Page 37 - 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’S YARD

Back when I was a small child, nobody grew grass in their yard. All the country people would sweep
their yards with a brush broom made from gall berry bushes, and they would brush all of the topsoil off
down to the hard pan, and the yards at most people’s houses were as hard as cement. Any sprig of grass
or other growing thing would immediately be pulled up and discarded since they took great pride in not
having any of that type of stuff growing in their yard.

Not Ma; she had been up to Lake City enough to know that some people actually planted grass in their
yards, and had beautiful lawns which she greatly admired. Ma was a great hand at growing flowers and
other ornamentals and always had the most beautiful yard in the county.

One day she decided that she was tired of sweeping the yard with a brush broom and she wanted a lawn
so she had Pa break up the yard with turning plows, and then harrow it down smooth and then further
smooth it by dragging railroad irons over it until it was as flat and level as a table. Then she would have
Pa go to the fields where he was always battling the bermuda grass, where he was trying to grow his
crops, and she had him bring all the bermuda grass that he pulled up in the fields up to the house and
plant it in the yard. In periods where there was not sufficient rain to make the grass grow, (although
bermuda grass is an extremely hardy and easy to grow grass,) we had a watering can which was nothing
but a big bucket with a partial lid on it and a spout on one side. At the end of the spout was a circular flat
biscuit shaped- spray head which had tiny holes entirely covering the surface of it, and with this
watering can you could sprinkle water wherever you wanted it without wasting any at all, and that is
what we would have to use on the grass if there was not sufficient rain to make it grow.

After about a year we had a nice lawn, the only one in the county, and she began to realize that the grass
was going to take everything over if we didn’t find a way to mow it. So she went to the hardware store
where my brother-in-law Eric Markham was working, and bought a push lawn mower. This old
mechanical mower had a reel between two metal wheels about 8 inches across, and it soon became my
task to push that mower across that lawn and keep it trimmed back and looking pretty. I think that is the
time that I might have wished mama had kept our old brush broom.

To make that old type of mower work, you had to push it about 2 feet forward and then back it up the
same 2 feet and push it forward again about a foot and that second time would get that grass down short
and you had to repeat this pattern over the entire yard.

1 don’t think that mower cost more than about $7.00 or $8.00 back in the mid 30’s.

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