Page 50 - 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

BUYING MY OWN BAND INSTRUMENTS

After I started playing in the band under Mr. Carl Roberts, after about a year he switched me from the
baritone horn to the E Flat Alto Hom, sometimes known as a mellowphone. The mellowphone is kind of
a poor man’s French horn, being shaped like a French horn, but having 3 piston type valves on it exactly
like a trumpet has. After playing the mellowphones for a couple of years, and getting to a point where I
could play almost anything Mr. Roberts put out, he wanted me to switch to trumpet. I had purchased the
mellowphone by selling some fryers that my mother had given me when she took all of the pullets out of
our baby chicks, keeping them to make laying hens out of, and keeping the little roosters, or fryers,
separate to be either sold or eaten. She had given me enough of these that I was able to get up $35.00
and buy a used mellowphone from someone. Strangely enough I do not remember who 1 bought that
horn from, but I remember distinctly who 1 bought my first trumpet from.

When I was a young teen ager my daddy allowed me to buy a female pig from the Overholtz farm,
(which is a farm now owned by the Kenneth Dicks family), and Mr. Overholtz sold me a thoroughbred
duroc female pig for SI0.00. I raised that pig, and when she got grown, my daddy had a thoroughbred
duroc male hog, and I bred my sow to my daddy’s male hog. The name of my sow was Agnes, and I had
adapted myself to my father’s custom of naming animals after the person he bought them from, and the
girl whom 1 actually bought my pig from was Agnes Overholtz. So the pig became Agnes.

When the pigs came, as I recall there were 8 of them that I raised to sufficient size to sell, and I sold
those pigs for SI0.00 each, which put $80.00 in my pocket.

A former band student who had graduated from the Columbia High band was Bob McColskey, whose
family was well to do, and who had purchased him the finest trumpet that money could buy in those
days. It was a French Selmer trumpet, and sold for about $300.00 brand new, and keep in mind that this
would have been in the heart of the depression.

Apparently I was the only band student that needed a trumpet that was willing to try to acquire one of
that extreme quality, and I spent my whole $80.00 pig crop to buy that trumpet from the McColskey
lh
family. 1 played that trumpet right on until I was in the 5 Army Division Band many years later. It was
a fine horn.

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