Cumire Dixon & Joseph Bova about 1912

According to the 1930 census, Joe worked as a salesman for a time before returning to making harnesses and saddles. Cumire's brother George W. Dixon, who was married with two children, Josephine and Kenneth, was staying with Cumire and Joseph in 1930. George, a lawyer and veteran of the Spanish American War, had become estranged from his wife. His son Kenneth often visited his Uncle Joe and Aunt Cumire. ⁴ By 1938 Joseph had bought a four-door Ford sedan which he kept until he bought a new 1949 Ford sedan. I believe that he kept that car so long because there were no cars made from 1942 to 1946 during World War II.

Joe liked to hunt. He and Cumire used to go to Dodge where he would hunt squirrels, rabbits and deer. In December of 1939, when I was almost three months old, Joe and his son, my Dad, Keith, went hunting for squirrels. Here they are with their day's kill.

Squirrel Hunt December 1939

On October 13, 1940, The Houston Chronicle ⁵ published an article about the Straus-Bodenheimer Company featuring Joseph and his coworkers. Here is what the Chronicle had to say:

"Manufacturing saddles in Houston adds up to a business of more than $350,000 annually and in the state reaches $1,000,000. One reason for the magnitude of the Houston industry is that the contiguous southeastern part of the state is a cow country and cowboys must have saddles to ride the ranges. In addition, the dude ranches and camps which have sprung up in recent years create a further demand. But go with Jess Gibson, staff photographer, through the plant of the Straus-Bodenheimer Company, Preston and Prairie, to learn how a saddle is made.
J.P. Bova, 1115 Robbie, cuts a selected steer hide from a pattern for a saddle. He's been doing it for 36 years. Each saddle is cut to size."

During the 1940's Joe made a silver saddle and harness for Glen McCarthy, the owner of the Shamrock Hotel in Houston. Mr. McCarthy's horse wore the saddle and harness during the Fat Stock show and Rodeo parades.

My brother Joe and I used to spend weekends at our grandparents' house, especially when our parents wanted time away from us kids. Grandmother Cumire had a featherbed that she kept in a corner of the dinning room that we slept on. During the winter months, especially on a cold Saturday morning she would fix hot chocolate. After I finished the cup of chocolate, she told stories about what she saw in the foam that remained in the cup. Grand Dad often took us riding in his car. As he went on his errands on a Saturday, he would teach me to read the billboards as we drove around Houston. This was before the first grade, so I was about five or six years old. Because my birthday is in September, I was delayed from starting school until age seven.

By 1949 television sets had become available in Houston. There was only two or three stations in Houston at that time. However, that did not deter Grand Dad from buying one of the first TVs in the neighborhood. I remember being told that it cost one thousand dollars! On Saturday mornings we watched the Howdy Doody program.

Grandfather had been under the care of Doctor Thomas Watson of 1925 Studewood Street since March of 1950 ⁶. On Saturday, afternoon, October 7, 1950, Joseph Paul Bova suffered a heart attack while watching wrestling on TV. ⁴ Our parents and grand mother had made him comfortable in the front bed room of their two bedroom home, while medical help was called. However, he died in about an hour after his heart attack. He was buried in Forest Park Cemetery, Houston the next day. He was nine weeks short of his sixtieth birthday.

Cumire was born in Bastrop County, Texas near the village of Red Rock on October 9, 1887. Her parents, Alexander Marion Dixon and Susan Matilda Shoots Dixon, were farmers. In 1891 her parents moved the family to Walker County near the town of Dodge where they bought 1000 acres. Her father died in Dodge on February 4, 1892 when she was only four years old.

When she was 23, she went to live in San Antonio. Cumire shared a room with her cousin Emma Donnell Upshaw. After Cumire returned to Dodge she met and married Joseph Paul Bova. They often drove up to Dodge to visit her mother and other members of the Dixon family. In 1925 her younger brother Charles Alfred, bought a small house in Dodge where he lived with his wife, Gladys Roark Dixon and their children. Of their 12 children five survive: Wayne and Jane (twins), Nancy, Cynthia, and Alfre Marion.

Cumire's mother lived with her brother Charles Alfred in Dodge. Joe and Cumire helped support her mother. In 1932 they helped finance her older brother George's bid for governor in the Democratic primary. He lost to MA Ferguson.

Alfre said that Aunt Cumire could tell you where every angel was sitting in the room. When my brother and I stayed at grandmother's house she would read tea leaves and the foam in the hot chocolate.

Cumire died on April 24, 1954 at the age of 66. She is buried in Forest Park Cemetery, Houston Texas, next to her husband of 35 years.