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Memories of Golde Dicks Markham (1996) Golde Markham Dicks 20/125

Clarence

My first brother, Clarence, died September 7, 1910, when he was just 9 months old. I
used to ask Ma how he died. She always told me that he had brain fever. She once said that

his temperature went up to 106 degrees. I don’t know if she used a thermometer. Ma kept
Clarence’s clothes for several years but finally gave them to Fay to bum. I used to take out
his clothes and look at them. They were made of red-figured percale^=crudely made with

crude colors.
I can remember Clarence’s funeral. Pa was sick in bed with boils all over him, even on
the bottoms of his feet. He couldn’t walk. 'Grandma and Roy stayed with Pa while Ma

attended the funeral. Roy and I took our rag dolls in the yard to play. We held our dolls by
the heads and dragged them around the house, laughing our heads off.
I can’t remember Clarence being sick or dying, but I can remember watching a neigh­

bor, Charlie Pearce, making his wooden coffin. He took the lumber and sawed1 it in the
length he wanted it, then he took his hand plane and shaved all the rough surface away. He
rubbed the palm of his hand over the board and shaved some more until he had got all the

lumber extra smooth.
Some neighborhood ladies lined the little box with a quilt, then they put a lining over
the cotton quilt. I still can see that little box but don’t remember seeing Clarence in it or it

being hauled away. I’m sure Grandma Dicks took Roy and me out of the house.
I remember seeing Clarence only once. We were coming home from church in the
wagon, almost in front of Grandpa Dicks’s house. Pa was driving the horse and holding me.

Ma was holding Clarence.
I said, “ Ma has a baby, and so has Pa.”

After Clarence died, I was the only child until Tribble was bom on February 4, 1914.
Then came Emerald on August 26, 1915, Opal on January 14, 1920, Fay on February 2,

1922, Lenvil on September 10, 1928, and Rodney on July 18, 1933. By the time Lenvil and
Rodney had arrived, I was married and living in Lake City.
Pa always went to get Nettie Pearce when Ma was about to have a baby. If “Mrs.
Nettie” was at our house before daylight, rushing me off to school, I knew another baby was

going to appear. God bless her. She was a dear soul, a good neighbor, and loved every child.

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