to some as PT Dicks,
and my older brother Tribble, who was nearly 15 years older than I, would sometimes jump out of the
bus and run along behind it until the bus got to going so fast that they figured that they couldn’t catch it,
at which time they would speed up and grab the back rails on the back steps of the bus, and get inside
for the ride home.

Apparently, at the time the truck hit the school bus, Tribble and Trammel were following their usual
habit of trotting along behind the bus, and were not involved in the wreck. Several of the children were

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