Chapter 22

FOND MEMORIES

I cherish the time I spent with my grandparents.  Always smiling and never complaining, never mentioning the hardships they had encountered. They lived, as  Reverend Schuler preached  “no matter how tough times get, you have the potential to achieve the best”.

Grandmother Tommie Lee Anderson faced early childhood challenges. When Tommie was only four years old, her mother died giving birth to her son Jetti L. Boles.   Her father Levi Boles and her sister Ellen, age fifteen, took over raising the family, two girls and three boys.  Tommie was only able to go to the fourth grade, however she continued her education by learning from a dictionary.  Many years later she was called an “able nurse” in a community where there was no doctor and a flu epedimic.

                         Aunt Ellen sitting with her father Levi Boles

 There was in a time in Henderson County, Texas, when they lived in a dug-out!  It was home dug into the side of a rolling hill, with sod blocks and a flat roof covered by earth.

                                           An example of an early day dug-out. 

 I have never known anyone more loving and compashionate.  I still have fond memories of her making those wonderful warm biscuits and hugging me at the same time. There was never a complaint about her childhood hardships, and always a beautiful smile. Grandmother passed away on April 9, 1950.

                          Family picture left Noma Powers, Jack Anderson, Lillie Higgins, Bill and Tommie Anderson, Georgia Fay Erwin and Leona  Sullins. 

Grandfather William Henry (aka Black Bill and Bill Lee) Anderson, lived with Noma and Jack Powers in Oklahoma City after Tommie’s death.  The “big city” was quite an adjustment for him after a life of a cowboy sleeping on the prairie and then living in the small town of Strong City, Oklahoma.  It was of concern to his daughters that he continued to wear his Colt 38 pistol in Oklahoma City.  He loved to ride the city bus around OKC and became friends with the driver who would advise him when it was time to get off.

I have fond memories of taking him back to Strong City for visits.  After my early days experience of riding in his car (and his turning it over) I insisted on driving.  We just visited and laughed while driving to Strong City, telling me who lived on almost every ranch and those he had arrested .  NOT ONCE, did he ever mention the gunfight in La Junta, Colorado, chasing Mexican rustlers across the border and then being placed in their jail,  playing Faro with some of the famous cowboys we read about today, becoming Deputy Sheriff of Roger Mills County, winning the rodeo roping contest at age 70 and his many other adventures.  I knew nothing of these advenrures until my aunts told me years later. His hardships were never discussed but I believed he truly “achieved the best in life”. William Henry Anderson died on June 4, 1955.

Cemetery in Strong City, Oklahoma.  Virgil Anderson’s grave on left, Tommie and William on right.

A final story about the fine people who live in Western Oklahoma.  Many years after my grandparents passed away, one of the neighbors called Aunt Georgia Faye, and advised her that they were getting ready to drill an oil well in the same section that the Anderson 3/4 acre lot was in.  After grandfather passed away they sold the home and moved it to Cheyenne, Oklahoma, but the lot was still in William Anderson’s name.  The neighbor told Georgia Faye she should go to the court house and bring the records up -to-date, so she could get some oil royalty money.  She said they had forgot about the lot and no one had paid the property taxes in years.  He replied, oh, I have been paying the taxes and using the land for my garden, but now that it might be worth something, she should get the money.

                                       The neighbors garden.