Page 96 - 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

MY GRANDFATHERS

1 never knew my grandmother Dicks because she had passed on several years before I was born. 1 did
know my grandmother Tyre quite well since she lived with us during part of the time I was growing up,
after grandpa Tyre had died.

1 will confess to having a favorite among my two grandfathers, because I simply took to my grandpa
Dicks more than I took to my grandpa Tyre. Grandpa Dicks talked with what I thought was a funny
accent, which years later I determined to have been an English accent, since he learned his speech from
his own father who was raised in England until he was a teenager. He had stowed away on a ship that
came to America at age 14, and I’m sure that grandpa Dicks just naturally talked the same way his
daddy talked.

He was a man who was comfortable to be around, since he always seemed to be in a good humor, and
never had anything bad to say about anybody as far as I know.

He had a car when 1 was a small boy, but he never learned to drive it himself. Either my older sister
Golde, or my older brother Tribble, or my daddy’s youngest brother, my uncle PT, or my grandfather’s
step son Ewell Stalvey, or my own daddy would take him where ever he needed to go. His car did not
get a great deal of use, since many times he would simply ride with my daddy.

I can remember as a very small boy riding up to Lake City with grandpa Dicks in my daddy’s old 31 ’
Chevrolet car(or it may have been a 1930) which he had bought as a used car. My daddy never had a
brand new car until after World War II.

The 3 of us would ride up to Lake City with my daddy driving, and as soon as we would park, grandpa
Dicks would take me by the hand and say let’s go get an ice cream cone. We would go into Wise’s drug
store, which later became the Lake City Pharmacy of Reedy Ogden, and he would tell the young lady or
young man behind the soda fountain counter, “Let us have 2 cones of vanilla ice cream.”

Grandpa never asked me what flavor ice cream I wanted. I probably didn’t know there was any kind but
vanilla because that is the kind he liked, and I guess he felt whatever was good for him would be good
for me, so of the many ice cream cones that grandpa Dicks bought for me I’m sure that every one of
them was vanilla.

That wasn’t all bad, because to this very day vanilla ice cream is my favorite flavor, unless I can be
fortunate enough to find some pineapple ice cream somewhere. (When I make home-made ice cream, it
is always pineapple.)

Grandpa Dicks had several orange trees in his yard, and between his yard and the lot, all of which were
bitter sweet oranges. These oranges were exactly as they were named, but there was more bitter than
sweet. It took a real man to just peel one and eat it, but a good cook could find several dishes using bitter
a sweet oranges which would be delicious. But anyway I loved to gather up those oranges and take them
home with me and mama would find some way of making something that would be palatable out of

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