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Memories of Golde Dicks Markham (1996) Golde Markham Dicks 5/125

so I could sleep on the way home. When we’d get to the church, she took the quilt into the
church and lay it behind the door so I could sleep through all of the preaching and singing.

Grandpa could be heard singing a mile away, but I was a sleepyhead back then, too. Nothing
kept me from sleeping.
It wasn’t too long after Pa got real active in the church that members of Philippi

Church asked him to preach for them one Sunday a month. He agreed to do this. Soon
Philippi Church asked Pa’s home church, Hopeful Church, for his ordinance. He was or­
dained at Hopeful Baptist Church on Sunday, January 31, 1915.1 can remember many men

surrounding Pa and putting their hands on his head.
After Pa started getting calls from other churches to be their pastor, he was gone
every weekend. These churches were little country churches that had services only once a

month, so he became pastor for four churches—a different church every weekend. These
country churches had such small memberships that they paid a pastor very little. At the end
of the fiscal year, the church would owe Pa more than half the salary it had promised him, so
the deacons started bargaining him down. If they owed him $100, they offered to pay him

$50 in cash. He needed the money so badly to pay off his own debts that he would agree to
settle for the $50.

If these country churches could find a preacher who lived in towfi and had a horse and
buggy, the church members could pay the preacher off in com, oats, fodder, chickens, syrup,
eggs, vegetables, or anything else they had on the farm. But Pa was a farmer, too, and he had

all those items. He needed money to buy seed, fertilizer, and clothes for his family.
Pa was always away from home on Saturdays. Since church services were only once a
month, the people had church services Saturday morning and night and Sunday fhoming and

night. Pa usually left home Friday afternoon, depending on the distance he had to travel with
horse and buggy. Everyone in Columbia County knew my father was gone every weekend.
I was about 6 years old when he started preaching. Ma had apprehensions about being

alone at night with small children. She would ask her sister, Clara (“Babe”), to spend the
nights with us. Aunt Babe was only four years older than I was, but just having company

kept one from thinking about what might happen with the absence of the man of the house.
On one occasion, Ma decided to take me with her and go with Pa to Philippi; she
occasionally accompanied him. I remember we went home with the Vinzants for dinner. Mr.

Vinzant had built a hammock out of wooden staves from a barrel that had bulging sides.
These staves had a slight dip that made a nice dip for the hammock. He took the staves and
attached them with wire. The hammock hung between two trees, and that’s where he rested

after dinner before going back to the field. Children loved this hammock. Pa promised to
make me one, but he never did.

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