Page 81 - 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

straddled the centerline, and if I had been in my proper traffic lane when I met him, he would have
obliterated me and my automobile.

I am convinced that my guardian angel had his hand on that steering wheel and took complete control of
that car in order that I might live longer, and be able to give thanks to God for what he had done for me.
And I do.

Another episode in my life which I have not told in detail to many people, concerns my grandson,
Brandon Mason, making an attempt to kill me. A few days before this incident, I had a problem with
Brandon not doing what I had told him to do in reference to one of my cars I was letting him drive, and I
ran across him and made him bring the car back to the office together with 2 or 3 of his hoodlum
buddies that he ran around with, against my orders.

He got belligerent with me, and I was not about to take that, so I slapped him pretty hard, without
considering the fact that 1 was probably embarrassing him in front of his cronies. 1 thought nothing
further about that at the time, but after the event I am describing herein, it came back to me.

One night when 1 was sitting in my recliner watching television, there was a knock at my front door and
it was Brandon and one of his cronies who asked to come in so that he could pick up a few of his things
that he had left in my house al a previous time when he occupied a room there, and lived with me.

I told him to go back to the room where he had stayed, and get whatever it was he wanted to get. I went
back to watching TV and it was not but a few minutes later that I heard a loud sound in the gallery just
outside the family room where 1 was sitting, and 1 thought one of them had lit a firecracker. I really did
not know what to think. I detected that Brandon and his cronie were in the gallery and 1 said, “Brandon
what was that noise?” He said “what noise? It must have been something on the television.” Well, I did
not take that at all, because I knew the sound I had heard was not the television, and so I went out into
the gallery where he and his cronie were, and I told him they had to go. They left and came back in a
couple of minutes and told me that the fellow that was giving them a ride had left them.

I figured out that when the fellow they had driving the car for them heard that shot, he took off. I told
them nevertheless they could not come back in, and they just had to get home the best way they could.
And so they left.

I left out the fact that when I went out into the gallery to accost them, Brandon’s buddy was holding my
Ithaca 12 gauge shot gun, in a vertical position behind his back, and I asked him what he was doing with
the gun. He said that they were just looking at it. I examined that shot gun and found that there was not a
shell in the chamber. The gun was an automatic, and after it is fired it automatically feeds another shell
into the chamber, but if it has not been fired and the chamber is empty, you have to know how to get
things released so that you can manually place a shell in firing position. I am convinced that this boy did
not know how to do that, or otherwise I would not still be around to be writing this book.

After they left I searched around to see what else 1 could find, and 1 found my repeating 22 rifle propped
up behind one of the display cabinets in the gallery, where it could not easily be seen, unless you were
actually looking for it, and when I saw the rifle leaning there I realized that Brandon had hid it there real
quickly when he detected that I was coming out into the gallery to check on them. The rifle had
apparently been fired once, and then had jammed. That is to say, it would not accept another bullet into
firing position.

From where I had been sitting watching TV there was only one place in the gallery that a person could
have stood and hit me with a rifle bullet fired from that location, and 3 or 4 days later I found a spent
rifle bullet casing at the bottom of the steps leading down into the family room, in a small crevice where

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