Page 67 - 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

AGE 10 TO AGE 17

After I graduated from High School and for several years while I was still in High School, I worked at
the Lake City Tobacco Warehouses as the scales operator. (I only did this for one sales season after I
graduated from high school and prior to entering the Service).

1 started working at the tobacco Warehouses unloading tobacco and rolling the tobacco carts loaded with
tobacco to place in the rows where it would be sold at the next auction, and as I recall I started doing this
when I was 1 1 years old. Mr. Carter was probably willing to hire me at that young age (there were no
child labor laws then) because he already knew me as a good worker from the times that I had worked
for him starting when I was 10 years old as water boy.

Now for those readers who are a little bit puzzled by the term “water boy” at a tobacco auction, each
morning Mr. Carter would have a couple of 50 pound blocks of ice delivered and put them in a big
waterproof barrel, which was a clean barrel. (I had to see to that.) Then it was my duty to take an ice
pick and chip up these big blocks of ice and get a bucket and go to the faucet outside of the Tobacco
Warehouse and fill up the barrel with water. I then had an aluminum dipper and a 10 quart zinc bucket,
which I would fill with water and each time the tobacco buyers and the auctioneer would get to the end
of a row, they would all be thirsty and wanting a drink of ice water, and I was always there to provide it
for them. Naturally, they all drank out of the same dipper and thought nothing of it until one day Mr.
Carter decided he should probably buy some Dixie cups and let me carry those with me so the buyers
could each have their own cups. If you follow the sale of a tobacco down a row of tobacco in a tobacco
warehouse in August, you can well understand the need for a drink of ice water at the end of the row,
because those tobacco warehouses get horribly hot.

It was during that time that the Social Security Act came into existence and I still have my original
Social Security Card that was issued to me in 1938, due to my drawing a salary as a water boy, and I
drew a wage of 25 cents per hour and worked about a 6 hour day. I was therefore making a Si.00 and a
half a day, or S7.00 and a half dollars per week, and I recall that the social security taken out of my
paycheck was 10 cents per week. I am certainly glad 1 did that because that is what I am living on today
even though it has multiplied many many times.

After 2 years as water boy Mr. Carter apparently viewed me as a good worker and at the start of the
season when the farmers would bring their tobacco in to the tobacco warehouses, he would hire a crew
of boys aging in age anywhere from 11 on up to unload the tobacco trucks, place the sheets of tobacco
on the warehouse buggies, put the buggy on the scale to be weighed, and then roll the sheet of tobacco
to the appropriate row where it would be slid off the buggy in line with the rest of the tobacco to be sold
next day or whenever the sale went far enough to get to it. Sometimes tobacco would be on a row to be
sold for a week before the actual sale would take place, due to the horribly large volume of tobacco that
was involved. I worked a shift rolling that buggy which started at 7 pm and we got off work at 7 am the
next morning. For this 12 hour shift we received pay of $5.00, and frequently went all night without
even a break. Sometimes about midnight to 2:00 in the morning if the line of trucks slowed up we would
get off a few minutes to go out to the concession stand, which stayed open all night, and get us a
hamburger and a coke.

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