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Memories of Golde Dicks Markham (1996) Golde Markham Dicks 93/125

our hands. The hog came pretty clean—hardly any hair left on him. Using knives, we scraped
the skin and then took the hog out of the kettle. I cut the hamstrings (tendons) so that we
could hang him up on the gallows.

We managed to carry him over to the hanging-up place. I held him while Mary put the
wooden rod under the hamstrings, and we got him hung up. I cut the hog open right down
the center of the belly, took out the intestines, liver, heart, and everything else. We rid the fat
from the intestines, then cleaned them out, turned them, and skinned the inner inside. We

cleaned the head and made hog-head' cheese, sausage, and liver pudding.
We cleaned the chitterlings. Eric and Mary wouldn’t eat them, but Clyde and I ate a
pot full. I wouldn’t have eaten them if I didn’t know they had been cleaned real good.

We had all of this done by the time Eric got off work that evening. I called him and
told him to come to Mary and Clyde’s for supper.
We had many good times with Mary and Clyde. We’d go to, the beach over beyond
Jacksonville to spend the weekend. Mary had a sister, Lola, who ran aitwo-story rooming
house. She was lots of fun. Her rooming house was just one block from the ocean. On rainy

cool afternoons, one of us wouldoften call the other to say the weather was perfect for a
waffle and sausage supper. After supper, we’d have a good game of canasta.

Fishing was our biggest activity during our married life. Eric loved to fish. Every

minute he had free, he’d be on the Santa Fe River. His fishing trips lasted almost 50 years-^-
1929 to around! 1'976. He had a lot of different fishing pals through the years.
The men put their boats in at one landing and picked another landing to take the boats

out. Eric’s (delivery man, Dick Jones, usually went with them. Dick helped them get their
boat and motor and fishing gear unloaded, then he drove the truck to the landing where they
were to take the boats back out.

We women headed for Itchetucknee Springs in the summer and played around in the
springs. Later in the day we headed for the landing to have a fish fry with the men who
arrived about sundown. They never failed; they always caught enough fish to feed our group,
ranging from a few to around twenty people.

Nearly all of the landings had a spring nearby where we could get water for cooking.
The men cleaned the fish and fried them. One of the women mixed up the hushpuppies, and
itheimen fried them in the same grease they had used to fry the fish. To make hushpuppies, I

mixed together chopped onions, cubes of cheese, a little salt, meal and flour, two or three

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