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Memories of Golde Dicks Markham (1996) Golde Markham Dicks 54/125

I wiped away the tears and saw Uncle Walter. Uncle Walter truly saved my life. If he

hadn’t been there, that cow would have run me down and killed me.
I never saw the' cow again. The cows passed our house every morning and every
evening, and I kept looking so that I could point it out to Ma and Pa. I always thought
Grandpa sold or killed the cow.

One freezing Saturday night, when I was about 6 years old, Uncle Walter and Aunt
Clara invited me to go with them to Lulu (southeast of Lake City) to see a Punch and Judy
puppet show at Lulu’s schoolhouse. We took the horse and buggy to Lulu that night. It was

truly one of the coldest nights that I can ever remember. Uncle Walter had a thick heavy
horsehair lap robe to cover our legs, feet, and lap. We could even pull it up to our chin.
Uncle Walter and Aunt Clara put me between them and almost smothered me with that lap

robe, but it felt good.
All I remember about Punch and his wife, Judy, was that their heads and mouths were
made out of sardine cans. They were jabbering away over the top of a bed sheet. The audi­
ence stayed warm because of the big wood-burning, pot-bellied heater. It was so. hot that the

iron side glowed red.
On our way back to Uncle Walter’s house (Grandpa Dicks’s old cropper house), we
passed a cane patch. It was a custom when passing a cane patch at night to stop and take

several' long jointed stalks of green cane—not red cane but green cane which was softer to
chew. When we came to the cane patch, Uncle Walter stopped the buggy, hopped over the
fence and cut a few stalks of cane.

When we got back to their house, he built a big roaring fire in the fireplace, brought
the cane in and started peeling and cutting it into blocks to eat. I was so little I had trouble
getting the block of cane into my mouth. Uncle Walter saw that I was having a problem. He

laughed and cut my block into four pieces to chew. We chewed cane until we all filled up.
Uncle Walter and Aunt Clara had only one bedroom but two double beds. Aunt Clara
warmed a quilt and put it on my bed. She turned the other half of the warmed quilt over my

body then pulled the other covers up over me. They went to a lot of trouble for me—and I
enjoyed every minute of it. I don’t think I ever thanked them.

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