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Memories of Golde Dicks Markham (1996) Golde Markham Dicks 30/125

Mrs. Addie kept coining after us as fast as she could run. We were running through
wiregrass so the boy who was carrying the melon covered it with grass. With the grass and

the melon both being green, it would be real hard to find again. In the meantime, Mrs. Addie
turned back for home. She knew she never could catch us. But we couldn’t take the time to
burst the melon and eat it. But a couple of days later we managed to find the watermelon,

bust it open and eat it.
That wasn’t the last of the watermelon episode, though. Alma Payne, my teacher, was
boarding with Mr. and Mrs. Josey Markham—right around the comer of a field on the other
side of Mrs. Addie’s house. There was no doubt in any of our minds that Mrs. Addie re­

ported the stealing of her watermelons to the teacher because the next morning Miss Payne
knew all about it.
At recess later that week, Miss Payne announced that those children who pass Mrs.

Douberley’s home to remain in at recess. The boys told me if Miss Payne asked me any
questions that I was to say “I don’t know” to every question. These boys were grown; there
was no way my teacher was going to whip them—and if she did, she couldn’t hurt them.

I don’t believe Mrs. Addie knew I was the culprit. I was so small and we were a good
half mile from her view. I always knew these boys would protect me and look after me
especially Uncle Walter and Uncle Press. Uncle Henry would also protect me, but my mother

wouldn’t trust him to take care of me.
Every time I got a whipping and told Grandpa Dicks, he would say, “Ha! Ha! Ha!”
But then he gave me some change—five, ten, twenty-five, or fifty cents.

The mischievous boys told me other ways to make .the teacher whip me, such as get
out of my seat, go to the blackboard and start drawing. When the teacher would tell me to
go to my seat, I was to tell her I wasn’t going to do that. I kept making the teacher whip me

until I had a cigar box full of change from my grandpa. The teacher finally found out what
was prompting me to be so disobedient and started ignoring me. It didn’t matter what I
did—she acted' like I wasn’t even present.

We carried our lunch to school in a tin bucket with a bail on it for a handle. The lunch
bucket consisted mostly of fried-over peas and cold grits. That was all that we had, but it
filled our stomachs and kept the hunger pangs away. Sometimes a student didn’t have any

lunch so he would slip back into the classroom at recess and steal one.
In the mornings, students put their lunch pails in a comer of the class. I don’t know
how we could tell which pail was ours since they all1 looked alike, but we could recognize

ours at a glance. To this day, I like to have fried peas and grits for supper once in a while.

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