James Lanier
"I Remember Ty Cobb"

(An interview by Abe Schear)

I'm in Mr. James Lanier's house with Mr. Ron Cobb and with Linda and this is really exciting for all of us. Tell me if you would, Mr. Lanier, where did you grow up?

I was born and raised in Augusta, Georgia. 2317 Kings Way.

And what are your first memories of baseball? You are how old?

92, but I was going to tell you where Mr. Cobb lived. OK. Mr. Cobb lived at 2425 Williams Street which is parallel to 2317 Kings Way, about a three minute walk between, so we were almost next door neighbors. When I was a little tiny
fellow, I didn't realize that Mr. Cobb was a baseball player. He was Herschel's father, just Herschel's dad. I would see him just as one of the neighbors, watering his grass. I'd ride my little old tricycle over. I introduced him to the Atlanta Rotary Club one time and he said, speaking to me, "Well I've known this boy (he called me "Jimmy m'boy," that's all he ever called me, "Jimmy m' boy"), and I've known "Jimmy m' boy" since he was that long," and that was a great compliment.

We would always gather at the Cobb house because Mrs. Cobb would give us a Ty Cobb candy bar, which was about the same as a Baby Ruth. Mrs. Cobb made wonderful cakes and we would go over and she would give us a little slice of cake. She would take us down to the baseball spring practice, which was in Augusta at Warren Park, and we'd get in the car and she'd say, "Do you boys want to go down and see the boys play baseball, the men?" So we'd get in the stands and just watch them. I didn't know what they were doing, running around throwing balls. But that's my first recollection, going to the spring training diamond in Augusta when I was a little fellow.

Who taught you to play baseball?

Oh, Mr. Cobb. Mr. Cobb's famous saying, which I've never forgotten, was "Teach a boy to throw a baseball and he won't throw a rock," and I'm going to have that blown up and put underneath my little great grandson's picture. We just more or less taught each other how to play baseball. We'd throw and I never will forget when I caught a ball with one hand, just about the distance where you are, but that's my first recollection.

Where did you get the bats and the balls and the gloves?

Our parents would buy them and Mr. Cobb always saw that little boys had a baseball. He had a steamer trunk full of old balls and he would give each of us a ball. I must have had ten. If I had the things that I got when I was little, I would be a multi-millionaire! Mr. Cobb would have given me anything within reason, but he'd always give balls to little boys. I remember the first time they came out with a Ty Cobb bat. It had his decal on it and that was the fifth bat that had a decal. They paid the other players $75.00 to put that decal on the bat. Mr. Cobb said he didn't want the money. He wanted them to give him a bin full of bats and they did.

My mother bought me a little Louisville Slugger. It had his picture on it and I went over one time and we were all playing down the street, little boys, and Mr. Cobb was on the front porch and it's the biggest laugh I ever heard. He had big dimples in his cheeks when he smiled and he said, "Let me see that bat Jimmy m' boy, and I handed it and he said, "You know who that is?" And I said, "Yes sir, that's you Mr. Cobb. You know that's the best bat in the world. I can hit them, I never miss," and he laughed and Mrs. Cobb had a chuckle. And I meant it. I walked on off and we played pickup ball.

When do you remember first listening to baseball games on the radio, the major leagues?

The first time I ever heard a baseball broadcast was in Valparaiso, Indiana. That was my mother's home and they broadcast the Cubs games and I would listen to the Cubs play and that was my favorite team, second to Detroit. But I never lost my love for Detroit. We've got a ball club this year. Maybe we're going to go to the Series.

Your favorite team was Detroit because of Ty Cobb?

Oh yeah.

At the time he was a player and then he was the manager
of Detroit.

That's right.

Other than Ty Cobb, of course, who were your favorite players?

Well I always liked Ruth because he could hit home runs. Tris Speaker was in the Cobb home one day, we were talking, and you know there was a Cobb era and there was a Ruth era. The Cobb era would hit singles and doubles and run the bases. Ruth would hit a home run. His bat was oversized. It was too heavy. But I saw him hit two home runs. It was a clear day in Detroit and he hit that ball. It went up slow, just like a rocket, and way over the fence and dropped. That was a beautiful home run. I saw him hit two.

You said Tris Speaker was at the Cobb house?

Abe, I can't name the number of ball players that I've met. Of course I met them on the diamond and I could name the starting diamond my first year. I never forgot that. Johnny Bassler was catching, Lu Blue was on first base, Charlie (Gehringer) on second, Tavener was the shortstop and Jack Warner and Fred Haney were on third base and then there was Mr. Cobb and Harry Heilmann and the other fellow named Heinie Manusch. They played in the outfield. That was the starting lineup in 1925.

Did they come to Augusta to visit Ty Cobb?

Oh yes. I met Eddie Collins. Eddie Collins was a very frequent visitor. Tris Speaker, Lu Blue, I can't name them all.

What was Tris Speaker like?

He was a very friendly man but he was abrupt. Grantland Rice was having dinner one time at the Cobb home. I always sat at the right of Mr. Cobb at the table, at the training table and in his home when I ate there, and Herschel, his son, would sit by my father. My father was a trap shooter and he had a very good record and Herschel would ask if he wanted to get Mr. Cobb out because he was a great bird shot and he had heads of different antelopes and bears and big moose in his house in his den, but he was famous. He was a fine shot.

Tris Speaker was out of a job. You know, he was the
manager over at Cleveland and he had a fine record and he and Mr. Cobb were very good friends. He needed a job and Mr. Cobb had just signed up with the Athletics, though he said he wasn't going to play anymore after 1926. He said that in front of me and so I said, "Mr. Cobb you're not going to stop playing are you?" He said, "Jimmy m' boy, I think I am." I said, "Well I've lost my job." But anyway, to answer that question, Tris Speaker was getting Mr. Cobb to try to get Connie Mack to give him a job and so was Eddie Collins. They were both out of a job. Eddie went on and became general manager of the Red Sox but Mr. Cobb got Mr. Speaker a job and he had the three old timers together, Mr. Cobb, Eddie Collins and Tris Speaker. Tris Speaker was a great player but I didn't see him play.

They all went on a tour of Japan. Mr. Cobb went after he retired and Tris Speaker went with them. Mr. Cobb came back with a uniform, and the cap had a star on it. I knew about when they were coming home. Herschel said, "Come over, my father wants to talk to you." So I went over and he said, "Jimmy m' boy, I brought you a present." I can't speak like him, he had a gravely voice like "Ah, ah, Jimmy m' boy, I brought you a present." He brought me a pair of Japanese baseball shoes and I wish if I had some of those things today!

He called me at home one day many years later and he said, "Jimmy m' boy, you neighborhood boys threw all of my things away and I don't have anything to send them up to the Hall of Fame. Do you have anything lying around the house there that I can have?" I told Mr. Cobb I'd look and I looked and I looked and I found an old pair of sliding pants. I called him. He said, "Send them over" and those are on display now, the ones that I sent to him, in Cooperstown. They are his sliding pants, old, faded, you know, they were white but had laundry marks all over them, but I once had the socks, I had more baseballs than I could count on my fingers and toes. Have you been to Cooperstown, Abe?

I have. Do you remember Connie Mack?

I had a sandwich with him one time.

And what was that like?

He was very quiet, very quiet and he never went down to the field before the game. I just paid a visit in Philadelphia. I wasn't a batboy there. Mr. Cobb said, "Herschel, take "Jimmy m' boy" up to the office," and I went up there and Mr. Mack came in and he had a sandwich and a glass of milk. That was his lunch and he ordered a sandwich and I ate
a sandwich with Mr. Mack. He did not go down on the practice field while the boys were warming up.

I've read a lot about Mo Berg, who seems to me to be the most peculiar ballplayer. He just wanted to hang around and watch. He didn't ever want to do anything. Tell me, do you remember anything about Mo Berg?

Mr. Cobb had a hunting lodge. He did not own the land. He leased the land, several hundred acres, maybe a thousand. It had a very nice cabin on it, a house. He leased that with another man in Augusta, Mr. Ellis, and he would invite people to come down, players, and Mo Berg came down. I even met Joe Tinker and he was fat and old and he hadn't played in years but he liked to drink. They would have a drink and then they played poker a lot and Mr. Cobb would let us sit there and watch for a while and when it got late he'd tell us boys to go to bed. I saw Mo Berg there.

You must have met Babe Ruth?

I met Babe Ruth on the diamond and maybe a lot of people don't know this, but on a real hot day Babe Ruth put a cabbage leaf on top of his head. You couldn't see it but it was a cabbage leaf. He said in some way that it kept him cool. I never could understand. He was very friendly.

I would get in behind Mr. Cobb a lot of times when he was coaching and Mr. Cobb had a lot of eye trouble in 1926. He didn't play but 78 games but he would get out and do a lot of coaching. Mr. Cobb didn't play this day and he was standing out near third base and Ruth hit the home run and came around and he yelled at Mr. Cobb and said "Now do you want to tell me how to hit?" They also had a little banter when they played golf. They played three times. Ruth won the first match, Mr. Cobb won the second two. They played in New York, I think St. Louis and San Francisco, just exhibition games to draw a crowd.

What was Mr. Cobb's mother like?

His mother accidentally shot Mr. Cobb's father and killed him, you know that story. I met his mother. I've got a picture there for you. She was very staid and didn't talk much and didn't talk much to her grandchildren. She wasn't very grandma-like.

And his siblings?

He had one brother, Paul, played a little baseball in the South Atlantic League. He was a fair ballplayer and Mr. Cobb said he was too slow on the bases. He went into real estate business and was very successful in Florida. That's the last I heard of Paul. He only had one brother and he had one sister. She taught school in Atlanta. Her name was Leslie Cobb. I had a print made of their family photo for you.

Tell me how you first got to be a batboy for Ty Cobb.

I've had that question asked many times. Mr. Cobb knew of my love for baseball and he knew how I liked to hit and Mr. Cobb would rather hit a baseball I think more than anything other than run the bases. I would always spend the night over at the Cobb's and we were in the living room talking and he said, "Jimmy m' boy, how would you like to be my batboy this year?" I almost fainted and he said, "Well, you ask your dad and mama if they'll let you go up to Detroit." I said, "Yes sir, I will," and they said yes but I had to live with the Cobbs. I was in school and I couldn't go until June.

And that's where I was to begin, in spring practice, not in Detroit, in spring practice in Augusta. The streetcar went right by our school and Herschel and I would walk out and get on the streetcar after school and ride down to Warren Park where the streetcar terminated. That's how we got our ride to the ballpark, and so my first job as a batboy was to go in the spring training dressing rooms, which looked like an old army barracks, and we would put little bars of soap out where the men would sit and we'd put a towel out and then we'd have to pick up the towels and count them after practice. We couldn't take a shower until all the players had taken a shower. But we wanted to be a professional player so we would get up under the shower, just like they did.

Mr. Cobb would stay out sometimes with some of the players that he wanted to give some extra attention. If I heard Mr. Cobb say this once, I've heard him say it to the catcher a thousand times: "Throw it to the bag, throw it to the bag, don't throw it to the player, throw it to the bag." Johnny Bassler was the only catcher that I ever saw, and I saw a lot of catchers, who could throw a ball from the squatting position to second base without standing up and that was a feat. He wasn't an outstanding catcher.

How much did they pay you to be the batboy?

Five dollars a week. They would tip me down at spring practice and sometimes I got a quarter to clean Mr. Cobb's bat. I did more work than anything for Mr. Cobb in a spring training and I would take big bones and I'd have to bone rub those bats. They wouldn't break, you know, bone rub those bats. I didn't like to do that but I had to, he wanted me to do it and he hardly ever broke a bat and then I'd shine it. Probably just shine them until they would shine but the

shine didn't last long you know. Then we would take a shower and I would go out and watch them. He would get men out there to bunt over and over and over. Today they don't bunt enough. They bunt and it looks like a pop fly to the shortstop or to the second baseman or to the pitcher. Mr. Cobb had a way of drawing the bat back and hitting it into the ground. They would roll slowly. The third baseman couldn't get to them in time. He'd be on first base and I only saw him slide one time into first base and he was safe. I thought he wasn't going to make it but he did and he would bunt and he would get them on and he taught them to bunt and he taught Heilmann how to hit and Heilmann beat him later in his career, hit more than Mr. Cobb.

Did they give you a uniform?

No, the uniform I had is this one. You see how big it is? You see the shoulders are way down here?

Yes.

My mother altered that. It looks like a clown's suit, those pants, but I was proud of it. They gave me that; that's the only uniform they ever gave me. They gave me some caps and I don't know whether you'd like to have this picture Abe, but you're welcome to it.

I sure would. Thank you.

And this little picture (of the Cobb family), and you guard that with your life.

Thank you. I'm not giving that away.

See, I was too little. But later I played for the Rinky Dinks. Guess what position?

Second base?

Left field.

Now, you were a batboy during the games too?

Oh yes, but I didn't travel. I stayed at home, I mean only home games. I made one trip to Chicago and one time they were playing the White Sox. I asked Mr. Cobb if I could go and told him I could stay with my aunt in Chicago and he said all right. And so I went to Chicago with the team and my aunt met me. They spent the night in a hotel but I went to the game and after that I went on back to Detroit with my aunt on a train. That was rough traveling, too.

When they had spring training in Augusta they did not stay in a hotel. They were there five years. There were some huge colonial homes in North Augusta, South Carolina, right across the river from Augusta. Mr. Cobb rented one of those huge homes and had it converted into where the men could stay and they'd have home cooking. They didn't eat in restaurants. They had home cooking. They liked that. And on Sunday they didn't practice. A lot of the players liked to play golf and he made arrangements for them to play golf out at the Augusta Country Club. He didn't let his pitchers go. He said it would tighten their shoulders, he didn't want his pitchers to play golf. As a pitcher, John Smoltz is a scratch golfer.

Mr. Cobb played golf some. I never followed him on the course. I saw him come back two or three times. One time his socks were wet, wringing wet, and he was there and I said, "Mr. Cobb your shoes and socks are wet!" Mr. Cobb had hit the ball into Rae's Creek where the Masters is played.

Did Ty Cobb ever disappoint you?

The only time I was a little disappointed in Mr. Cobb was when we were playing the Cardinals in a practice game. He hit a line drive over the second baseman. It really was a good hard single. He tried to stretch it into a double. He went around first base and he went into second base and he slid a long way and they tagged him out and they said he threw sand into the umpire's face. Feister was the umpire. Mr. Cobb stood up on second base and Steamboat Johnson was the head umpire that day. The crowd went wild. He wouldn't get off the base. He said he had beaten the throw and he said he didn't throw sand. I could just see the sand and I was a little fellow and I was way in the back. He would not get off the base. Refused. Steamboat Johnson, the umpire, went out and Rogers Hornsby was there and heard it. He said "Ty, you're out, get off the base." Mr. Cobb said no, he beat the throw. Steamboat Johnson said when he got back to home plate and turned around that he was calling the game if Ty Cobb had not left the field. He did stay there. He did call that game and they had to refund the money. All this is historical. They refunded the money.

Mr. Cobb went down to the Richmond Hotel and talked to their manager. And said come on back out there and we'll finish the game but he made a fool of himself, I thought.

I rode home with him. He had a Franklin automobile, and he went in and he told Mrs. Cobb. He said he had made the biggest mistake of his life and he told Mrs. Cobb about it. The next day they played in Greenville, South Carolina and they played the Cardinals, the same team. And the umpire said, "Ty, I don't guess you want me to umpire that game." This is what I heard, I didn't hear him say this, I heard it secondhand. Mr. Cobb said, "You be over there, I hired you to umpire two or three games." He was over there and they played, it was serene. It was about 50 miles from Augusta. The little shortstop, Tavener, hit a foul ball into the stands. The ball hit a woman and Mr. Cobb went up into the stands to see if she was alright and she was alright. I was told that he said, "You go and see a doctor and whatever the expense is, you send it to the Detroit Tigers and we will pay that

expense." It didn't hit her in the face or anything, but it did hit her. But I thought little things like that were heartwarming.

By the way, I heard people say that a lot of the players talked about Mr. Cobb behind his back. I listened. I listened in the dressing room. The only thing I heard them say about Mr. Cobb was something good. They'd say, "Did he help you today? Do you think I can get him tomorrow?" During spring training, see, in those days, I had the run of the dressing room so I heard what they said.

Ty Cobb hit five home runs in two days. Did you see that?

I didn't see it. The only record I have I remember is that he hit 6 for 6 one time. Remember, I didn't get up there until June, so I missed the first two months and I had to come home the last of August to go back to school so I missed September. Once or twice I might have stayed, but I had to get back to start school, so a lot of things went on, of course, that I didn't see or didn't witness.

You moved to Atlanta in...?

When I graduated from this high school in Augusta, I went to a little college out here, Oglethorpe. Mr. Cobb was invited out to Oglethorpe to a dinner they were giving one time. I met him out there in the yard and oh, those boys said, "You know him?" But I didn't carry on about it. They all had bought little cheap 10¢ baseballs and a lot of them wanted him to sign them. He did it very graciously.

I took my son, when he was 12 years old, to see Mr. Cobb in Atlanta just shortly before he died. They had just given Mr. Cobb a sterling silver bat because he was voted the outstanding baseball player for the first 50 years of the century. So there Jack and I were in the hospital and Mr. Cobb was trying to sit up in bed and we chatted. He had a stack of stock certificates. I don't know what they were because it was none of my business, but I knew they were stock certificates. He had a brown paper bag by his bed and that bag was his briefcase. He would take those and put them in the paper bag.

When you were in Atlanta in the '40s and '50s, you would see Ty Cobb at the Biltmore?

Often. That's correct.

This was a real typical visit. He knew how to get in touch with me in Atlanta. He had my telephone number and I did a lot of little favors even up until the end, even when I was married and I had a family. I would go down to the Biltmore and meet him there. I met his second wife once and she was a very beautiful woman. She had been a tennis player, but they got a divorce. At the Biltmore, we'd go up and we'd just order a sandwich and eat in his room because people recognized him then. You know, they would get around the table and he couldn't eat his lunch. So, we just had a sandwich and a cup of coffee. He would ask me about Augusta. Mr. Cobb owned a lot of property in Augusta, a lot of property. He built a big apartment house, he named it "The Shirley." The Shirley Apartments.

The last time I saw Mr. Cobb he was in the hospital, at Emory, and he had been there several days. I went up and all the children were there that were alive. I asked the nurse if I could go and see Mr. Cobb. She said, "No." I asked the members of family and they said, "Let him go in, he's real close family to Mr. Cobb." So I went in and he looked like he was asleep, he was heavily sedated, just lying there, his hand on the bed. And I kind of tiptoed up to the bed and I got right down and I said, "Mr. Cobb, this is "Jimmy m' boy." And I thought, my imagination, I can't say so actually, but I thought I saw his mouth quiver. I won't take an oath on that, but I want to think he did. I took his hand and I said, "Mr. Cobb, this is "Jimmy m' boy," and I squeezed his hand like that. And again, I thought I felt him squeeze it back but he probably didn't and I got to the door, I saluted him. I said, "Goodbye Mr. Cobb," and that was the last time I ever saw him.

Any stories from Augusta?

One of the nicest things I ever saw him do was in the wintertime, when he was home. We would all go to see the cowboy show on Saturday morning and then go across the street to a place called Home Folks where they had hot dogs and lunches and sold out of town newspapers and cigarettes. One afternoon there was a boy, he looked like he was a farm boy who had just been plowing and he was kind of tattered, and he asked how to get to the Lynnwood Hospital. That was a veteran's hospital in Augusta. And some man says, "Well, you get a streetcar and you go so far and you get off," and Mr. Cobb heard him and said, "Son, I live out that way." He said, "I'll take you out there." Mr. Cobb had a LaSalle coupe. Herschel and I sat there and Mr. Cobb was driving. The car had wide running boards Mr. Cobb was driving and he was talking. He liked farm boys as he had grown up on a farm. I don't know what they were saying, but when he got up to the Lynnwood Hospital, he stopped the car and I was the only living soul that saw this happen. Herschel was looking at some girl walking down the street or something, and I saw Mr. Cobb hand that boy a $20 bill. That boy thanked him and he walked on off and he kept looking back. He didn't know it was Ty Cobb. He walked and kept looking back like who in the world is that man? And we drove on to Mr. Cobb's house. But little things like that meant something.

Let me ask you a couple more questions because I'm going to run out of tape. I know that you told me that you went to the first Masters. Didn't the golfers and the athletes used to hang around the locker room? Tell me if you would about Ty Cobb and the players, the Masters, Bobby Jones and Grantland Rice.

I'm so glad you asked that. That's a good question because I worked at the Masters the first year. There were maybe 10,000 people. We'd hold the ropes and we had on a uniform. That got a little attention. We'd run down and hold the ropes around the greens so the people could stand back and I saw Bobby Jones, I just saw him play a few holes down there at the first or second Masters. They paid me $2.50. That was how much they paid me to work out there on those few days, but my home was very close to Rae's Creek. That was the only creek that went through the course. I used to go down there and hunt and fish and catch little fish and there was a big nursery and they would say, "You be careful down in there, don't break any bushes or anything."

I'm glad you asked that because Bobby Jones was practicing there one day and Mr. Cobb came out and had on a business suit and they were talking right on the range. Bobby Jones and Mr. Cobb had a lot of good hunting dogs, some fine dogs. I couldn't butt in. I stayed back if Mr. Cobb was talking to somebody, I knew not to butt in. But I stood back and I just saw Bobby Jones lean down and pet one of his dogs and talk to him a minute.

And then, another time, I saw Grantland Rice. One night at the table, Eddie Collins was there at the dinner table as was Grantland Rice. Whenever I spent the night over there, I ate a meal over there. Mr. Cobb asked me one time, I was a little fellow, to say a blessing. I lost my breath and I said something like, "We thank you for the food for Christ's sake, amen." That's the way I ended it. Eddie Collins almost died laughing at me when I said that and Mr. Rice, after the meal was over, when we were all in the living room said, "You want to say the blessing next time?" I said, "Noooooo." But the last time I saw Mr. Rice was at the Masters. He was walking with a group of people and I walked up to him and I said, "Mr. Rice," he said "Yes?" And I said, "You don't remember me. I met you out at Mr. Cobb's house." "Yes Jimmy, I remember you," he said "You ever say the blessing again?" I said "No, Mr. Rice, that's the last time." But that was funny and that's the way I remember Grantland Rice.

You were at the Masters when Gene Sarazan made his double eagle, weren't you?

I was there, but I didn't see it. It was a rainy day, and you know the story there. But I heard it out there, I never heard so much whooping and yelling and it was just... you couldn't do it again in 100 years. He didn't hit long balls, but he hit that one and since that time, Ralph McGill wrote as an editor of the Atlanta Constitution, that over 10,000 people have claimed to have seen that shot and I imagine standing around the green, there might have been 40 or 50 people. A lot of them say, "I saw that shot," and that's the reason it makes me so mad when they talk about Mr. Cobb when they didn't see what happened.

They talked about how he sharpened his spikes. He didn't sharpen his spikes. I heard people say that and I never saw it. There wasn't a file in the dressing room. I cleaned his shoes. I dug dirt and clay out of his shoes and I didn't see any sign of sharpening his spikes. Someone asked him in his home, "Ty, do you ever sharpen?" He said, "I never sharpen my spikes. Never." But somebody started that rumor and it spread and it spread and it spread and it spread. But I never saw him do it.

I've got 25 or 30 personal letters that he wrote to me and a lot of autographs that didn't come off of checks. I'd get some of them at the hotel and had him write some to my boy. I've got all of them in the bank.

I have one more question. It would appear to me that the thing in Mr. Cobb's life that he loved the most was really baseball.

It was.

Baseball was his true love, being out on the field, just being a baseball player. Maybe being a person was more difficult.

He was eccentric in some things, but playing baseball over at Royston, when he was just a toddler, he was a little, bitty runt and he could play so well. He played with some of the big ball players because he could run the bases, but he would play and play and he played for some church teams around. His father wanted him to be a doctor. Finally, he said, "You go and play baseball, but don't come home a failure." I have several letters of his, always in green ink. If you don't get one in green ink, be wary of it.

This has been a wonderful hour for me. I think that story telling and verbal histories are very relevant and it's always seemed to me and Linda that it's hard to figure out where you're going if you don't know where you were. I mean, life is a journey and it starts somewhere. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses and I think that the way Ty Cobb intersected in your life, and the way you intersected in his, is so interesting. Ty Cobb would probably would tell stories about Jimmy Lanier, "Jimmy, m' boy."

Sure.

You couldn't be as passionate about him unless he was equally passionate about you, because you don't give something back to somebody unless you were getting it from him as well.

Abe, I loved Mr. Cobb as I would a father and he loved me. He didn't have to tell me that. I know he did. Let me tell you a story. One time Herschel was driving a Lincoln automobile that Mr. Cobb owned. We had been out to his grandmother's house.

He was driving this Lincoln and he was eating a sandwich. It was a nice new automobile and I was sitting over there and riding, he was not speeding, maybe going 25 or 30, and we went down this dirt road and he dropped his sandwich and that car went off the road and hit about five pine trees. It didn't smash the car, but it bent some fenders. He said, "Jimmy, I've got to get this car fixed before I go home," so I go, "Herschel, they can't straighten this car out." These fenders, the front fender and the back fender were bent badly. I said, "They'll have to straighten it out and paint it and everything," and he said, "I can't go home." He was almost home. He said, "You go in and tell him. He'll kill me." So, I walk in there and the sportswriter for the Augusta Herald was in there and the football coach for Richmond Academy was in there just visiting.

I went in and I guess I must have been pale as a ghost and I said, "Mr. Cobb, I want to talk to you," and I was trembling too, and Herschel whispered to me, "You tell him that a drunk man was weaving down the road and I was afraid that he was going to hit me and I turned off the road and I hit those trees."

The first thing a father ought to teach his child is to tell the truth. I didn't tell Herschel I would do it, but I went up to Mr. Cobb and I said, "Mr. Cobb, Herschel had an accident. He wasn't hurt but he bent the fenders on the car," and Herschel came in and told him that the drunk man had run him off the road. I stood there and when Herschel left, Mr. Cobb said, "Don't go home Jimmy, I want to talk to you, Jimmy m' boy," and he sat down and he looked me right in the eye, he had robin eggs blue eyes. He said, "What really happened?" I said, "Mr. Cobb, we went up to Grandma's house and, coming back, they gave us some sandwiches and Herschel was eating his sandwich and it slipped out of his hand and he didn't mean to do it (I was trying to cover for him) but he couldn't get control of the car and he wasn't going fast (I tried to soften it up) but he hit those trees," and I said, "He feels mighty bad about that." He said, "Thank you, Jimmy, m'boy." That's all. But he learned the truth and it said to me in my heart that man trusted me more than he trusted his own blood and that meant a lot to me to think that he would do that and I didn't cop out on Herschel. He just wanted to know the truth, that's all, but Abe, I always like to talk about Mr. Cobb and I've just gotten started. I'll talk forever and ever.

Unfortunately, I'm all out of tape. I can't begin to tell you how appreciative I am for your time.