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Memories of Golde Dicks Markham (1996) Golde Markham Dicks 39/125

When I was growing up, we didn’t have fancy kinds of candy and candy bars. Any
family who grew sugar cane and made syrup and brown sugar usually had candy-pulling

parties. After greasing their hands so the gooey stuff wouldn’t stick to their hands, a boy and
his girlfriend would pull this cooked sugar cane syrup. Everyone knew just how to pull it and
then watch it turn a beautiful pearl-glossy beige color—almost white. It was so brittle that

we could break off just a mouthful. The popular homemade candy then was peanut brittle
made from cane syrup and parched peanuts.

In the beginning of this century, legal documents and official papers were handwrit­

ten—usually written with a goose quill pen which was a large feather from the wing or tail of
a goose. The growth end of the feather was cut at a slant and then split slightly at the tip end
of the slant. One could then dip the cut end of the quill into a bottle of ink and write with it.

Then someone got the idea of improving the quill pen by taking a thin piece of metal, shap­
ing and splitting it and making the fountain pen^and eventually the ball-point pen.

e

In my “little-red-wagon” days, I remember going with Pa to get the tree to build the
horse trough. Pa hitched the mule to just the frame of the wagon, which consisted of the
shaft, two axles, and the four wheels. After he sawed down the perfect tree, he hewed or
chiseled out the heart of tree, leaving about ten inches at each end of the log. He split off

about one-fourth to nearly one half of the tree before he chiseled the inside out.
I watched him as he drove the mule and wagon up to one end of the trough. The

trough was about twelve feet long. It was almost impossible to load the trough since it was
real big and made of green cypress. He got one end of the trough on the back axle and
picked up the other end, and then started pushing it toward the front axle. Finally he got it

over both back and front axles. He picked me up and sat me down in the trough with my feet
straight out in front of me, and then he sat on the end of the trough with his feet on the front
axle. That was the happiest ride of my life—even better than my first airplane ride.

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