"Look 'em over, girls"
Calin Coburn Collections ©2004
According to Tucsonian Roy Drachman who knew Bob when he was in Tucson High, Carl Loeb's father owned an amusement park (Past Time Park) and he was murdered in a robbery. "Jimmy Smith was a wild character around town."
1921 saw Bob starting school in the seventh grade at Safford Junior High School, transferring to Roskruge Junior High the following spring. An outstanding athlete, he progressed normally through the grades, graduating from Tucson High School on May 25, 1928. During the summer holidays he worked as a lifeguard at the Wetmore Pool. Wetmore was more than an Olympic-size pool. It featured outdoor movies, a roller rink, a picnic park and a dance hall with a spring-suspended double maple floor so it was a gathering place for young people. During this time he started riding the rails, looking for work and seeing the country. He summed up his feelings in the line of a song when he wrote, When I feel the urge I gotta travel anywhere the tumbleweed blows....
For some reason, Bob let friends and interviewers believe that he had attended the University of Arizona for a time and studied harmony structure, etc. The University has no record of this although a careful search was made. His brother Earl confirmed the fact that Bob had no university education: "Bob was not too interested in continuing his studies." Bob was, however, a member of the Arion Club in Tucson High and his name is listed with the glee club in the 1928 school yearbook, The Tucsonian. His interest in harmony structure and love of harmony singing may have had its roots there.
Bob told William Bowen, editor and publisher of The Pioneer News (a North Hollywood Sons of the Pioneers fan club magazine) that he wrote a poetry column for the "Arizona Wildcat" called Tumbleweed Trails. A careful search through the back issues of the "Wildcat" from 1927-1930 found no evidence of such a column. However, Bob may have been thinking of the Tucson High School newspaper, The Cactus Chronicles. Bob was definitely a member of the staff of The Tucsonian, the high school yearbook.