Page 52 - memories-of-golde-dicks-markham-(1996)-golde-dicks-markham

Memories of Golde Dicks Markham (1996) Golde Markham Dicks 37/125

Pa knew I’d be coming out of my cubbyhole, and he said, “Golde, stay where you are.
Don’t come out.”

I knew all of the stories about men who waylay folks at night, catching hold of the
bridle on the horse or mule and striking a match to see who they had. They could shoot or
kill somebody right there on the spot or turn the horse loose and let the passenger go on his

way. Well, Old Beck was blowing through her nostrils. Pa slapped Sher with the reign straps
and she jumped up and just stood up on her hind legs scared stiff! I was so scared; I could
sense my parents’ fear.

After failing to coax Old Beck to move on, Pa got out to see what was wrong. Ma
didn’t want him to get out, but Pa wasn’t a man to be scared very easily. He noticed the
wheel ruts were about ten inches deep in sand, and the woods were thick with heavy bushes

right up to the ruts. He managed to walk down alongside Old Beck until he got about even
with Old Beck’s front legs. He struck a match, and there lying across the road was a twelve-
foot-long alligator slapping its tail and trying its best to slap Old Beck. That’s probably the
worst frightened I’ve ever been.

Pa told Ma and me to just stay in the buggy, and he’d go get Sid Williams, a half­
cropper on our farm who lived about a mile down the road. He killed alligators and cured
and sold their skins to help support his children. He had fifteen children. Sid came and shot

that gator but it was so big and heavy that Pa had to get our other mule to pull that gator up
to the house. Sid skinned and cured the hide to sell.

Every now and then Ma would take a notion to go> fishing in Hagen Lake. Sometimes
she. fished in the Dicks’s pond north of Hagen Lake. She used worms for fish bait. Pa got the

worms by driving a one-by-four board into the ground where the worms had made doo-loty
mounds. The worms would work down and''leave little piles of dirt rolled up just about the
size and shape of rice grains except they were dirt color. Pa took one end of a board and Ma
the other and together they pulled it back and1 forth. They made that board vibrate in the

ground, and the board’s vibration caused the worms to crawl out of the ground.
I’ll bet those worms thought that an earthquake was happening! I put the worms into a

bucket. In no time flat, we had fish bait and be on our way to the pond.
One spring morning, Ma and I went down to Hagen Lake to fish. Ma walked out onto
a log over the lake where it was deeper. I was flopping my pole and splashing and inching
toward her on the log. The water got deeper the farther out we went, and the log got

37

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