A Boy named Bobby

THE STORY BEGINS She was sitting in one of the seats about half way back on the isle in the Old Greyhound Bus which was one of the popular ways of travel back in the 40’s. She was a pretty country girl with a cute little pug nose and shiny brunette hair, traveling by herself. She was on her way back home to be with her parents who lived out on the home stead outside of Atoka in southeastern Oklahoma where she was raised up. If you looked a little closer you could see the reason why she was going back home. She was almost 9 months pregnant and this was her first baby. She needed her mama in the worst way. She would go between crying and sighing for the bus to hurry up and get there. She had been traveling for two days and was very uncomfortable after riding over 1,000 miles with many stops in many towns. She was the last one out of eleven kids to leave home and the last one to get married. Now she was coming back to where she wanted to have her baby, out on the home place, the Hankins’ Ranch. Finally, the bus pulled into the Atoka bus station down on Main Street. She was hugged and greeted warmly by her mom and dad when she got down off the bus. After her dad got her suit cases loaded in the old car, they headed out. It was good to be riding with her parents again, seeing all the familiar surroundings and landscape. Then she starts crying again when she sees the ranch, back home again! After a few days of settling back into her old room, enjoying the home place and her mama’s good home cooking from the old wood-burning stove, it was now time to ring up the phone and call Doctor Cotton. They wanted him to come out to do the delivering. I was getting ready to make my entrance into this big old wide world. So, at 5:30 in the morning on June 6th, 1941 mom delivered her first child at the home place. I don’t know who all was around, but there were a lot of family and excitement. Everyone was happy for mom’s great job of giving birth to a healthy strapping baby boy. There was lots of joy and gladness to have another member of the Hankins clan. They named me Robert Louis Sims, Jr. after my dad and nick-named me Bobby. I was the last grandchild born out on Chicken Fight Road on the old home stead in those Oklahoma Hills. My dad wasn’t able to be there. He came out a few days later because he was a bus driver and had to haul a load of solders across country to a base somewhere. He was thrilled as most dads were back then when their first child is a boy, and many named them after themselves. I had no idea what a great family, the Hankins Clan, I was entering into. There is such a rich history, that I wanted to interject what a couple of my aunts have researched and written so you can get the full, colorful and grand history of this wonderful family. I am going to take you way, way back to how this Hankins family had its beginning. My mom’s baby sister, Alice Claudine, was the first to research and go back as far as she was able and then write it all down. She did a super job and all the family members are eternally grateful for what she did. Heritage starts a lot farther back than when one was born. The stock that I come from, especially from my mom’s side, is pure, 100%, pioneer-cowboy-homesteader, Okie blood. This is how it all got started. So Aunt Alice take it from here-