Remembering Uncle Bob...2

Robert Lee “Uncle Bob” Saunders was an early-day resident of Gatesville and the son of one of Gatesville’s early business pioneers.

Born in 1880 in Gatesville, Uncle Bob had many memories and stories from his childhood which, later in life, he put in writing during the 1940s and 1950s for The Gatesville Messenger in a weekly column titled “Down Memory Lane.”

According to John Frank Post, editor of the Gatesville Messenger from 1946-1978, “Mr. Saunders composed his Down Memory Lane columns from his West Main Street home in the shadow of the county courthouse dome. Deadline time would find him hunched square-shouldered over his small desk pecking away at his typewriter.” Post continued, “disdaining the rules of grammar and political correctness, he wrote like he talked – straight and plain-speaking. He was spared any tedious research, as his gifted memory supplied him with facts that he could weave into his own inimitable embroidery, using colorful anecdotes, local history, and happenings. Yes, Uncle Bob knew how to juice up a story.”

Post recalled that the “Down Memory Lane” column was a hit with the readers of the newspaper from the beginning. Post said that Uncle Bob’s close friends felt he viewed his writing as a “gift to his generation and a legacy to generations to come.”

The following is an excerpt of Uncle Bob’s Down Memory Lane column that appeared in the April 22 and April 29, 1949, editions of The Gatesville Messenger:

The State Reformatory

Back some 60 yeas ago, the good fathers and mothers who lived in Coryell County used to tell son Willie when he would get out of line and want to take charge, that if he didn’t mend his ways and be a good boy, he would wind up in the State Reformatory at Gatesville, which was a state prison for boys under 18 years of age. I guess that they must have made the threat stand up, for from 1888 to the present date (1949), there have been only two or three boys from Coryell County committed to this institution.

But that’s neither here nor there and ain’t got nothing to do with why Coryell County and, more especially Gatesville caught the load when the all-wise fathers at Austin located the State Reformatory within three miles of the public square. This was back in 1888. Lawrence Sullivan Ross of Waco had been sworn in as governor of Texas on January 20, 1887, and he at once advocated needed reforms in the Texas Prison System. Boys under 18 who were convicted of crimes were sent to the penitentiary at Huntsville. Governor Ross advocated the separation of the boys from the men prisoners, and a separate institution for them. He figured that some boys might be reformed if they were in a different institution.

Evidently, he and the State Legislature seen the thing eye to eye, for they passed the law and appropriated the money for the new institution. The site-finding board located the reform school three miles north of Gatesville. I think their buy was a section of land, 640 acres. The two main buildings were three stories high with an attic. One was for the white boys and the other for negroes.

When they first started the reformatory, it was operated nearly all together with single men as guards. There was living quarters for the superintendent and sergeant and their families, but none for the guards that herded the boys on the yard and in the fields. The State of Texas paid good wages for guards at the old Reformatory, and there never was any lack of men to fill the jobs. Every young feller in Coryell County that owned his hoss and saddle and a .45 six-shooter had hopes of landing a job out there. The State paid $25 a month for day guards and $30 a month for night guards. Don’t sound like much money in this day and time, but I know several ex-guards who saved enough money on their jobs to buy purty good little farms.

The grub on the guards’ table was just the same as there was on the boys’ table, with the possible exception that the guards were served fresh beef twice a week. And if you stood in line with the flunkies in the dining room you could get greasy “corner” cornbread instead of the middle cuts that were six inches thick and not always too done.

(Those wishing to learn more about the State School for Boys, can read Uncle Bob’s column in its entirety in the April 22 and April 29, 1949, editions of The Gatesville Messenger).