Bob was 6 foot 6 inches tall and had very broad shoulders. I am 6 foot 5 inches tall and probably similar to him in some ways now. Bob was born in 1912 and was the eldest of 5 children and my father was the 2nd born in the family after Bob. They were a wild and adventurous bunch which helped to survive the Teens, twenties and 1930s as well. Dad was born in 1916 so he was 4 years younger than Bob. Dad was about 6 feet 2 1/2 inches tall and very strong and wiry and valedictorian of his high School Class. However, he almost didn't survive to be valedictorian because he bought an old Harley Davidson 74 when he was 14 and a German Shepard ran up on him riding down a gravel road and they crashed. His 12 year old brother Tommy was on the back of the motorcycle and the dog died attacking the motorcycle. When the bike eventually laid down Dad stayed with the bike to protect Tommy his brother but Tommy had already jumped off and didn't want to be injured so he just tumbled to protect himself but wasn't seriously injured but the motorcycle ground my Dad's right leg into the gravel and the hospital wanted to remove the lower part of Dad's leg but his Dad wouldn't let them. This was before Anti-biotics so they didn't have a way to prevent gangrene from setting in. So, instead he went through a really rough time because they put him on Morphine instead which makes you hallucinate a lot. Later Dad said he had a nervous breakdown but I think instead he was having morphine withdrawals. I think the extreme stress of all this contributed to him becoming valedictorian of his senior class as a way of coping with everything in his life. He kept his leg but had awful memories of hallucinating for 6 weeks while they had him on morphine as a pain killer until his leg healed. So, he had to spend at least 6 weeks in the hospital while his leg went through various stages and they cured him.
He had been forbidden to buy this motorcycle so he bought it and kept it at a friend's house. He was riding Tommy on the back of it when Tommy was 12 and he was 14. As you can see this was a very adventurous and wild family of kids.
Bob was a really big guy and defended all his family from anyone and anything. When my father was 2 years old Bob was 6 years old and had to defend his brother from either a fox or a coyote in Arizona that Bob was trying to keep as a pet that he caught when it was a pup. But, now it was older and meaner because how well does a 6 year old keep a fox or coyote all by himself?
So, it got loose and bit my Dad where your kidney or liver is (likely liver) so the animal tried to eat my Dad but Bob and the family hound dog rescued Dad. Later a doctor said that if it had bit any closer to my Dad's liver that Dad would have died because the thing bit a chunk out of the side of my Dad when he was 2. Their father was wiring up the miner's quarters then at a copper mine in Morenci, Arizona. This was where my Dad was born in Morenci. He took my Mom and I there to see the big open pit Copper mine there when I was 8 years old in 1956 in our new 1956 Century Buick on our way back from a church Conclave in Santa Fe, New Mexico then. So, Dad got bit by this animal in 1918 in Morenci, Arizona then.
IF you have ever seen an open pit dump truck the wheels are about 8 feet high on them. So, they are basically much bigger vertically at least than even a train engine. I have a picture somewhere of me standing next to the wheels and I'm not even sure I come up to the axle of the wheel it is so big.
Here's how big they are:
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