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Memories of Golde Dicks Markham (1996) Golde Markham Dicks 16/125

The field, lot, and comcrib were surrounded by thick pine, oak, persimmons, arid
hickory woods. Gallberries, dog fennel, briars, and cockleburs grew in the ufiderbrush. After

picking hickory nuts, Ma sat on the steps and cracked them with a hammer, picking the nuts
out using nails. We made pies from the briar berries and ate the persimmons when ripe.

The gallberry bushes were used for brush brooms to sweep the yards, but Ma made a
broom for sweeping the house. I watched her make these brooms so many times that I
believe I could make one even today.
We walked over to the field in front of where Great-Grandma and Grandpa Kennedy

lived in Grandpa Tyre’s little house—which belongs to Rodney and Norma now. In front of
the house was a little pond, and near this pond grew some of the rankest stuff called “broom

straw” (sagebrush). Ma cut the straw, and with a ball of twine from her apron pocket, she
wrapped the twine around the stems as she cut.
Once back home with the sagebrush, she went to the woodpile to get a block of wood

standing upright that Pa used to split the stove wood. She put the stem end of her broom on
that block and had me hold the broom end. She then took the ax, raised it up, and came
down on the handle end of the broom with all the force she had. It was hard to believe how

even she could cut those straws. Stores didn’t have brooms back then because most country
folks had dirt floors. Soon enough, wooden floors were built.
No one had a refrigerator. Most people had a water shelf at the end of the porch in the

back of the house. Ours was on the north end of the front porch. We kept a bucket of water
with a dipper in it on the water shelf. Everyone drank water from this dipper-^even visitors.

This was the custom at every family’s home. Next to the bucket was a tin wash pan with a
chunk of homemade potash soap and a rag towel made from a worn-out sheet. I never saw a
real towel until the early 1920s. We had to utilize everything we could to exist.

The bathroom was beyond the back yard. Some called it the “closet”; some called it

the “privy.” I guess it was called the “privy” because a person’s business there was to be
private—and1 not to pray. But what better place to pray? Well, I.walked in holding my nose.
In the back end of this little house was a board. In feet, most outhouses would have

two wide boards put up like a shelf—just the height to sit down on. The school’s bathrooms

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