Page 30 - 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

I FALL IN LOVE

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When I was in the 4 grade, under Miss Catherine Montague who, incidentally, was the nicest and
prettiest teacher that a boy could have, there was a young lady that was a classmate of mine by the name
of Jean DeVane. I thought Jean DeVane was the prettiest girl 1 had ever seen in my life, and she was just
as sweet as she was pretty, and 1 would take every opportunity to have any contact with her that I could.
She apparently did not share my feeling in return, because I don’t recall that I ever got any attention at
all from her.

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But, nevertheless, if a 4 grader can be in love, I was in love.
This is in about 1937, in the depth of the great depression, and at that time the Government was
attempting to provide whatever means the Government could provide that would enable people to make
some sort of a salary, or wages, and one of the programs that the Government had was to furnish under­
privileged children with piano lessons.

We had an old piano at home, that my daddy had bought many years earlier, when he hired Ms. Myrtis
Witt to come live with the family and teach Golde to play the piano one whole summer, so when my
folks heard about free piano lessons, naturally, since we always went for anything that was free, they
arranged to get me lessons with a nice old spinster lady by the name of Maude Mosely.

One day each week I would be excused from school for 45 minutes in order to walk down to Miss
Mosely’s home, which was only about 4 blocks away from the school, toward the downtown area, and I
would get my piano lesson and then walk back to school. I can definitely remember that one of the other
students of Mrs. Mosely was Sheriff Tom Trammel’s mother, and her name back in grade school was
Daisy Morrell. She was also the sister of Wayne Morrell, who started Morrell’s Furniture Business there
in Lake City, which is a thriving business to this day. This is all just incidental to the story, and Daisy
Morrell Trammel has passed away several years ago.

Anyway, back to the piano lessons from Mrs. Mosely, one morning when I got to her house there was a
note on the door saying that she had to go out of town to the funeral of a family member, and that she
would not be in to give lessons that day. Well, I already was excused from school, and had about 40
minutes left before I went back to school, and therefore I decided to walk down to Lake Desoto and just
kill a little time. When I got down to Lake Desoto, there was an old gentleman there fishing in Lake
Desoto with a cane pole, and I struck up a conversation with him, and he seemed friendly enough and
we apparently enjoyed talking with each other. While I was there, I do not recall whether or not he
caught a fish but anyway I got acquainted with him and he got acquainted with me, and finally I got
around to asking him his name.

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