Page 36 - 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

“MA ”PEARL

My mother, Pearl Tyre Dicks, in my opinion would be a perfect example for what every person should
be. She was extremely intelligent, innovative, perceptive, and a tremendously hard worker. Also, she
was not timid about being the first person to undertake something, since she was always confident in
th
what she was attempting to do. She raised 7 children to maturity, and lost Clarence, an 8 , at the age of
about 8 months old when Golde was a small girl. She cooked 3 full meals a day, kept up the yard,
washed and ironed all of the clothes, and spent the rest of her time at her sewing machine.

There were no electric machines back in my early days. The sewing machine was operated by a foot
treadle, which the person doing the sewing would have to keep one or both feet on and move them up
and down, similarly to what one would do in playing a pump organ.

Ma was an extremely good seamstress, and she made all of the underwear for all 9 members of the
family (really 8, because Golde had gotten married and left home 9 months before 1 was bom,) and she
also made almost all of the outer garments that we wore.

During World War II, which was a period of great shortages, her chicken feed came in bags that were
made from print materials that could be used for making clothes after the feed was taken out of the sack,
and the sack had been thoroughly washed. My sisters and I had worn many, many garments which were
made out of empty chicken feed sacks, but one would never guess it to look at them. Some of them were
quite beautiful.

Ma was a great cook, although almost everything she could use in cooking was grown or raised right
there on the farm. My daddy had a main cash crop derived from two sources, one being vegetables such
as cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplants, sweet corn, mustard greens, collards, and other types of stuff that
grows in a garden. He would plant these items in great quantities and would sell this produce to some of
the grocery stores in Lake City, and he would also peddle some of it up and down the streets. Most
housewives where he went to peddle his produce were happy to see him because his prices were more
reasonable than the grocery store, plus the fact that they could always count on getting high-grade
vegetables. If it was not first class, Pa wouldn’t sell it.

I am supposed to be talking about Ma, not Pa, but 1 said all the foregoing in preparation for what else I
am going to say. Pa’s other cash crop was hogs. He raised great numbers of hogs, and we always had
plenty of ham, bacon, side meat, pork chops, ribs, and any other kind of pork you could mention and
many of the dishes that Ma would cook consisted of some type of pork. None of us ever died of too
much cholesterol, and we always had plenty to eat. Some type of pork, together with either grits or
combread, which we had ground from our own com, or biscuits which was made from flour that was
purchased a barrel at a time. I have missed Ma’s cooking during my years since she has been gone, and
would give anything to have another sample of it.

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