1. Mary Jane McCord posted some enlightening data on her Grandfather Robert:
2. "He sang with a beautiful, rich Irish tenor voice. In his younger years, he often sang at church functioons - sometimes with a quartet, sometimes alone. An elderly lady named "Sit" Jones in Plains, Texas once told me her family once drove over seventy miles to hear him sing. She said she later heard R. B. had a "falling out" with a Southern Baptist preacher and stopped going to church. That may have been true, because I remember my grandmother going to services while Grandaddy stayed at home".
3. Mary Jane McCord further reported that her Grandmother, Martha "Mattie" Farhilla (nee Kuykendall), told me that Bob delivered all their babies except the last two, who were delivered in hospitals. [They had a special cane-bottom chair for blessed events] She added that those doctors in hospitals didn't know as much as her husband did about making delivery easy for a mother and child.
4. Bob's grandchildren loved him, and he was everything a grandchild could want in a grandparent. He wasn't as "easy" on his own seven children, however. He was a strict displinarian with his older children, but mellowed when the last few came along.
5. There is an amazing thing about the parenting skills of Mattie and Bob...there wasn't a bad McCord child in the lot! All their children were wonderful, successful people who made a positive difference in this world.
6. Thing Mary Jane McCord who was only 6 years old when "Bob" died, remembers was his snuff, which he inevitably stained his vests, his black cars, his easy laughter, running to sit in his lap, his glasses. I suspect he was partial to girls...he doted on his grandaughters and once rescued one of my cousing from a spanking.
7. Joseph McCord reports that Grandad Bob was a farmer and always wore those old blue coveralls - even to church! He was the first to let me drive his Model "H" Farmall Tractor. He sat in the old metal seat behind me and helped guide the noisey tractor as it bounced down the turn row near the house. I'll never forget the spanking he gave Harry Lee, my cousin and I for taking his tractor without permission. We started off from the old barn and drove over the back yard. The weight of the old machine was too much for the boards that supported the top of their septic tank. We fell into the pool filled with human urine, stool, toilet paper & etc. The tractor tires were a little over two-thirds under water and the stink was beyound description. For 6-7 year old boys this was a very traumatic moment.
8. He also taught me how to make sausage and soap from a hog. Every year they would kill a hog and butcher it for meat and by-products.
9. Along with milking the cow twice a day and tending the land they lived on, he was a good example for a growing boy --- none finer!
10. I can remember visiting my grandparents as a child in a little community 15 miles East of Tahoka, Texas, called Grassland, Texas. As a matter of fact, it is still there and is compromised of a small general store combination filling station with a buch of old worn out tires stacked on the South and rear side facing the only remaing cotton gin still left standing. [There were three when I was chasing around with my cousin Harry Lee.
11. Our favorite pastimes were "skinny dipping" in the old earth neighborhood tanks during the hot summer months and hunting rabbits along the turn rows of the cotton fields.
12. We always had supper at Aunt Lena's house [her pies would lead a young man to heavens doors] and made our way to Granny's house for breakfast about a mile and a half down the road. She could make the best sausage biscuits that ever crossed the lips of a growing boy and because of her loving thoughtfulness, she always managed to bake a few extras every morning for visitin grandchildren. There is nothing that can beat the taste of home made biscuits made on a kerosene stove. It makes my mouth water just thinking of it today. She was a precious soul. JOSEPH MC CORD
Martha "Mattie" Farilla KUYKENDALL
1. Mary Jane McCord reports: "It's impossible to think of Robert Bascom without thinking of Mattie, his wife. She was the most wonderful person I ever met. Mattie was simply amazing. She outlived Bob for many years, so our memories of her are clearer. They married in Samantha, Alabama, 13 Oct 1898. Granny told me her father didn't want them to marry. Bob had a big white horse and they met a a pre-arranged place and time and eloped. She said she rode behind him on that orse to a preacher's house, where they began their life together. She said he was intelligent, handsome, and strong. She [with a great deal of pride] called him "my man" when talking about him. She said he was a gifted athlete, good with animals and people, and had a "gift of gab".
2. Bob didn't think it was necessary for Mattie to learn to drive, so she never did. When women got the vote in 1929, Mattie said Bob was delighted, not because he was for womens' rights mind you, but because he believed he would have TWO votes. He always told Mattie exactly how to vote, but she confessed later that she would listen carefully to him and then vote the way SHE thought best.
1. Mary Jane McCord reported that Charles R. McCord, was a horse-and-buggy Alabama doctor who tole R. B. "Bob" how to deliver babies when the couple married.
1. E. L. Short is a retired Texas State Senator.