Little Bose and the automobile
by Tim Campbell · first published 18 December 2017 · his original post
100 years ago today it was reported in the Blooming Grove Rustler and the Corsicana Daily Sun that Elmer Bose Robinson Jr., aka "Little Bose", about 10 years old, was hit by an automobile after attending a Saturday night "picture show" at the BG Theater in downtown Blooming Grove.
The theater in those days was located on Fordyce Street at the site of the present day Blue Sky Realty office in Blooming Grove. In those days the most common automobile around town is said to have been the Model T Ford. Luckily for Little Bose, the top speed of a Model T Ford was about 40 to 45 miles per hour. This fact, combined with the unpaved, rough condition of Fordyce Street in 1917, and the fact that the driver was in the middle of town on a Saturday night and surely in some degree of traffic, must have meant that the car was traveling at a relatively low rate of speed. The newspapers record that Little Bose sustained only slight injuries.
Elmer "Little Bose" Robinson Jr. was the grandson of William Simpson Robinson, one of the founding members of the Dresden community, who I have written about in an earlier Tales From the Grove post. Little Bose was born in 1907 to Elmer Bose Robinson Sr and Huldah Carolina Hodges. He had four sisters, one of whom was the very well known Beatrice Robinson McCormick of the Grove,(wife of Ditt McCormick).
After Little Bose's altercation with the automobile he went on to graduate from Blooming Grove HIgh School and attend East Texas State University in Commerce, Texas. As of 1940 he was living in Blooming Grove in a boarding house and was working, ironically, as an automobile salesman.
On March 19th, 1942, he enlisted in the army at Ft Sam Houston. He completed 5 years and 2 months of service to his country, was heavily trained in the Signal Corps, and was a combat officer in the European theater where he served in the Battles/Campaigns of Northern France, Rhineland, Ardennes, Normandy, and Central Europe.
Little Bose returned to Blooming Grove after the war. He was a member of the Blooming Grove Methodist Church. He passed away in 1967 and is buried at Oakwood Cemetery in Corsicana in the Robinson family's plot.
This piece was published without a title. The one above was written here; the words below are his.