As a child in Texas, I read J. Frank Dobie among many other books, including Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. I still have the copy of The Longhorns my maternal grandfather, Dr. A. B. Greenwood, (who raised shorthorn cattle) gave me for my twelfth birthday. As we will see, however, the collecting bug did not hit until a good bit later. Although I was a great reader, comic books and baseball cards were more in my collecting wheelhouse.

In about 1986 my friend Professor Stephen Alton (who introduced me to my wife Pat, something even more consequential and fortunate for me) gave me a copy of the Dobie biography An American Original. The Life of J. Frank Dobie by Lon Tinkle. This of course brought back memories of my earlier reading of Dobie but did not by itself lead to any immediate veers into bibliomania. In a short time, however, a few circumstances combined to show me the glories of book collecting.

First, my wife Pat and I liked to attend antique shows. In those long-lost pre-internet days, in person shopping was the only choice. Chronicling it on the internet is only a bit meta, right? In any event we attended a large Houston antique show that featured a book dealer. In his booth he had Dobie books I had never seen. Opening one I discovered it came with two original Dobie letters. What was this great world that had such treasures in it?

You could buy actual letters from your boyhood author and great Texan J. Frank Dobie? I had never considered such a possibility, and the price was surprisingly (to me) reasonable. I bought the book and letters, of course. The first step along the path to … book collecting. Three other important influences affected me to set the hook and make me a collector of J. Frank Dobie.

I do not recall the precise order of these influences, but about the time in question I discovered Detering Book Gallery and its major domo Oscar Graham. Detering’s was a wonderful treasure house of a general bookstore. Before long I learned my way up to the combination office and rare book room where Oscar was often found. There I began to see many fine books and to start the process of learning about them. The relationship is of course mutual – book collectors make bookstores, but equally much the existence of good bookstores make people into collectors.

Jeff Dykes was a book collector and later dealer. A Texas A&M man it is a bit ironic that I, as a Rice and UT guy, count him among my most formative influences. I never had the chance to meet Dykes in person but came to know him through his writings. He began collecting Texas Ranger books, later meeting Dobie and building one of the great Dobie and Ranching collections, now at Texas A&M. Along the way he wrote about collecting Dobie and other western books in a way that showed the shear fun he was having. In fact one of his best books was called I Had All the Fun! I wanted in, and Dykes was a major influence leading me to begin collecting the works of J. Frank Dobie. A third step on the path.

Over the years I met and bought books from a great many wonderful booksellers, in Texas and across the country. In the mid-1980s however, I met Ray Walton of Austin at a book show in Houston. He had an item in his booth that Dykes had described in his book on his Dobie collection. I was of course as green as grass in book collecting. It seems crazy now, but I recall it took me a while as a beginner to work up my courage to actually speak to such an august personage as a rare book dealer! When we spoke, he was very nice of course and answered some of my inarticulate chatter. I did not buy the item I had my eye on, but I did take his card.

After the book show, when I was at home, I consulted Dykes and he confirmed my memory that the item in question was a rare Dobie “item.” I was immediately struck by remorse by failure to buy the book when I saw it. Who knew when I would ever see another copy? In those days I regularly went to Austin for work. As it happened, I had an Austin trip coming up. Again I worked up by courage and telephoned. I introduced myself and mentioned I had spoken to him about Dobie books at the recent Houston book fair. Would it be possible to come by and see him when I was in Austin? A date was set. When I arrived at the appointed evening, he had the Dobie item I was interested in ready for me, but in addition he had spread out a great many of the other items Dykes listed as rare and hard to find “items.”

I was awe struck. My mind boggled to see the cornucopia in front of me. Dobie collecting was going to happen! The third set of seeing the rare Dobie items I read about in Dykes spread out in front of me was the third and perhaps most influential step that made me a serious single author collector. At book shows I now introduced myself proudly as a Dobie collector. And Ray Walton became something of a mentor to me, which turned out to be a blessing to a novice collector, as he brought many great things my way and taught me much about books and collecting.

To be continued.