Page 97 - 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

them. I recall on one occasion I had ridden up to grandpa’s house with my daddy in the old Chevy, and I
had loaded up all of the oranges I could possibly carry and managed to get on the passenger seat ofthe
car with them. I must not have closed the door very well though, because I can recall when daddy went
to turn around the corner of the horse lot to gel out onto the county graded road, my door slung open,
and out I fell, oranges and all. I was not hurt, but the car had run over one or two of my oranges which
all spilled out on the ground, and I did not like that very much, but daddy helped me gather them up and
put them back in the car. I do not know what my age was at that time but it could not possibly have been
any older than four. I remember it 1 suppose because I was so very frightened at being thrown out of a
moving car.

lh
Grandpa Dicks was a County Commissioner for a good many years, as was his 5 son, Press Dicks, and
also as was his grandson, Rodney Dicks, who is my younger brother.

Now as to my other grandfather, Will Tyre, he was pretty much of a sour puss. I don’t ever remember
seeing him laugh or crack a joke of any kind, and he seemed to be in a bad mood almost all the time.

He was my school bus driver for the first I ‘/a years I attended school and if you want to see a school bus
full of kids who are behaving themselves, you would need go no further than grandpa Tyre’s school bus.
He made everybody toe the line and didn’t put up with any crap from anybody.

He owned his own school bus and the County paid him for the use of his bus and for driving it, but
actually it was nothing but a 2-ton Model A truck with a roof added on to it, and wooden benches put
inside. There would be one long bench against each side of the bus, and another two benches which
were nailed back-to-back and ran down the center of the bus. These benches were simply nailed into the
body of the truck with big nails, and each spring when the school term was over, grandpa Tyre would
simply remove the benches and hire out to haul cows and hogs to the market all summer long. Can you
imagine the school system allowing such a thing today?

Then, just before the fall term started, grandpa would make poor old grandma Tyre take a scrub brush
and a tub of water and some lye soap and go out and scrub all of the old dried up animal droppings out
ofthe bus and clean it spic and span. He would then re-install the benches, and once again it became a
school bus.

He lived on what is now known as Rodney Dicks Circle, in the same house that Rodney lives in today
except that Rodney has totally remodeled it, put brick siding on it, replaced a lot of the interior portions,
and made quite a modern house out of it. But that is where grandpa and grandma lived, and where ma
was mostly raised after she became a teen-ager. It was only a short distance, perhaps a quarter mile,
from grandpa’s house down to our house at the bottom of the hill which is the house that my daddy and
grandpa Tyre and my uncle Jess Tyre built in about 1912, and as I dictate this particular part of my book
today, it is April of 2012 which means that the house that I was raised in and which Golde moved into as
a 4 year old girl, is exactly 100 years old now. The house is still in excellent condition and you would
never notice or think, when driving by that house on the Price Creek Highway, that the house is 100
years old. Since it was a short distance from grandpa’s to our house, sometimes in the afternoon he
would put us off when he intersected the road that he lived on, by turning left to go to his house, or
turning right to go to our house, and 1 remember one afternoon he put us off at that location and told us
that we could walk the rest of the way home. It wasn’t far and he was busy, and if Pearl didn’t like it,
take it up with him. 1 didn’t mind the walk but I can remember being somewhat resentful of his talk
about my mama that way.

Both of my grandfathers died the same year, Grandpa Dicks at the age of 75, and Grandpa Tyre at the
age of 70. The year they both died was 1936, and 1 can remember going to the house of each one of

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