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Memories of Golde Dicks Markham (1996) Golde Markham Dicks 88/125

salary for ten years: $'125 a month. We made monthly payments to Mr. Fred on our house.
We had to buy our cars on the installment plan.

Let me give you some advice my grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nephews, and
nieces: Anytime you have business with anybody, be it relative, friend, family, or enemy, any
race, creed1 or color, get a written agreement or contract written up and signed by all parties!
Don’t depend on oral agreements. They won’t stand up in court. A written, signed agree­

ment will help keep you from having disagreements, hard feelings, and quarrels. Everyone
will understand the facts.

Over the years we’ve had many relatives live with us: Tribble, Emerald, Eric’s Uncle

Ernest Johnson, his two sisters, Edith and Doris, and all three of Eric’s younger brothers.
Even though we had only two bedrooms back then, at one time, nine of us lived here. We
built a room down one side and on the back end of the side room of the outside garage. All
of the boys slept out there. We all managed to cook and eat here in the house. They all

worked, but none of them made enough salary to pay on the expenses. Tribble joined the
Navy and left, and the others eventually rented apartments. At that time, Eric’s dad was
giving us a lot of produce to help us get by.

We were lucky to have Eric’s parents and my parents living on farms. They gave us a
lot of our food which really helped with our finances. Eric’s father peddled all kinds of
vegetables twice a week in Lake City—cabbage, English peas, com, Irish potatoes, fresh
onions, turnips, collards, mustard greens, radishes, carrots, and bell peppers. Eric’s mother

made butter in one-pound molds and bottled up quarts of milk and buttermilk to sell. His
father also butchered hogs and made sausage, hog-head cheese, liver pudding, hams, sides of
bacon, and even chitterlings.

Eric’s dad drove an old Model-T Ford. He removed the back seat from the car to
make more room for his produce, then he loaded it with all of the food he had grown and
that the entire family had worked so hard to prepare. I always called Eric’s mother and father

“B.C.” and “Sister Lee.”

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