Page 17 - memories-of-golde-dicks-markham-(1996)-golde-dicks-markham

Memories of Golde Dicks Markham (1996) Golde Markham Dicks 2/125

We swept the hulls into the fireplace and pushed the chairs and boxes out of the way.
By some coincidence, one of the guests just happened to have his guitar, and others brought

a fiddle, a banjo, a mouth harp, and an accordion. They could really make the music! Every­
body would dance until late at night, but I couldn’t stay awake that long.

I had a big yellow cat that Ma didn’t allow in the house, but that cat slept with me
every night. Ma would find him in bed with me many nights and then toss him out. He soon
learned to slip under the cover, especially in the winter when the light was dim. She couldn’t
see the cat then. Our crib was made out of logs that left cracks between the logs. The rats

loved to make their home in these cracks. While I would hold up my cat, she would use her
front paws to catch the rats.

Ma tried to raise a few chickens, but it was a continual battle fighting off the wild
animals and hawks. It was a common sight to see a hawk swoop down and fly away with a
helpless little biddy in his claws—the baby chick chirping for its life. The mother hen would

run around in circles, flapping her wings, squabbling and squalling. All we could do was just
watch helplessly as the hawk carried the 'biddy away.
Pa built a pen out of slats to enclose the hen and her chicks when we couldn’t be

outside to shoo the hawks away. We put them in the pen at night to keep the wild animals
from catching them. One morning a weasel dug under the pen and cut the heads off of every
biddy. Weasels suck the blood out >of their prey.

The grown hens and roosters ran loose back then. The hens would steal a nest and lay
their eggs—then they would sit on their eggs to hatch out more chicks. Soon as the chicks

could walk, the hen would bring the chicks to where we could give them water and help the
mother hen feed them. They would usually hatch from seven to fourteen chicks. Hens had to
sit on their eggs twenty-one days tO' hatch out biddies.

Pa had a big gray mare that was nursing a colt. The mare was really white, but we
always called her the “Old Gray Mare.” Not long after the colt was bom, the pretty, gentle
mare got sick. One day, she laid down out in the middle of the lot, the area around the

comcrib. The lot had a stable back of the crib on the east side and two more stables on the
south side where the horses slept and ate from the troughs. We kept a wagon in a shelter on
the north side. This lot had a board fence around the building with a gate large enough for

the wagon to go in and out. The watering trough was by the fence in this lot. Pa turned the
mules out into this lot to get a drink and run around, kicking up their heels for exercise.

2

www.LakeCityHistory.com LCH-UUID: C15F5985-B57F-498C-9C99-F425FA07E049