26 Toombs County Magazine
go out there to clean the tack and get everything ready
for the customers. I was basically free labor,” laughed
Tim. “But I got to ride the horses when people weren’t
there.”
During the summer months, Tim stayed with his
grandfather in Parsons, West Virginia. “My grandfather,
Irvin Cox, was a veterinarian. I stayed with him in
the summers from the time I was six or seven until
his death when I was 13. He was a Renaissance man.
He graduated during the Depression with a degree
in veterinary medicine and couldn’t get a job. So,
he went back home and farmed and worked in a
tannery to supplement his income until he could get
his veterinary business going. He did a little bit of
everything. He would come to your house and sew up
both people and horses. He would do a C-section on
your dog and then set your son’s arm. He was quite a
guy. Back in the Depression, people didn’t have money,
so he would have five pounds of bacon or something
like that left on his porch for payment.”
When Tim would visit his grandfather, the
veterinarian would rig the car with four by four pieces
of wood so Tim could reach the pedals. “He hated to
drive,” said Tim. “I would drive him to all of these
little calls all over town to check on horses and cows
and pigs and everything else. We were pulling calves
and setting animal’s legs. We were doing a little bit of
everything. I learned so much from him too.”
Tim remembered one day in particular when he
was driving his grandfather around. “I saw a flashing
red light behind us. Back then, the police car had only
one red light on top like Barney Fife. I was maybe nine
years old. The policeman came up and spoke to my
grandfather. He asked him how he’s doing. The whole
time I was sweating thinking I was going to jail. Finally,
he asked, ‘So this is your grandson?’ My grandfather
nodded. ‘Well, you be careful,’ he said, and we drove
off.”
Tim went to nursing school in Bozeman, and
then to Utah for a P.A. degree. After Utah, he went to
Kansas and got his Nursing Anesthesia degree. When
he returned to Montana, he said, “They had closed
the hospital where I was from, so I decided to look for
some place with no snow.”
It wasn’t that he didn’t like the snow. There was
nothing Tim loved more than snow skiing. In fact, he
loved it so much that when he was in nursing school
in Bozeman, he would set up his class schedule so
he could ski in the morning before class and then go
back to the slopes after class and ski until dark. But
after several knee surgeries and finally, a total knee
replacement, it didn’t take a degree in the medical
field to know his skiing days were over. After that, Tim
saw no enjoyment in sticking around in a place with
a bunch of snow. A job offer brought him to Vidalia in
1985. And thirty-three years later, he still calls Toombs
County home.
Tim no longer raises
Appaloosa, but he and his
wife Rita share the duties
of raising the Black Angus
cattle, goats and ducks at
Roose Angus Ranch near
Alston.