The My granddaddy was a Texas ranger back during the Great Depression.

He passed when I was just a kid, so most of the stories about him I got from my dad,

but some of them are some real doosies, and this is probably the one that sticks with me the most.

As you can probably imagine, the Great Depression meant a lot of folks turned to crime to make ends meet,

and those already raking in ill-gotten gains had to really kick things up a gear to maintain the kind

of lifestyle they'd become accustomed to.

As a consequence, Cochran County became the bank robbery capital of West Texas, with banks and credit unions in

Morton, Whiteface, and Bledso getting hit on a daily basis sometimes. A lot of the folks who robbed

the Bledso credit union tried skipping over the border into New Mexico, but the feds got wise to them

whizzing off along the 125 and started posting

officers over in tantam where they could head him off and take him into custody. But then, not everyone

tried burning rubber down the 125, and a lot more folks seemed to be getting away than my

grandpa and his fellowangers would have liked.

One time, Grand Pappy trying to track this one bank robber across the state,

and this son of a bitch shot a female clerk after she spooked him,

so there's no shortage of tips coming in from folks who think they spotted either him or his getaway car.

One of these tips is from a guy who said he was 99% sure

that he spotted the getaway car in the parking lot of some isolated motel called the Yellow Rose.

Granddaddy drives out there to talk to the proprietors who turn out to be this nice old couple

living out of a kind of semi-retirement out there in the middle of nowhere.

They said the place used to be fairly lively back before Wall Street crashed, but by 1932,

it was nothing but a glorified retirement home for him.

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