Page 171 - a-columbia-county-boys-recollections-and-memories-of-columbia-county-florida-(2012)-lenvil-h-dicks

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

in his trumpet section, and he said that Carl would have never forgiven him if he had caused me to drop
out of the band. (I almost did that anyway, as related somewhere else in this book).

They tell a rather humorous story about one of Kobe Hooser’s experiences, and I somewhat doubt the
veracity of the story, but here it is. When Tribble was attending Mason School he had a good friend
about his same age by the name of Crocket Farnell who was raised on a farm just a short distance from
Mason School. Crocket was a great big husky fella, and was an obvious athlete. Hobe had heard about
this boy who had been attending Mason School who everybody said would make a fine football player,
so it is said that one afternoon he went down to the Farnell Farm to ask Crockett’s daddy, Mr. Farnell, if
he could talk to Crockett. Mr. Farnell told him he had no objection to his talking to Crocket, but he had
Crocket plowing corn and he did not want him to knock off early to talk to him. He should wait until
Crockett got through plowing and was ready to knock off, and so the coach drove down the road where
the corn Held was and waited for Crockett to get through. When that time came, he went over and stood
by the fence and introduced himself and told Crockett that he would like to talk to him if he had time. It
is said that Crockett said “Coach I will talk to you but my pa is going to be mad with me if I do it before
I tote this mule back to the house. He told that story at the banquet that night, and of course it brought
the house down.

Speaking of Crockett Farnell, he did turn out to be an outstanding football player for the Columbia High
Tigers, and was an outstanding football player for the Florida Gators back in the early and mid 30’s. He
got a degree in education, and taught school, or was a football coach in one of the large high schools in
Tampa. He later ran for School Superintendant of Hillsboro County and was elected, and served several
terms as School Superintendant in one of the largest counties in the State, which at that time was
probably the second largest county in the State, so sometime these old Lake City boys do ok.

This section of my book was supposed to be about my older brother Tribble, but again I have digressed
and gotten on to some other subject which I suddenly remembered, and which I thought might be of
some interest to some of my readers.

When Tribble was in the Navy, which he was for 27 years, from 1933 until 1960, when I was 9 years
old he heard that I wanted a 410 gauge shot gun for Christmas, and so he bought and sent me one. My
parents apparently felt that I was old enough at 9 years old to handle going off hunting with a shot gun,
since they never objected to it.

That 410 gauge shot gun, as most of the readers would know, is the smallest of the various types of shot
guns that people hunted with, and I have a story to tell in regards to that small gauge shot gun that 1
suspect nobody that 1 have ever told it to really believes it, but I am going to tell it again here and I
admit it is somewhat unbelievable, but one time, while hunting in Edgar Dicks’ field, I killed 8 doves
with one shot, on the wing, with that shot gun. If someone else told me that story I probably would not
believe it either.

What happened was that Edgar had several large stumps still in that field, since he had only cleared the
land a couple of years before that, and that year he had planted corn in the field and allowed his hogs to
go in and eat the corn without harvesting it and taking it to the bam, as was accustomed. When that
happened, naturally the hogs left shelled corn lying everywhere, and the doves would come to it better
than they would come to a baited field.

I was crouched down behind one of those stumps, and a flock of doves approached the field, and I
actually believe that there may have been as many as 300 doves in that one flock. They were in a long
stretched out flock perhaps with the lead dove being some 200 yards ahead of the last dove in the flock
and they flew across the end of the field. Just as they got even with the stump I was hiding behind this
immense column of birds changed directions, and the whole flock came straight at the stump where 1

163

www.LakeCityHistory.com LCH-UUID: B423BA50-F22B-4D87-A44C-403308C92982