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

THE PASSAGE OF TIME

At my age now, which is almost 84,1 never cease to be amazed at how quickly time seems to go
by. I continue to go to the office daily, somewhere around 10, give or take, and leave usually
sometime between 12 and 1 at noon. All I do at the office nowadays is to open the mail, credit
people’s payments to their accounts, and make up the bank deposit, when there is anything to
deposit.

For the past 3 or 4 years, 1 have noticed there seems to be no time between Monday and Friday 1
get up on Monday morning, get ready to go to the office, and it seems as though Friday morning
comes just after that. The whole week goes by so fast that I cannot seem to account for it. It was
not always that way. 1 can remember back when I was a 5 or 6 year old boy, sitting on the front
porch steps at our house, and inserting caps one at a time in very little simple cap pistol, which
Santa had brought me, and 1 can remember sitting there firing that pistol and being so very sad.
My sadness was caused by the knowledge that it was going to be a whole year before Christmas
came again, and I could hardly bear the thought of having to continue to live that long before
Christmas came again. It seemed that it was an eternity from one Christmas to the next.

No more. Now, Christmas seems to come, and seemingly about 3 or 4 weeks later Christmas is
upon us again. If a person has any problem in trying to visualize how long eternity is, if you will
just look at how much faster time seems to go at this age than it did at a much younger age,
maybe eternity would not seem so long after all. I just could not get over how sad 1 was at
thinking how long it was going to be until Christmas came again. Back as a child, I really, really
loved Christmas. Now, it seems Christmas is more or less just another day.

1 can remember one other thing about Christmas at about that same age or an age or somewhere
between four years old and seven years old, when 1 got a tricycle for Christmas. That was the
most beautiful tricycle in the world, and I was absolutely tickled to death to get it.

After I had the tricycle a few days, for some reason 1 happened to turn it upside down and
examine the under parts of the tricycle, particularly the little shelf that was on the back of the
tricycle so that you could put one foot on that and ride the tricycle as if it was a scooter. When 1
looked under that little shelf, I discovered something that I really wish 1 hadn’t discovered. It
seems that the tricycle was a second hand tricycle, because even at that young age 1 could tell
that it had once been a different color, and that it had been repainted. I can recall that my first
reaction to discovering this was disappointment and somewhat of a sinking feeling. Even at that
age, though, I suppose I was willing to give the devil his due. This would have been in the
1930’s, and everybody was very poor, although we did not know we were poor. We just knew
we had no money.

It came to me, and that somewhat made me feel better about the whole thing, that my folks had
probably had to sacrifice something in order to get me a tricycle of any kind, and they just could
not afford a brand new one. Therefore they got me a second hand one, and although 1 was
disappointed at first, 1 appreciated having received it and ultimately enjoyed the tricycle a great
deal. I never let them know that I had found out it was second hand. What 1 always wanted, but
never got, was a bicycle. We had no place to ride a bicycle anyway, since the only pavement

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