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

THE OTHER SIDE OF ME

I have observed that there seems to be a lot of small boys who actually enjoy getting into fights. I was
never one who looked for a fight, and actually preferred not to fight.

th
When I was in the 4 grade, I was in Ms. Katherine Montague’s room, which was an upstairs room in an
old brown wooden school building which used to sit west of where the School Board Admin Center is
today, and access to this room was by a set of stairs that went halfway up, then there was a landing, and
then the stairs continued in the opposite direction for a few more steps until we reached the level on
which the room was situated.

lh
While in the 4 grade, there were two or three rough-neck boys who liked to bully other boys if they
thought they could get away with it, and there was one who was particularly objectionable to me that
one day. I will not call his name, because many of the readers of this book would know him, even
though he passed away about two years ago. His children, or some of them, know about this incident
that I am embarked upon telling.

After recess one day, during which time he had bullied me considerably, 1 figured I had taken enough,
so as soon as the bell rang I headed on back into the building and went up the stairs as far as that first
landing, where I waited for him to show up a few minutes later. When he stepped onto that landing, 1
already had my arm cocked, and I hit him in the jaw with every ounce of strength I could muster. It
turned out that I knocked him back down the stairs, and I was assuming that I had a real fight on my
hands at that moment.

Just the opposite. He had a hang dog look on his face, got up and came back up the stairs, barely looking
at me, and went on into the room and took his seat. That is the last time that I ever had any problem with
that particular boy, or any of the others.

I have been told from the time I was a small boy that if you ever get into a fight, be sure you get in the
first lick, and be sure it is a good one. I guess I put that knowledge into use that day.

th
When I was in the 6 grade there was a kid that was 3 years older than 1, who picked on me constantly
on the school bus.

One morning after suffering his usual bullying on the way to school, as soon as the bus came to a stop, I
went ahead and stepped off the bus, but I did not leave the vicinity. I stood outside the bus door and
waited while the other children got off the bus and when this particular boy got off I gave him my best
lick right side of the head, just as I had done the other kid two years earlier on the stair landing.

,h
I don’t know how much of a punch a 6 grader can give, but I knocked him down. When he got up he
did not want any more and left immediately. Later that day, 1 got a summons to go to the principal’s
office, the same Mr. Eastham who had requested the company of
Bascom Norris and me the year before in connection with a water pipe we had broken, and Mr. Eastham
asked me to tell him what had happened, that he could not put up with fighting on the school grounds.

I relayed it to him exactly as it happened, and I got the distinct impression that he was a little bit amused
lh
lh
by it, since the boy that 1 had knocked down was a 9 grader, and I was in the 6 grade. Later that same

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