Page 233 - 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

MY BROTHER RODNEY

On July 18, 1933, Mrs. Nettie Pearce was cooking breakfast for us, and I will never forget that the first
thing that she told me when I got up that morning was “Lenvil you’ve got a new baby brother”.

I ran from the kitchen to my mother’s bedroom, and the first thing 1 heard from Rodney was the intense
sound of a newborn baby crying. I will never forget that sound, and I experienced exactly the same
sound when each of my own 3 children were born. I guess newborn babies all cry the same way.

Rodney and 1 grew up together on the farm, and did some of the farm chores together.

When he was about I year, or 1 Vi years old, (I am guessing) I was sort of babysitting him on the front
porch when I noticed that his color had changed, and he had taken on a sort of bluish color. I remember
being very frightened when 1 saw this, and daddy was working across the road in the mule lot, and I ran
out to the front fence and hollered “daddy Rodney is dying”. Although John Dicks was probably 46 or 7
years old at that time I recall seeing him leap over that 6 foot high lot fence in one leap, and run as fast
as he could go to the front porch where he scooped Rodney up and ran around to the back side of the
house where mama had filled a #3 wash tub with cold water, prepared to rinse out some clothes she had
washed, and daddy just threw Rodney in that tub of cold water. It wasn’t but a minute or two when he
began to gasp and cry and his color changed back to his normal color.

To my knowledge that is the only time in Rodney’s life that this ever happened, as he did not have any
type of seizures or spells of any type. 1 simply do not know to this day what happened that day, but I do
know that John Dicks could have been a track star. I never saw a man move so fast in my life.

Rodney and 1 used to ramble the woods together, and after Tribble sent me the 410 gauge shot gun that
he sent me, I would let Rodney tag along with me, and 01 Sam’s squirrel dog, in to the woods to hunt
squirrels, and as I recall he began to be somewhat of a hunter himself at around the age of 9 or 10. After
that we hunted squirrels a great deal together, and later when we got bigger we hunted doves together.

We probably would have hunted deer together, but there weren’t any. This was in the heart of the Great
Depression, and you could not even find a gopher tortoise, much less a deer, because if they moved
somebody saw them, and captured or killed them, and had a meal. The only type of wildlife we had was
the squirrels we shot, and occasionally some quail that we would trap in a trap that Grandpa Tyre had
made for us. Grandpa Tyre was a man who could make a lot of things, and who worked with his hands
skillfully, in addition to that he was an accomplished Blacksmith, and worked on people’s plows for
them when they would get bent, straightening them back out, and shoeing their horses for them.
Grandma Tyre worked right along side of him in the Blacksmith Shop, and she was about as good a
Blacksmith as he was.

Rodney and 1 used to shoot marbles together a lot, and the time we were not playing marbles, we were
generally fighting, as we were each strong minded, and would fight at the drop of a hat, and even though
he was nearly 5 years younger than me, he could give me quite a tussle, especially as he approached his
teenage years. Rodney was pretty tough. But so was 1.1 recall one of the things that happened when
Rodney was about 4 or 5 years old, and I was 9 or 10. Sometimes when daddy would come home from
town he would bring us a little bit of candy of some kind or other, and since my dad himself enjoyed
eating candy corn, sometimes he would bring us each a little bag of com which was shaped like corn
kernels, and was a bright yellow color with an orange tip.

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