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Memories of Golde Dicks Markham (1996) Golde Markham Dicks 72/125

I’ve heard the place where Dewy and Ann live now referred to as the “Hagen place”

or the “Axman place.” These were families who previously owned this place prior to my
father buying it. The first family I remember living there was the Tyre family, but I don’t
know which Tyres.

When Ma was younger, Grandpa and Grandma Tyre lived across the road from the old
Clarence Southwell home. They also lived in the old house where Bill and Gwyn Boone’s

house is now. That’s where Grandma and Grandpa lived when the big storm1 came through.
The storm took the roof off their house but Grandpa had taken the family to the smokehouse
for safety where they waited out the rest of the storm.

When Grandpa Tyre worked for the railroad, they lived at Woodchop in the Jarrett
place. Woodchop doesn’t exist anymore.
Grandpa Tyre was a railroad man, a carpenter, the husband of a blacksmith operator;

he had a large blacksmith shop. I phrased Grandpa Tyre being the “husband of a blacksmith
operator” because, as a child, that is what he looked like to me. Grandpa held a red-hot plow
sweep with tongs while Grandma beat the red-hot plow or horseshoe with a sledgehammer.

Grandma always did the hard work—maybe that’s the way they worked best.
Grandpa was the first man for miles around who bought a brass head Ford. Quite
often one of our neighbors’ relatives, who lived in another county, would get critically ill or
even die. Our neighbors often hired Grandpa to drive them in a hurry to the nearby county to

visit their sick relatives.
When Grandpa first got the Ford, all of the roads were deep rutted dirt roads and had
many curves and''bends. One day Grandpa Tyre took his car out to practice his driving. He

took a short cut around Grandpa Dicks’s half-cropper house where there was a big curve.
Right on that curve, only inches from the rut, was a fat pine stump. Grandpa didn’t turn his
steering wheel—he took that stump head on.
He sure messed up his car but managed to drive home three-fourths of a mile away. It

took three weeks to get it fixed, but since he was a blacksmith, he knew what to do—sort of.
It wasn’t long before Grandpa had taken that engine apart—every nut, bolt, pipe, and hose.

I wasn’t there when Grandpa took on that stump, but I knew him well enough that I
could tell you word for word exactly what he said. I won’t repeat those words, however,
because I hope my great-grandchildren read this. I already have two of those great-grand­
children, Mark and Brandon.

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