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Bobo and Blair by
Bob Bowman | |
Two
Shelby County, Texas, communities might have passed into history without as much
as a footnote if a singing cowboy had not popularized a marching and dice playing
chant by East Texas soldiers.
Bobo
and Blair, two farm communities on the old Houston
East and West Texas Railroad, achieved fame when Texas Ritter borrowed the
soldiers’ chant, “Tenaha,
Timpson, Bobo and Blair,” for his popular song.
The soldiers’ chant
was used by a National Guard Unit composed of men from Shelby County who discarded
the familiar cadence of "hup, two, three, four" in favor of "Tenaha,
Timpson, Bobo and Blair," their home towns.
Dice players also took
up the chant to make the point of ten on a pair of dice and others argue that
the popularity of the saying began with a conductor on the HE&WT
line, which passed through Shelby County.
The conductor supposedly called
out the various destinations along the way to Shreveport, and the alliteration
of "Tenaha, Timpson, Bobo, and Blair" made it a favorite of passengers.
Historian
Robert S. Maxwell of Nacogdoches
claims that the song had little to do with the HE&WT
other than through the recording by Ritter that made the towns and the railroad
line famous.
Leon
Hale of The Houston Chronicle remembered that, as a young soldier in World
War II, he watched crap games in Italy.
R.R. Morrison, commanding
officer of Company B, 3rd Texas Infantry of the National Guard, said an outfit
was shipped together from Shelby County to France during World
War I, but just before being shipped out, some of the soldiers got into a
crap game. One was trying to make his 10 point and yelled "Tennyhaw!" Another
soldier from the unit, betting on the shooter, yelled "Timpson!" Others, used
to hearing these names, called "Bobo" and "Blair."
Hale wrote, "Morrison
told me that the Tennyhaw cry went overseas with his company and fell on fertile
ground. It spread, big time, among dice players who’d never been to Texas."
As time passed, Tenaha
and Timpson remained viable
towns in Shelby County while Bobo
and Blair faded as rural communities. Tex Ritter’s familiarity with the four towns
came from his knowledge as a boy growing up in neighboring Panola County.
Bobo got its name from John Henry (Billy) Bobo, who opened a sawmill in the community.
while Blair was first known as Blair Switch, which was likely named for an engineer
for one of the trains. | |
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