There probably aren’t more than a handful of people in the world who qualify for the position, but Moody Anderson just needs to find one. He’s looking for someone to take his place as owner and proprietor of his amazing Country Life Museum in The Grove, Texas. Someone who truly loves Texas history.

The unique museum includes the entire downtown business district (minus one building) of The Grove, a turn-of-the-century (19th century, that is) agricultural town, complete with an authentically furnished bank, post office, general store, saloon, blacksmith’s shop, doctor’s office and more. Anderson has filled the town with fifty-plus collecting-years’ worth of antiques; now he’s looking for someone who will continue his 35-year restoration project with the same enthusiasm that has always characterized him. It’s a tall order.

Moody Anderson grew up on a farm that’s now inside the city limits of Round Rock. “I-45 runs through the fields where I picked cotton,” he says. The family also raised cattle, goats, hogs and sheep. His two brothers, his sister and he “all worked hard,” he recalls. After graduation from high school in 1947, he joined the Naval Reserve, then the Texas National Guard. He rose through the ranks as an administrative officer during his thirty-year career, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1979. But halfway through his National Guard career, he discovered his real life’s work. In the early 60s, he got the urge to start buying old blacksmith tools.

“I was becoming a sort of couch potato,” he recalls, “sitting around watching football games, and all. One Saturday, I saw a sign announcing a farm auction behind a barn in Elroy.” He attended, mostly out of curiosity, and decided to bid on some old blacksmith’s tools that nobody wanted. “Something told me I ought to start buying this stuff, that one of these days it was all going to be gone.”

His new interest became almost a compu ...

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