By Jody Grismore Vance

It started as a sales promotion, but it was probably inevitable that it would take on a wider scope, given the Wickham family trait of being opinionated. When I visit my friends in Malcolm Falls, I really don’t actually see it anymore because I am simply just so used to it.

However, when I take a couple of friends along with me to visit, one of them will spot something unusual, come up to me and whisper, “Why are there words engraved in the bricks over there on the wall of that house?” Once someone wanted to know why a flagstone path was etched with the message, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.”

That’s easy, I just tell them the path which now leads to a garden shed used to lead to the outhouse.” They look at me, more befuddled than ever. “Okay, the lady who lived here ran a boarding house and she took it upon herself to impart little health nuggets to her guests.”

They look at me and then usually say, “And so she CARVED, ACTUALLY CARVED that in the walk?” And I tell them no, she didn’t to it personally. Over the years there have been people who have made a side business out of carving sayings in garden stones, garden walks, steps leading to front doors…and back doors as so forth.

I am fairly certain this doesn’t really enlighten them, but most feel they really don’t want to know any more, especially if they have spotted the walk to the house that says, “Two’s Company, Three’s a Crowd.”

This would be about the time they say, “Maybe this isn’t a good time; maybe we should go.” But, of course, it is all right now. The Wickham brothers who lived there for 50 years and were hermits have been dead for 60 years. The next owners were a newly-wed couple and it suited them fine. They ended up have seven kids and farther up the path, it says, “The more the merrier.”

Sometimes they respond, “How quaint,” and just go on to other subjects. Sometimes they don’t and I am drawn into a little history lecture about how years ago a brick factory, trying to get business away from a competitor, started offering bricks with words of inspiration stamped on them. And I talk about the parsonage that says “hope, faith, charity as you sight in one single bricks. About a quarter of the way up, the church board got the idea to string a row a bricks together so a visitor would read, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

And there are other verses. It has worked out for the most part just fine, although there was a problem when a fire broke out on the second floor and as the firemen put a ladder up, one spied the quote “He who is last shall be first.” They got confused and figured the fastest way to get a fireman up there was to put him last…and it turned out like a Chinese fire drill.

By the way, one of the folks in the crowd watching the blaze was the owner of a Chinese restaurant that had become very popular and prosperous. This fellow was building a new house with his new wealth and had the idea to have his bricks inscribed with fortune cookie sayings. The house was almost done when he saw a mason carrying one that said, “Wise man thinks twice.”

He stopped short and thought, “Oh my gosh, what am I doing?…I need to build two stories.”

Then Fred Wickham got the idea of “advertising through bricks” and if you step back away from a house and look at it just right, you can see patterns that says, “Eat at Joe’s” or “Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco” – the current owners of the latter house, however, opted to remove the bricks below the ad and add ones that said, “The Surgeon General has…”

Somewhere along the line, someone – perhaps cantankerous Phil Wickham – decided to air his grievances right on his house. Not in big fashion, but in messages on individual bricks. The print was obviously small and people took to using opera glasses to see what the current complaint was.

Actually, it was Phil, owner of what became known as the Grumpy House, who made an advancement in the technique. He realized that some of his complaints in easy to read spots were out of date and got the masons to engineer the “changeable brick”. It helped him to keep current.

Other, more reserved citizens, saw great possibilities in this. They would often have a few removable bricks installed in their houses to address things as they came up, such as holidays or weather.
However, when Wilma Wickham took up opera, she looked out her window to read “SHUT UP” etched on her neighbor’s wall.

She stormed out the door and went to give the critic what for. But he had leaned out the window and switched the bricks in a few seconds and she was left to fume…and to order her own bricks. We don’t need to go into what they said.

Election years could get a little troublesome, but we won’t go there either, other than to remark that it became a nighttime activity to switch the bricks on some houses or add some that said “stinks.”
People living in wood homes felt left out, until they got the idea of brick garden walls and engraving stones, which brings us back to where we began.

Actually, I find myself thinking maybe a hidden brick with a message wouldn’t be a bad idea. A little show of individualism…on the other hand, I could turn out to be like Prudence Wickham who got so irritated at so many things, that she just settled for putting “Oh, Yeah?” on the brick above her mailbox.