Wednesday, August 14, 2024
When Mike Goldsby was growing up in Houston, he danced to the music of Bob Wills and became a big fan of the famous fiddler’s music.
He got on with life, got an education, earned a PHD in Psychology and is now Director of Clinical Research at Family Psychiatry Clinic in The Woodlands. He stays busy but continues to have strong memories of dancing to that western swing music when he was in high school.
Eight years ago, when he was taking his son to enroll in West Texas A&M University, he drove through Turkey where Bob Wills worked as a barber during the early years of his musical career. He discovered that Turkey was a bustling town after 1928 when the railroad came to town. The city got its name from the wild turkeys in the area. It was first called Turkey Roost.
The city has a big Bob Wills festival every year. Dr. Goldsby noticed a lot of rundown buildings as he was driving through Turkey. One of them was an old Phillips 66 service station. His research indicated that it was the very first Phillips 66 service station built in Texas. He bought it and restored it. Then he bought the old Hamms barbershop and restored it. He did the same thing for an old Ford dealership building and a dry goods store.
He fell in love with the people of Turkey and the clear air of the Panhandle area, which is quite different from the air around Houston. Dr. Goldsby was so taken with the city of Turkey that he plans to retire there.
Mike is mechanically minded and has restored a bus like the one Bob Wills used for touring. He found out that Bob Wills’ old house was in the middle of a pasture being used as a hay barn. He contacted the owner, a dentist in Amarillo and asked if he could move it to town where Mike owned a corner lot. The dentist was fine with that.
All the buildings Dr. Goldsby has restored now have or will soon have historical markers. Mike did all the research on the buildings and now several small towns want him to help with their historical marker projects.
Dr. Goldsby says the old bus like the one Bob Wills had will be in the Bob Wills Day parade next year.
Mike has also found some old cars in Turkey that he’s restoring. He spends as much time as he can there when he’s not at his clinic, which treats about three hundred patients a day.
A tall monument at the edge of town honors the former barber, one of the founders of western swing. Bob Wills day is celebrated the last Saturday in April every year.
