My dad was a pretty neat guy — although we never had the kind of relationship where we’d go out and have a few beers together, we did manage to have a few “private” conversations. I certainly wish there could have been more of those, but it “is what it is” as they say.
Of course our grandkids never got to know their great-grandad and someday in the future, if they’re interested in learning about their ancestors, I’d like them to have a little more insight to their great-grandad than when he was born, when and who he married and other rather mundane things that they might find on ancestry.com… I’d like them to learn that he was a real person, not just a name on the family tree.
One of the stories he told me once (that probably would have been even better over a couple of beers) happened when he was in his late teens just before he graduated from high school. My dad and couple of his friends had been to Oklahoma City and didn’t get back to Maysville until about 2:00-2:30 in the morning. Now Maysville Oklahoma had a sheriff during the day and also a “night watchman” sheriff during the night. The main street in Maysville was about 2 or 3 blocks long, and near one end of the street there was a gas station built on the “corner” of the block. The pumps were covered by a roof and so during nice weather, the “night watchman” would sit in a cane-bottomed chair, leaning up against the side of the building. That gave him a pretty much unobstructed view of the entire main street.
Anyhow, when my dad and his friends got back into town that night/morning, they decided to drive up and down main street a few (or more) times. I know that sounds dumb now, but back then, that’s what you did if you were lucky enough to have a car — it was called “dragging main.” I forgot to mention that directly across the street from the gas station on the opposite corner, was the town’s only bank and unknown to the night watchman and my dad and his friends, the bank was going to be robbed that night. The robbers were about to make their move when the “Williamson gang” roared into town and disrupted their plans. The robbers waited for things to settle down before proceeding, but dad and his friends, rather than going home, stopped to “bs” with the nighttime sheriff (everyone knew everyone in Maysville.) Apparently the robbers got tired of waiting and approached the group with guns drawn. They herded dad, his two friends and the sheriff into the bank. Back in those days, sometimes the bank locked the vault and sometimes they didn’t. (This was before all the fancy time-locks they have today.) Well, on this particular night the vault hadn’t been locked, and it was “easy pickings” for the robbers. But they put their “hostages” in the vault and did lock it. When the bank opened at 9:00 o’clock the next morning and they unlocked the vault, it was the first time anyone knew the bank had been robbed.
According to my dad, he and his two friends spent the next day chasing bank robbers. He said he didn’t remember how or where they came up with a couple of shotguns but he remembered not finding any bank robbers, but shooting ducks down by the river.
I don’t remember all the details of the story, but evidently the robbers were caught sometime later and they were apparently unknown to anyone living in or around Maysville.
So someday, if this blog survives and our grandkids are looking around for information about their ancestors, they may conclude there was more to their great-grandad …than he was the son of George and Josephine….
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