| Many years ago in the early 1900's a young man named Jimmy Lee Gordon was trying to find a way to make a lot of money with out doing much work. He was in the Edwards Hardware Store located on the courthouse square corner. The building was rather narrow and long and had a high ceiling. There was a large Pot bellied stove near the front of the store and the stove pipe ran the length of the store to the back providing radiant heat to most of the store. Each year the stove pipe had to be dismantled and each section cleaned of the soot that had accumulated during the preceding year. Jimmy Lee Gorden offered to clean the pipe in place and would charge only $25.00. His offer was accepted and he proceeded with his plan. Without divulging his plan Jimmy acquired some gun powder and made a small bomb and placed it in the stove early in the morning. He then got on a ladder and went the entire length of the stove pipe gently hitting each section. This broke the soot loose from the sides and top of each section. Jimmy theorized that when the bomb went off all the soot would be blown up the chimney to the outside. But folks thats not what happened. When the bomb went off the stove pipe separated in several sections, some came crashing down and some remained on their wire support. The entire store was filled with acrid smoke and soot. The soot gently floated down and covered ever item in the store. I do not know exactly how Jimmy Lee fared, I heard he left town for a few days. I do not know who cleaned up the mess. I doubt if Jimmy ever got his money. Later in Life Jimmy was forgiven and became a colorful sheriff of Jones County. |
| In Anson, Texas, Sheriff T. C. Birdwell states that his Thanksgiving spirit was interrupted rather unpleasantly at about 5 p. m. on Thanksgiving day when he was knocked down by a number of prisoners coming upon him when he was serving supper for the inmates of the jail. He hit one of them with his keys, but the others succeeded in getting him to the floor and taking the keys and would have made their escape except for the fact that Harold Stone, son of Frank Stone, met them at the foot of the stairs with a pistol, and forced them back to their cells. Two of the prisoners had fifteen years sentences in Collingsworth County and were brought to Jones County to be tried for high jacking. The others are charged with stealing cars and are in jail awaiting the action of the grand jury, which convened January 5. These were the only ones participating in the attempted escapade. Young Stone, according to those who witnessed the scene was very calm in his role as officer, and showed plenty of nerve. The sheriff was not seriously hurt. |
| I remember seeing the many wagons and teams of people who came to town on Saturdays. They "parked" and unhitched the teams on two vacant lots just off the town square. One at the northeast corner and another behind the businesses in the south east quadrant of the business section. This later location was also where the "medicine shows" set up and performed for the public, as well as the traveling roller skating rinks. |
My Home Town by Charles W. Lantrip
Anson is a small town just north of Abilene and I suppose the population when I grew up there was maybe 1500 to 2000.It didn’t seem like a small town as there were also many other towns of a similar size around that part of the country. In the 1930’s it was a busy, bustling community. All the buildings around the court house square were occupied with businesses. There were two drug stores, two variety stores (now known as five and ten cent stores), seven grocery stores, two farm implement stores, two hardware stores, one furniture store, two dry goods (clothing stores), two shoe repair and bootmakers, a feed store and hatchery (for chickens), two dry cleaners, a steam laundry, several auto dealerships, two movie theaters (one of which was open only on Friday night and Saturday and only showed cowboy movies), two cafes, a post-office, abstract company, a bank, and a newspaper office where the weekly paper was published. There were some other businesses which I can no longer remember but I thought it was a really neat town. Anson had a courthouse as it was the county seat.. The square around the courthouse and the streets leading out of town in both directions were paved with red brick. Since most of the people around were farmers, Saturday was the day for everyone to come to town to buy their supplies for the coming week and to visit with other people who had come for the same reasons. As a result all the businesses closed late (from 10:00 P.M. to midnight) on Saturday.Usually the town square started filling up by late morning on Saturday and the merchants were really busy.Most of the children would get to attend a movie which started at 1:00 P.M. and the price of admission was 10 cents. Most of the time the Lyric theater, we called it as picture show, would be packed as they always showed a western movie, one episode of a serial that usually had 12 parts, and a cartoon. Many times we would see it twice which really took most of the day. The post office was old and while I was a boy it was rebuilt. This was of course a big project for Anson but the most important part was there would be a mural in the new post office depicting the Cowboy’s Christmas Ball, a Christmas dance which has been a tradition since before the turn of the century. However, I thought the laying of the cornerstone for the new Post Office building, into which all sorts of things were put for the enlightenment of those future persons who would tear down the building someday, was much more exciting than the mural.One of the stories that went around at this time told of a cornerstone being looked into when some building was torn down fifty years after the cornerstone was laid. It was said that a Horned Toad in the cornerstone had survived all those fifty years and was alive and in good condition when it was opened. We boys hoped that a Horned Toad would be put in the new post office cornerstone but sadly we found that would not be allowed. There was one thing Anson had that towns of today do not and that is a wagon yard. That was an open place about the size of 3/4 of a city block where people traveling through or those who lived a long way from town could camp in their wagons or tents for whatever time they wanted to stay. It was also a place where traveling preachers would hold revival services, also where medicine shows (a traveling group who would have some kind of entertainment, usually a guitar player and a singer, and sold bottles of medicine that they claimed would cure anything from bunions to cancer was sold to the audience), tent vaudeville shows and the like could set up shop. It was located a block off the square just across from the old red gin and next door to the Dr. Pepper bottling plant. Any time any of this free entertainment was in town there was always a big turnout and our family was among them. Any of these coming to town was big excitement to us During these times no one ever bothered to lock their doors at night or even when they were away for a few days. There were of course some minor crimes as there would be in any place but very few major ones that I can recall. The sheriff for most of the time I was growing up lived just across the street from us and his name was Jim Lee Gordon. He was a friend of my father when they were both youngsters in Anson. None of the streets other than the square and main street were paved, all others being gravel roads in the more populated part and just plain dirt for the rest of them. The town did have sidewalks of concrete as they were more used than the streets. The town square was the hub of all activity. On election night a big chalk board would be put up and as the ballots were counted the tally entered on the board. People would stay till late to see how the political races were going. The square would be the main focus also of First Monday (the first Monday of the month) on which date most of the merchants would have a special sale and there would usually be some kind of entertainment plus prizes donated by merchants to be given away in drawings in order to entice people to come to town. Since this was toward the end of the great depression, free entertainment (or for that matter any kind of entertainment) and prizes were well received. The stage for the entertainment (usually some kind of musical group) would be the flat bed of the hardware store’s truck and dad would set up the sound equipment upon the truck. These first Mondays didn’t last too long as I recall since most farmers felt they would be shirking their duties if they didn’t work on Monday on the farm. |
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