00:00:08
Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underware. Listening past, you can’t predict anything brought to you by first Light. When I’m hunting, I need gear that won’t quit. First Light builds, no compromise, gear that keeps me in the field longer, no shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it out at first light dot com. That’s f I R S T l I t E dot com. Join today by author Mark Lee Gardner, expert on all things wild West. But first, the Bob Kratchett Report.
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Speaker 2: Do you think the audience looks forward to the Bob Cratchitt Report every every Monday.
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Speaker 1: That’s the thing I’ve been worried about. Yeah, you think maybe no one cares, uh huh as much as I care.
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Speaker 3: I think you’re onto something there.
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Speaker 1: How’s it going? How’s how’s it going? As Bob cratch It just real quick, Phil’s just so everybody knows. People just discovering the show. Phil is he’s uh, he’s been cast into Christmas Carol.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it’s true. We just dad tiny, Tim’s Dad. Rehearsals are rolling, they’re going well. Uh, it’s always fun watching watching it come together. You know, it’s it’s show business. Baby, We’re We’re.
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Speaker 4: I don’t have a whole lot to add, Steve.
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Speaker 2: If you in case you you do, you get like groupies, groupies theater groupies, like girls that want to come talk to you.
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Speaker 3: Uh.
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Speaker 2: The first time someone asked me to sign their program in the alley behind the theater, I was taking up.
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Speaker 1: I was telling about getting bugged.
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Speaker 2: They they do exist, but they are they are very they are few and far between.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, Phil, do you use a special Bob Cratchit voice in the show?
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Speaker 1: Yeah? How do you say it’s up?
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Speaker 3: I do? I do have an English accent?
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Speaker 4: Oh?
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Speaker 1: I think you guys could just not do that.
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Speaker 2: You just think we should go full American and just spanning all different regions of the United States.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, like I was saying, you would do US currency.
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Speaker 3: US Yeah, because that’s confusing and.
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Speaker 1: Just have have you ever watched Death of Stalin.
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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that’s the guy from who created Veep did that phenomenal movie.
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Speaker 1: But everybody just talks like how they talk. They’re not all trying to have that like that boris like, do the accent you do when you’re a Russian.
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Speaker 3: In the movie.
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Speaker 2: I’ve never I’ve never been a Russian in a movie.
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Speaker 1: But yeah, they don’t they don’t do all that. Yeah, and it’s like Steve Bushmi, but he talks like he’s Steve. Yeah, that’s good.
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Speaker 2: I think you are are masking your love for theater and spectacle. You you try to direct it towards me. But this is just a way for you to share all of your ideas that you have for how to how to just create a great theater production.
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Speaker 3: I think you’re in the wrong line of work.
00:02:59
Speaker 1: Frankly, Yeah, that’s true because you know what my wife points out to me a lot of times. A lot of times I’ll yell at my kids about something and she’s like, you’re talking through the kids to me. This is me you’re talking about. Because I can get away with that, but I can’t get away with saying it to her. So I’ll say it to them in her presence. Yeah, like who left all this land everywhere? But I know it’s hurt.
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Speaker 3: My wife is the exact same thing to me.
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Speaker 5: I hate to tell you this, but that might be a universal tactic because I tend to the same.
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Speaker 1: I like mom did oh oh it was mom? Okay, Okay, just don’t like to see that. Just make sure it’s not you. Guys.
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Speaker 6: By the time this airs, you and I will probably be coordinating our outfits for to go see Bob cratching the matinee.
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Speaker 1: I don’t having science as I’m here for cratching love it. Mark Lee Gardner’s the author historian of The Weast Musician. I didn’t know this Turkey hunting enthusiast.
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Speaker 4: I’m an addict, seriously, Yes, every spring.
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Speaker 1: Huh rare book collector.
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Speaker 4: Yes.
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Speaker 1: And I heard that you compete with Random in the state sales.
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Speaker 4: I do, yes, if there’s one. If there’s one today, I’ll be there right, but they’re usually not on Tuesdays.
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Speaker 1: Author of many books. You know, you know I liked it. You did a lot. You did that thing where you did what’s that thing called? Where you do like you take questions like wild West questions. It’s that it’s on Uh what the hell was that?
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Speaker 5: Wired?
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Speaker 1: Yeah? Wired? Where you like field? You like the helpline and you field wild West questions. Dude, you got a lot of breadth when it comes to wild West history, like good wild West details.
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Speaker 4: Well thanks, yeah.
00:04:43
Speaker 1: Uh. Here’s some of Mark’s books. What are we sitting here? Right front. Right here, we got in front of me, I got shot all the hell Jesse James, the Northfield Raid and the wild West Greatest Escape. We got brothers of the Gun sitting in front of us. Wider Doc Holliday and a Reckoning and Tombstone also the author of Wagons for the Santa Fe Trade. That sounds very detailed.
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Speaker 4: It’s very detailed. I think it’s sold like three hundred copies. It’s a very specific. It’s the definitive book on wagons.
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Speaker 1: That’s like, but that’s like hard history.
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Speaker 4: Hard history. That’s what they call a material culture study.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, and explain that to folks real quick, Like what will they learn in that book? Wagons for the same.
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Speaker 4: So they’re going to learn what the freight wagons look like, what they were made out of, and how the styles changed from the eighteen twenties up through when the trail ended in eighteen eighty. How many mules you know, what weight?
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Speaker 7: You know they’d.
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Speaker 4: Averaged six pounds or three tons, I mean, you know the dimensions. All from primary sources, newspaper accounts. And it was actually the first study of freight wagons, and it came about because the Santa Fe Traill has made a National Historic Trail by the Park Service. But it’s also the only book on Santa Fe Trail freight wagons.
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Speaker 1: So you got to hell on a Fast Horse, The Untold Story of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett. That’s a good one. We talked about shot all the hell. You got a book on Roosevelt.
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Speaker 4: I do on the rough Riders.
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Speaker 1: Rough Riders, Theodore Roosevelt, his Cowboy Regiment, and the Immortal Charge up San Juan Hill. And a book on one of my personal favorite subjects. I’m kind of a little big horned Edmund Fitzgerald. Guy, Okay, I think I might do a shirt where it’s the Edmund Fitzgerald but custers on it bringing everything again.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, it would be the only shirt like that in the world.
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Speaker 1: That that book. I haven’t read years on this, but i’d like to The Earth is all that lasts? Crazy Horse sitting Bowl in the Last Stand of the Great Sux Nation? Does that cover like this the Summer of seventy six?
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Speaker 4: And yeah, I mean I have a whole chapter on just the battle itself, but it’s there. It’s their life story. It’s a dual biography of both these Lakota leaders. But but yeah, I have a lot of information about the battle, and I just stopped there on the way up here.
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Speaker 1: Actually yesterday, isn’t it haunted? Mass It’s haunted, dude. It’s one of those few places speaking of like like if you’re in Whitefish Bay, you can feel the Edmund Fitzgerald, if you’re on Last Stand Hill, you can feel it. It’s like you can feel it. I cried on Last Stand Hill first time I went there. I went there on the anniversary. Oh my buddy Seth got married on the anniversary a different time. Oh not him, that’s Brody Okay.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, although I got a couple ancestors that were in that battle.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. If you look at the dead, Brody’s all over there.
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Speaker 4: Oh well, it’s a very moving site. I’d completely agree with you. I mean, especially if you’re if you can go there, you know they’re open, well they used to be who knows now, but they used to be open till uh dust the sunset and nobody’s there then and you just stand on a Last Dan Hill or go to Reno Hill. You know, it’s just a very moving h you know, just a neat experience.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of suffering that day. But you know, the thing you can’t get over is just the absolute exuberance that must have been felt by the Northern Cheyenne in the Sux to be like just after like all these just stunning defeats and massacres, to just that one day, one time, just well and bring it to them, you know what I mean? Like, how good for them, How good that day must have felt.
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Speaker 4: I think you’re absolutely right. But also it was a tremendous relief. I mean, these soldiers had come to kill them. I mean they had families and children in the village, and they had protected I mean, that was the reason they were fighting. It wasn’t just to get a victory over the white man. But those soldiers were gonna hurt them, and they were protecting their families and their mothers and sisters. And they did it. And then there’s all this booty they got, you know, springfield carbines and cult revolvers. Of course, sitting Bull had warned them in his vision that they weren’t supposed to take anything from the soldiers, and if they did, it would mean they’re doom. But they disobeyed the vision, and some Lakotas field that that was the downfall of their people. But yeah, the vision told him, do not take booty, do not take souvenirs or whatever. But how could you help, you know, not help. There’s all this stuff, ammunition and the horses and so, yeah, they took plenty of booty.
00:09:40
Speaker 1: Have you ever read the account of Wooden Leg.
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Speaker 4: It’s one of the best accounts shining accounts.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, he like he leaves the battlefield. He like face scalped. A guy at the battlefield tried to give it to his mom or grandma. She didn’t want it, like a side burned scalp splits. They all take off the cavalry. The other the survivors, the surviving cavalry guys come up. They like scour the whole battlefield, bury everyone. Wooden Leg and his buddies go off to the west to go hunt for crow Indians they like. They don’t find any crow. They find like one family and decide not to kill him for some reason. He hasn’t explained why they decided not to kill him. And then they come back to the battlefield to get stuff that they remember that they didn’t grab at the time, to like, if I remember right, there should be a few shells over here, or I remember, like I threw a belt down in the bushes there, and they like were kind of like coming back through looking for stuff just wild.
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Speaker 4: Well, they were finding stuff at the battle. I mean for decades. I mean they were still finding stuff that had been lost. And you know, maybe an royal washes out and they find a canteen and one guy, I mean this was involved a court case. It was like maybe in the nineteen sixties or seventies found a pair of binoculars, you kid, Yeah, and then of course he told people about it and he was arrested. It was a huge no kid, Yeah, you’re not supposed to take anything, sure, the National Park Service sites or federal land.
00:11:20
Speaker 1: So have you read Plainsmen of the Yellowstone.
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Speaker 4: Yes, but it’s been a long time so.
00:11:24
Speaker 1: It’s a hell of a book. But there’s an interesting take. Like, like I said, I’ve always been a big, little, big horn buff, you know, and Plainsmen of the Yellowstone he treats it like he’s like a lot of like to summarize his view, he’s like, you know, everybody loves it, everybody writes books about it. It didn’t matter. It was a non event. It was a non event. This all lands where it was gonna land where it landed. They were gonna kill them all and bring them onto reservations, and they did. And it’s a non event. It was just nothing like if you look at like what actually matters, He’s like, it’s just it’s a thing that historians love to talk about. What it didn’t matter.
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Speaker 4: The only reason it’s it’s huge, of course, is because the guy that was killed George Custer, right, I mean the Civil War, I mean truly an amazing soldier to Civil War. I mean, he earned all the accolades that he got, and he’s this darling you know the American Army and Michigan man. Yeah yeah, yeah he uh, the Michigan Brigade, the fighting Wolverines, all that stuff. So but anyway, yeah, I mean, if if it had been some other officer, maybe it wouldn’t have been as big a deal or as covered as widely as it was. But it was Custer, you know, the guy that had this amazing reputation. He had fought Indians before at the Washitas, so you know the story about they no one knew who he was, that the La Cosaa giants didn’t know it was that’s contested.
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Speaker 1: It is contest a little bit, but some of the women and that there’s a Southern Cheyenne woman that was visiting and was there. She said she recognized him.
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Speaker 4: She did this, that’s in my book. Actually, yeah, yeah, she she they were going to scalp and mutilate him and she said, no, no, stop, that’s that’s he’s the husband of Mona Sita, who you know. She claimed that Custer had buried.
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Speaker 1: But anyway, and it was her that took the sewing all, yes, and punctured his ear drums.
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Speaker 4: Right, yeah, because that goes back to when he after the Washton in Oklahoma, he met with some Chayan leaders and one of the shy leaders dumped some ashes from his pipe, you know, on his boots, and he said that was so that he would remember next you know, he keep his promise that he would not go against their people or whatever. And and so the reason for puncturing the all into his ear drum was so that he would hear better in the other world now.
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Speaker 1: And I think she said maybe I kicked dirt up on him with my horse. I think that’s something she said. She was like speculating that could have happened, but you know.
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Speaker 4: He was he wasn’t apparently, you know, he had like a finger tip cut off, and but he wasn’t mutilated like all the other bodies. I mean, Tom Custer was just unrecognizable. And the idea behind that was that in the Land of Ghost, you know, what you did to them in this world, that’s how they would be in the Land of Ghost.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, there’s that move of like slash, make it so you can’t run, sure, yeah, make it so you can’t shoot your ugly, make so you can’t make love.
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Speaker 4: Right, So, but no, he was apparently it was very you know, yeah, in good shape.
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Speaker 1: I believe there was two guys that weren’t touched. One guy was under a pile of dead horses, so that doesn’t seem like they found him. And the other guy was Captain Keyo. And Captain Keo had on a he was some I don’t know, some like branch of Cathalois and I can’t remember, that’s right, Yeah, And he had on he had on some kind of emblem, some kind of jewelry that and all this stuff is like it’s everybody contradicts everybody, you know, I mean, it’s like so and so said this. So and so says that, so and so says no one recognized them. So and so says they recognized them. Either way, he had this thing on this this religious peace.
00:15:24
Speaker 4: I think he was in a papal guard at one time or something. And it might have been they had to do with that.
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Speaker 1: In’t anyways, They’re like he might be They felt that he might be some kind of religious figure and didn’t messle them.
00:15:36
Speaker 4: Well, he was a highly respected officer. He was one of the more well liked officers in the seventh Cavalry.
00:15:41
Speaker 1: I think his horse is the only thing that survived Comanche.
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Speaker 4: Well, the Lakotas and Chyenne survive.
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Speaker 1: Sorry, only like the only I shouldn’t see the only thing that survive. What am I trying to say.
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Speaker 4: Of the men with Custer and their horses? I guess they wound up stuffing that horse and then they did. You could go see it in Lawrence, Kansas. Is that it’s a the Natural History Museum. Yes, oh yeah, and they’ve not too long ago they kind of refurbished Comanche. But no, yeah, so he’s there because he was at Fort Riley in his last years in Kansas. And uh and yeah, he’s fully it’s mounted, and he’s got a you know McClellan saddle, and uh yeah, yeah, and uh.
00:16:21
Speaker 1: He had some arrow holes in him and some bullet bullet holes. I think crippled up pretty he was.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean he was, but apparently he was. They felt he would survive. He was in good enough shape, so uh yeah, so they they made sure they kept him, took him back.
00:16:35
Speaker 1: This has nothing to do with that. We’ll get on with this in the meant But when after all the buffalo were killed off, we were talking about this in our Hide Hunters thing. After all the buffalo were killed off, you know, horn to Day came out to do to put together museum collection. And he comes out and starts scouring the country between the Yellowstone, Missouri and eastern Montana, trying to find museum specimens works. His ass off. Can’t find any. But the biggest bull he finds that he kills for the museum. He kills it. It’s already carrying four slugs in it. Oh wow, yeah, already carrying them. So they can put up with something.
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Speaker 4: You know, Theodore Roosevelt went into the bad lands, he would just had to kill a buffalo, you know, and later he becomes you know, later he’s wanting to preserve the buffalo. But he did it after after he got his buffalo.
00:17:28
Speaker 1: Him, he’s like, yeah, preservation stars. Now he killed two. The second one he regretted a little bit. I think he killed one uh Medora, right outside of Manora, then killed one outside the park somewhere. I believe, didn’t he. Randall Rail’s got PhD in history. Do you got one of those?
00:17:47
Speaker 4: No? I don’t know.
00:17:49
Speaker 1: His is right up there. It’s a smaller one underneath my very big one.
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Speaker 4: Oh nice, nice.
00:17:55
Speaker 1: Think of that.
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Speaker 6: Yeah, it’s almost like a to scare replica.
00:18:01
Speaker 1: I don’t even know why you have that there, because because like guests like you come in will get intimidated. Oh okay, you’d be like, oh the big guns. Now yours is a nice frame.
00:18:15
Speaker 4: Yeah you large it?
00:18:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, I just photo.
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Speaker 4: Large it.
00:18:23
Speaker 1: I want to get into your books. But can we hit you with some because when you did that thing for Wired where you answer Old West quest Yes, can we hit you with some Old West questions?
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Speaker 4: Mold worst questions. I don’t know if I’ll have the answer, but I’ll try.
00:18:34
Speaker 1: Is there any reason to believe? Is there any reason whatsoever to believe that people would Uh. Any is there like a famous case example of someone getting shot and falling over a balcony rail like that is like trope of Westerns. I can’t Is there like a famous story that inspires all those scenes?
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Speaker 4: Nothing famous. I mean there may be you know, this may have happened sometime in the Old West, but I’m not aware of any famous.
00:19:03
Speaker 1: So just they just like it and it became like a it became a trope, and.
00:19:07
Speaker 4: I think, so yeah, yeah, now I’ll probably get lots of emails. Yeah, oh yeah, you know Frank James knocked that guy off the balcony. No, I don’t know of any famous case.
00:19:19
Speaker 1: Were those doors, the swinging doors? Was that a thing?
00:19:23
Speaker 4: Well, I got in trouble for that, so I didn’t think it was.
00:19:27
Speaker 5: What are they call him batwing doors?
00:19:29
Speaker 4: Yes, and I you know, I look at historic photos and could not find, you know, these swinging doors, but apparently they were used late in the nineteenth century. But for instance’s an episode with Doc Holliday and it gets really nerdy. But you know, Doc Holliday got into a gunfight, a minor gunfight in Leadville and it’s in this saloon and it talks about this guy walking in the door, you know, so it’s like, well, it wasn’t you know these swinging doors he walked in the door. Yeah, and it had glass in it.
00:20:00
Speaker 1: So they don’t picture anyone knock here.
00:20:03
Speaker 7: No.
00:20:03
Speaker 4: Yeah, But anyway, but apparently there were, you know, late in the nineteenth century, you did start to see them introduced, and the idea was behind it. They didn’t want like children looking in being able to see, and you know in the summertime that’s so it kind of blocks their view and also let some air in because I’m sure it was filled full of cigar smoke.
00:20:23
Speaker 6: And I was going to say, it seems like a seasonable, a seasonal yeah style.
00:20:28
Speaker 4: And then a lot of these salute that had the swinging doors, they had both doors. They had a door you could close, but also they had to swinging doors as well. So, like you say, in a little privacy screen, it’s kind of a privacy screen. Yeah, But I just don’t see it prevalent, like in the eighteen seventies Dodge City or Wichita. I just I have not seen any evidence that it was.
00:20:46
Speaker 1: That’s a good to look at all those old photos and didn’t see them or not exactly.
00:20:50
Speaker 4: Yeah, and go through the newspaper account. I mean you could even go through advertisements in historic newspapers and oh yeah, here’s the new swinging door. You need it for your saloon or whatever.
00:20:59
Speaker 1: But that doesn’t this or it does exist.
00:21:01
Speaker 4: Well, it does exist. Oh the mean the ads ads. No, I have not come across. But apparently there are patents for these kind of spring loaded hinges. I haven’t seen them, but I’ve been told that there’s actually patents that were done. So if they swing back and for I mean, you would have to have something, you know, to make it do that.
00:21:18
Speaker 1: I guess if I ever built a house some scratch or do a big remodel, I was already planning on putting in a urinal. Okay, do them damn doors there you go? Yeah, okay, huh, well.
00:21:30
Speaker 5: Kind of yearnal like a trough or like like like a communal one or.
00:21:36
Speaker 1: What’s kind of their alone, Yeah, next to the toilet.
00:21:40
Speaker 4: I’ve actually been in restrooms and houses that had those swinging doors or whatever.
00:21:44
Speaker 7: Yeah.
00:21:44
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, but see, I want to create tension. We’re I’m gonna have a very modern home, old swinging doors all right, do you know what I mean? Like it’ll like like it creates a power balance between the two motifs for the bedroom. That would be good, right, yeah, yeah, okay Rin Krin was saying, you got some insights into you got some insights into cowboy hats. Yes, oh okay, cowboy hats.
00:22:12
Speaker 4: What do you want to know?
00:22:13
Speaker 1: Like did everybody Okay, let’s got yeah, Like what would you regard to be? I know you’ve said in the past, someone said, like when did the wild West end? And you thought the wild West ended with the car?
00:22:25
Speaker 4: I when when you don’t see horses on the streets anymore, that seems to me that that era is gone, you know, so when.
00:22:32
Speaker 1: When it was like that that you were just pointing out, there’s ways people defined exactly like some people will say like barbed wire, right, like the open range closed land was owned, it was fenced. The West died and you had to you had to take that, like you view it like when the horse ceases to be the primary mode of transportation.
00:22:52
Speaker 4: Yeah, and and it I just think the horse is so interwoven with the American West. I mean, uh, you know, cowboys and you know, buggies, you know, and the mules of course, pulling wagon. I mean when you don’t see that kind of those animals as transportation, I mean, that’s so associated with the West. I mean you don’t have a cowboy without a horse. Yeah, I mean there’s no cowboys that are just afoot. I mean they’re on horseback. And same with the planes Indians. I mean their mobility is because of the horse, and so when the horse is not part of that fabric, I just see that as kind of the end of what you could call the Old West. Now you could argue, is that nineteen thirties, I mean nineteen forties, because you know he’s in some places of Wyoming and Montana. I’m sure people are still riding their horses into town. Sure in the nineteen forties, maybe even the fifties.
00:23:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, they’re all like working on the Manhattan Project and dudes are riding around on horses.
00:23:45
Speaker 8: Sure, twenty minutes from here, I saw a guy get off his horse and go to Stacy’s right in Geluton Gateway.
00:23:53
Speaker 1: Was he being cute?
00:23:54
Speaker 4: No think I.
00:23:56
Speaker 8: Think he had the proper jeans and the proper boots, so I don’t.
00:24:00
Speaker 5: And his driver’s license was suspended.
00:24:06
Speaker 1: I like to play that game.
00:24:07
Speaker 6: Whenever we see an adult on a bicycle.
00:24:11
Speaker 1: What are those little scooter you know, those little like hover hoverboard. Yeah, but there’s no handlebars on one of those are called hoverboardsboards? Yeah, their day just not far from here. On Kagi is the guy going down the road on one of those with a white cowboy hat on the phone.
00:24:35
Speaker 8: Taking a picture of that and sent it to us CRUI No.
00:24:39
Speaker 1: He wasn’t like no, I was the world wasn’t a hipster vibe. Let’s get more of a crazy guy just like everything about it. I was like a local eccentric. Yeah, I’m trying to weigh stereotypes to the reality real quick. Just gy have a handful of these. You go to, let’s pick a your eighteen seventy Okay, is it really like in eighteen seventies? It really There is the wide brimmed hat, and that’s like it. No, everyone all men wear a hat, and all men wear a cowboy style hat.
00:25:18
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don’t think so, No, No, I don’t. I mean, you know, your cowboys in the seventies, they’re gonna have some kind of a wide brimmed hat. But I think that they’re if you look at historic photos there’s a lot of variety even into how they wear them. I mean, you know some guys have their hats tilted up. Yeah, you know, the lily crowns are creased. I mean, there’s just a lot of difference. Uh So, I just don’t think you can say there’s one standard. You can probably look at what’s work.
00:25:44
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean the broader family of like like a hat with a body of a hat and then a wide circular brim.
00:25:54
Speaker 6: Yes, a hat that a tourist would buy on vacation.
00:25:56
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that’s pretty standard.
00:25:58
Speaker 1: It’s like like when you leave home in eighteen seventy, if you’re a man, you’re not bald at you like, you’re not hatless.
00:26:05
Speaker 4: No, no, no, the hat is yeah, very common. Now a little bit later you have the introduction of the bowler hat, the Derby hat or whatever. And there was a story about in Tombstone if somebody came in wearing a Derby hat, that Doc Holliday would go around with the triangle, ringing a bell behind him and kind of harassing them or whatever because they stuck out.
00:26:25
Speaker 1: You know, they were a little bit What was he calling them out about.
00:26:28
Speaker 4: I think because they were like a newbie or like a dude or you know, it’s just maybe a little uppity or something or this kind of latest fashion, and so he’s going around. But you know, apparently he was reported as word a Derby hat later a few years later. So I don’t know how if that looks like it’s a bowldy, you see, I’m true.
00:26:46
Speaker 1: Like a lot of the later gunfighters had those kind.
00:26:49
Speaker 5: Of well often there’s like an English villain in the kind of movies that wears a.
00:26:54
Speaker 4: Bold yeah, and you know bat maaster Center. I think there’s a photo of him wearing a Derby hat, you know, later in his.
00:26:59
Speaker 5: Career, where slip on cowboy boots with jangly metal spurs that announce their presence.
00:27:07
Speaker 4: Well, they definitely wore cowboy boots, you know, and they could go up to the knee. There’s different styles of those boots. One of the more interesting to me is what they call a mulear boot. Have you heard of this? So on the sides, instead of having the leather loops that you would pull, there’s a long leather strap on each side that you could grab onto and pull you and they called a muliar boots.
00:27:29
Speaker 1: You can just just a strap, not a loop, just a.
00:27:32
Speaker 4: Strap, Yeah, a long strap maybe like that long that you would grab hold of. Those were fairly popular.
00:27:36
Speaker 1: And then you tuck them inside.
00:27:37
Speaker 4: No, you leave them on the outside. They’re flapping on the outside.
00:27:40
Speaker 1: Oh, hence the name muleers.
00:27:42
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, And I you know, there’s different theories, uh in the I mean these boots, you know, they could they could be very tall. They go up to the knee or whatever, and you’re out on the range and their boots are sweaty when you take them off at night, they get wet, and you know it might be a little nicer to have something to really grab hold of to pull those on.
00:28:02
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:28:02
Speaker 4: You know the story of Billy the kid the night he was killed and he was in his stocking feet, and a lot of people think that, oh, you know, he would never walk across that parade ground and his stocking feet, and and it’s like, do you want to pull your boots back on after you’ve taken them off You’ve been in them all day, and no, it might be easier to walk over here, across the corner and get that slab of meat and just leave the boots behind.
00:28:24
Speaker 1: So you know, when he went over when Billy the Kid went over to get a chunk of meat off that thing, Like, what was the sort of situation, Like, is it just sort of matter of course that there’s a there’s a side of beef hanging in the courtyard.
00:28:40
Speaker 4: Well, no, it’s not a matter of course, but he had been told. So he gets in really late to this house at fourt summer, this adobe building, and he’s hungry. And the woman in the house, who is Pat Garritt’s sister in law, Billy the Kid’s girlfriend. Though there’s some dispute on whether she was the girlfriend. The family says that they were not boyfriend girlfriend, so we don’t know for sure, but he was staying there and she had a husband he was there too, But anyway, she tells him that there’s a sight of beef hanging over at Pete Maxwell’s place. So that’s why he goes over there with the butcher knife and his gun because if he gets the meat, she was gonna cook it up for him. And then that’s where, you know, he meets Garrett’s two guards or deputies i should say, are outside and they don’t know what they don’t know what Billy the Kid looks like, and They just they think he’s a ranch hand or he works for Pete Maxwell. But as soon as Billy approaches them, he sees these guys in the shadows and he pulls his gun right away, and he’s going ke and s ke and s you know who is it? And John Poe, one of the deputies, is saying, Okay, calm down, friend, you know we’re not gonna hurt you or whatever you and but they don’t know it’s Billy. And that’s when he gets up on the porch. She backs into the room. Pat Garrett is on the side of Maxwell’s bed and he recognizes Billy’s voice, as does Pete Maxwell. He says, that’s him and Pat Garrett. Now here’s the thing. You know, people are on Pat Garrett’s like, oh you shot. You didn’t give Billy a chance to kill you?
00:30:03
Speaker 1: You know.
00:30:04
Speaker 4: Well, you know, Billy the kid had said he was gonna kill Pat Garrett the next time he saw him, and he’d already killed a Lincoln County sheriff in a Lincoln County deputy. And why would Pat Garrett give this guy a chance? You know? It’s like it was Billy the kids. So he shoots right away. Sure, the first shot gets him in the heart. Uh, and then he fires a second shot. You know, there’s there’s it’s a moonlit night. But if you fired a Colt revolver, black powder smoke, I mean this smoke fills the room. And so he fires right away, you know, you want to make sure he got him. Of course, Billy had already clasped by then he runs out and Pete Maxwell runs out, and they almost shoot Pete Maxwell, the deputies because you know, these guys are outside, they hear a gunshot and they don’t know what’s going on, and anyway, and don’t don’t shoot that’s Pete, you know whatever. And then they get a they light a candle, put it in the window, and they see his body inside and they’ve got Billy the Kid. But but anyway Pat Garrett was saying, is pet Grett wrote a book later called The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid, and he says, people, if accused me of hiding behind a cat couch, and he says, if third bit of couch I would have been hiding behind it, why would I You know, I’m not an idiot, you know.
00:31:06
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, but that whole thing of like being a chivalrous around shooting. I mean the way we hit dudes now we do it from outer space.
00:31:16
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, well this is.
00:31:21
Speaker 1: I mean it’s like, you know, you’re just driving down the road your car. You know, it’s not like someone comes on. It’s like stick them up, yeah, or.
00:31:27
Speaker 4: In your boat.
00:31:28
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:31:29
Speaker 4: But well here’s Steve. Here’s the thing about that. It’s like, and I think what’s so amazing about White Herb. I mean most of his job, or a lot of his job, was disarming drunken cowboys. I mean there were these laws in these towns, you know, whether it was Wichita or Dodge City, you can’t carry a gun. And so today, I mean you can go to YouTube and if a policeman sees a gun, they shout gun and the fireworks start. You know, I mean, you’re gonna be dead. But Wider went up to these guys and he would physically disarmed then and usually his technique he was hit him in the head with the you know, the barrel of his revolver. But he was so close quarters time and again in disarming these guys. And you know, he had no training. There was no police academy. Then the goat no, you know, there was nobody knew about karate or whatever. I mean, It’s like he had to physically disarm him. And I tell you, lots of officers got killed disarming cowboys. So ed Masterson, he was the sheriff or the Marshall and Dodge City. He was killed disarming a cowboy.
00:32:32
Speaker 1: Fred he.
00:32:34
Speaker 4: Was a brother, Fred White and Tombstone. And if you saw the movie, you know you see where Curly Bill kills you know, Fred White was trying to disarm and he grabbed the gun and pulled it towards him, and the gun goes off and he gets a mortal wound. So it was a very dangerous thing to be a law officer disarming cowboys. And they didn’t do it at a distance, you know, they did it up close. Bat Masterson said, Whiter was the bravest man he’d ever known. He showed no fear whatsoever, and he survived. He never got wounded, I mean, which is kind of bizarre too.
00:33:05
Speaker 1: So what do you what do you take of the I see here that Wyatt’s six shooters up for sale right now? Yes, okay, yeah, it’s being auction. Yeah, I haven’t pulled up the link yet.
00:33:18
Speaker 4: Yeah, well you know it’s Uh, it’s one of those things where the auction says it comes with a binder full of providence, and the providence is this, So this.
00:33:30
Speaker 1: One I’m looking at sight right, Okay.
00:33:31
Speaker 4: So this man was a friend of whiteb and also a friend of Josephine. But who is White’s wife’s forty five? Yes, and it was purchased in They have the cult letter. So it was purchased in Los Angeles at a store in nineteen twenty two. WHITEERB doesn’t die till nineteen twenty nine. So this man who is a friend of Wyatt, he dies, but then his son remains close to Josephine, Wyatt’s wife, and the son got the revolve and then he told his children Josephine told me that this was Wyatt’s gun. So we don’t have a letter from Josephine saying it’s why it’s gun. We have this guy’s word, the son of the man who was a friend and their children, the grandchildren are saying, you know, here’s our you know, and they signed notarized statements and all that kind of thing. But also, I mean, Josephine was known to acquire a gun or two and claim that it belonged to Wyatt.
00:34:28
Speaker 1: You know.
00:34:28
Speaker 4: Jesse James’s mom did the same thing. She would buy guns and oh yeah, this belonged to my son, and she ah, and she would make money. She actually this is funny. So they would they would sell at Jesse james grave. He was very next to the house there in cart near Carney initially, and they would sell pebbles from the grave of Jesse.
00:34:50
Speaker 1: I’d buy one of those.
00:34:51
Speaker 4: Oh I would too. But then when they ran out of pebbles, they went to the creek and got more pebbles and put up on the grave. So I get you know, it’s still from his grave, but it might wasn’t there a long time? A short time. So every white erp gun, there’s a question on providence. I mean, it’s you’re just not sure. And to me, it may very well be true. You know, that story may be true. But like I said, I you know anymore, uh, anymore, you would almost have to have somebody dig up white and put the gun out of his grave to say, you know, yeah, that was for sure.
00:35:27
Speaker 8: Uh.
00:35:27
Speaker 4: And it’s the same thing with all of these Old West figures and outlaws. And there’s such a big money involved in One of the bangs of a historian’s existence is that courthouses have been rated of documents with white Earth any.
00:35:41
Speaker 1: Earth versus just the documents valuable.
00:35:43
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean they’ll clip the signatures and and uh. And I know of the case is when I was researching this book that you know white Earp’s you know certificate where he commissioned is a law a lawman in Missouri. Nobody knows where it is. Fortunately there’s a there’s a microfilm copy of it. But people have gone in and these county courthouses that are not well protected or secured, especially the remote ones Lincoln County, New Mexico, a lot of government legal documents with Pat Garrett’s name on it have been stolen. In fact, a few years ago there was a collection. It was offered at auction and the state of New Mexico went in and then they were county records. I mean there were legal government documents, and they approached the auction company and said these belonged to us and the family. In order to avoid they just donated him back to the state. And here’s the thing people should know, Steve, is that if it’s a government document, it never ceases to be a government document. Even if you found it at the dump, it’s still a government document. So something comes up for sale that’s a league like a land patent or whatever it is. If it’s a county, you know, like a warrant for arrest or whatever, don’t buy it because you know it doesn’t belong to the public. It belongs to that county or the state or wherever it can from. But a lot of collectors he just can’t resist. Oh, I gotta have this. It’s got Pat Garrett’s signature on or whatever. But anyway, it makes a historian’s life a nightmare because you know, it’s removing the historical record, and so we’re missing chunks of information because these documents ended up in private hands that are taken out of these courthouses, and then sometimes they’re you know, they’re destroyed or lost or whatever, so we don’t even know what we’re missing. So it makes it really really tough.
00:37:27
Speaker 1: I got a buddy, well he’s dead now, but he was a very well known arrowhead hunter. He’s kind of like an outlaw turned good arrowhead hunter. He was down in Colorado. He’d been an oil he’d been an oil engineer, oil executive. I came here with he like came up through engineering, became an executive, but was a big arrowhead hunter and then turned legit, started volunteering for site surveys and whatnot. Anyhow, I was driving around him one day in New Mexico and he’s telling me a story. He he’s at some kind of a state sail or yard sale or something or another, and he sees a fulsome point bolo tie, Oh wow, and like something about the patination on it, like he knew it was a foalsome point. It wasn’t a fake, Like he just looked. He said, I looked at it, and I knew what I was looking at. That was a falsome point glued to the just like you got on right, Okay. I wish I remember where it came from. He telled me the whole story. He buys it for next to nothing, peels that falsome point off there and on it is still the museum coding number.
00:38:42
Speaker 4: Oh wow.
00:38:43
Speaker 1: And he found the home for it.
00:38:44
Speaker 4: Oh nice.
00:38:45
Speaker 1: Somebody just walked away and it was like, rolls it over and it’s like I’m making this up, like a zero one one nine or something where they do like white out and then put a thing on there and then and then like nail polish over.
00:38:59
Speaker 4: It or whatever. Yeah, No, that’s that’s the boy stuff.
00:39:02
Speaker 1: Well, it’s just like like you’re saying, like people was walking. Yeah.
00:39:05
Speaker 4: Well, you know, my wife was a curator at the City of Colorad Springs Museum several years ago and she had a woman come in and it was with a Van Bige Vanbrigil vase and Van Bergel was a very well known early pottery maker in Colorado Springs. So anyway, she brings it in because she wanted my wife to give her some information on it. Well, my wife takes it, looks at the bottom and there’s an accession number on it and it’s from their museum, and my wife’s my wife says, this is an accession number. The lady grabbed it out of her hands and ran out of the buildings. Yeah, she got it like a yard sale or something. But anyway, they tracked her down and a lawyers were involved, but we got they got the vase bag. But no, it’s like the lady, I mean, she did not want to hear this. I mean because those pots, those faces. It was probably like a thirty or forty thousand dollars van brigle Vase. But no, she rap it and took off. It’s like I’m out of here, you know.
00:40:04
Speaker 1: Uh. The other day, a couple weekends go, I was at my buddy’s wedding down in New Mexico, Jeremy Romero. He’s getting married. I you know his wife, Shannon. I saw it. Never clicked her made family’s names and all that in her background, Like I mostly know him. Anyways, in the in the whatever the hell the ceremony, they throw a nod to Grandpa Art mm hmmmmm yeah, And I said, do you mean like the later when you’re supposed to say congratulations? Later we’re supposed to congratulations. I’m like, does that mean like the IRPs? And she didn’t know where everybody fit with, like the irt family.
00:40:42
Speaker 4: Suddenly he became very interested.
00:40:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, does anyone have any objections to this union? Actually, more of a question here got perked up during the ceremony. So, so you your new book Wider Doc Holliday and a reckoning in Tombstone. Oh, let me hitt you with this one further. Do you feel that what Doc Holliday, that the script was wrong? They screwed the script up in Tombstone. Doc Holladay should have been saying, I’ll be your huckle bearer.
00:41:21
Speaker 4: That’s that’s an urban legend, huckle bearer. Oh yeah it is, Yeah.
00:41:26
Speaker 1: That’s what I I didn’t say, that’s what it said. No, no, check me on answered yeah yeah. But he did it like an accusation.
00:41:33
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, yeah.
00:41:34
Speaker 4: I was not implying that you that you were wrong. True, yeah, no, it’s not. No, no, hell is he talking about? Well you can find that. I mean, actually that came up recently and I looked through newspapers dot com and like one of the first references is in the eighteen fifties and it was regarding like so and so we’re gonna, you know, he wants you to be you know, or have a shooting match. And the guy goes, yeah, I’ll be your huckleberry, Like yeah, but not huckle bearer, No, not huggle Because.
00:42:03
Speaker 1: The urban legend is that they used to use like huckle wood for the rails on a what do you call the grave thing, a box a castin that the coffin had like handrails, and the handrails they would use like huckle wood, like a huckleberry. Well, I don’t make any sense.
00:42:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don’t even know what a huckle tree looks like.
00:42:24
Speaker 1: So well it’s if it’s a huckleberry tree, it’s a mighty thin ra Yeah.
00:42:29
Speaker 4: But no, that’s that’s that’s not true. That’s not true. And I have heard that that story about the huckle bearer, but no huckleberry, you know, And.
00:42:36
Speaker 1: What does it mean, I’ll be your huckle boy.
00:42:38
Speaker 4: Well that means I’m game. But I don’t know the origins why it’s associated with the word huckleberry. But it’s just the implication is, oh, yeah, I’m game, I’m your man.
00:42:47
Speaker 1: Or whatever you like out like a trout in like Flynn.
00:42:49
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
00:42:50
Speaker 1: Maybe you’re looking.
00:42:51
Speaker 6: There’s the idea that you’re looking for huckleberries.
00:42:54
Speaker 4: And what I found and I didn’t even I don’t even know.
00:42:58
Speaker 1: I don’t even know if the people spitball in here.
00:43:00
Speaker 4: I don’t even know if the people that said it knew what it knew where it came from. And that’s one of those phrases where oh yeah, I’m here, and people just started using Now. I don’t think it was that common, but it was. It was at least in the nineteenth century. It was used now I have never seen Doc Holiday at a contemporary source saying I’m your huckleberry. But Kevin Jar, the scriptwriter, was a brilliant screw. I mean, he did research and he really looked at the historical record and somewhere he came across that phrase, which was brilliant. You know, I’m your huckleberry. And Val Kilmer did it exceptionally well. But one of the neat things about the movie Tonbestone is there are lots I mean, Kevin Jar found lots of quotes. For instance, uh, you’re a daisy if you have or you’re a daisy. That actually is in the testimony from after the Ok Corral gunfight, Kurt Russell says, or one of the one of the Earth says it’s a regular slaughter house. Well, that came from the diary of John Parson, who is a minor. I mean, so there’s Jar did his research and there’s lots of phrases. And I have to agree with Kurt Russell who said before that, you know, the thing that stands out about Tombstone is all the quotes. It’s one of the most quotable westerns ever.
00:44:12
Speaker 1: You know, you know, you know what, here’s a good if you’re a screenwriter out there listening or an aspiring screenwriter, there’s a lesson to be learned here. People love to quote Full Metal Jacket, Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. Everything memorable that anybody says in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket is taken verbatim from Michael Hare’s book Dispatches. When he was sent to cover the Vietnam War for Esquire magazine, and instead of going and doing what everybody else did at the time, which is go talk to Wes Moreland or like the brass Right and talk about strategy and body counts and money spent and money wasted, he just went and spent years talking to grunts. And Dispatches is about he cruise around with Errol Flint’s kit, shean Flynt, who’s a photographer. He just went around Vietnam everywhere and talked to grunts. And so when you read Dispatches, which is his account of his time in Vietnam, Kubrick teamed up with him. All the quotes how can you shoot the women and children? And you don’t lead him as much?
00:45:20
Speaker 4: Oh God, yes?
00:45:22
Speaker 1: From the movie right, which is from the book it’s all. It’s all stuff dudes say to her hair. Howard Avery says his name, it’s all stuff people say to him, and it’s all and it’s all those memorable lines from from Full Metal Jack. So it’s an interesting deal with this guy that like those great quotes like I’ll like I’ll be your huckleberry, right becomes just no one knew what the hell that mant No, but it’s like it’s because it was the thing.
00:45:49
Speaker 4: And it’s on T shirts now you can buy a T shirt that says I’m your huckleberry. But is Michael here the one that wrote that there’s nothing as vicious as a teenage boy or something like that, or he might have Yeah, I think that comes from him, or.
00:46:03
Speaker 1: The war kind of killed him in a way. He didn’t do much, like he reached like his zenith. He even explains and the end of Dispatches how hard it was to come home because he is from Berkeley, and he came home he talked about people would expect him to condemn everything, but all he could talk about was how beautiful he thought it all was, Like it messed him up. He never did much anything. He was like the dude that wrote dispatches. You know, like the book killed him. It was like true mc capodi, like writing in Cold Blood kind of killed him. Talk about wider like as a kid or whatever. You don’t like, where’s the guy like that come from.
00:46:43
Speaker 4: So he’s born in Illinois eighteen forty eight. His father was a Mexican War veteran very short time, just a few months in the Mexican War. But I mean, you know, it’s it’s Midwest farming family. His father, you know, ran a kind of a grocery store in Monmouth, Illinois. Then they moved to Pella, Iowa. I mean, really, there’s nothing exceptional about his childhood, and there’s very few stories about him. I mean, you know, they talk about schoolyard fights or something. But what’s odd about White Earth is that the only stories that we really detailed stories about his childhood come from him when he’s dictating. I mean, you would think somebody in Mama, oh yeah, they live next to us, the guys that fought at the OK Corral. Yeah, they were my neighbors, and this is what they did. There’s nothing like that either in Illinois or Iowa. And so I just find that kind of odd.
00:47:33
Speaker 1: But and he wasn’t tangled up in the Civil War thll.
00:47:35
Speaker 4: No, his brothers were. He had three brothers that fought for the North, but he tried to join. Is a famous story. He was like fourteen years old and he runs away from home at fourteen. Yeah. Yeah, well his brothers were in and it’s like, you know, so so different from wars today. Everybody wanted to join. Everybody wanted to go to war. I mean, you wanted to be a hero. You wanted to you know and fight, you know, fight the ReBs and the other side the same thing.
00:48:03
Speaker 1: So U I gotta hold you up on that, Okay, I’m just curious, not just gonna cough. Oh sure is that that? That’s like there was there was an enthusiasm to fight that war. Oh yeah, I mean well because that was that war. That was no joke.
00:48:19
Speaker 4: No it was not.
00:48:20
Speaker 1: But you’re getting you get involved in that war, you’re got a very good chance something’s gonna happen to you.
00:48:23
Speaker 4: Part of it is expectation. I mean, you’re you’re a young man, You’re expected. You know, you’re you’re gonna go to war. You’re gonna fight for your country. But also part of it is is is looked at. I mean, it’s the glory. Uh. You know, Custer gets knocked for being a glory hunter. But you’re not going to advance in the army unless you get glory, unless you have victories. You you you win at war. So it was expected. And then if you want to seek political office later, I mean, look at how many generals advanced into political office after the war. I mean, it would help your career. I mean, Grant becomes president, right, I mean, and so many of them congressmen and senators, and so it was a whole different mindset in the nineteenth century. And then everything you read as a kid, well, for instance, Theodore Roosevelt born in eighteen fifty nine, all through the Civil War, I mean he seeing Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s and they’ve got these giint engravings of these glorious battles. And they’re not in color. You know, they’re black and white. You don’t see the blood, you don’t see the drip, you don’t see the men beheaded by a cannon ball. I mean it looks so glorious and thrilling, and so there’s all this kind of manliness involved. Yet let’s go off and we’re gonna fight and we’re gonna become heroes. And of course they realized later that it’s awful. It’s horrible, it’s ugly. So no, they’re they’re you know Whyatt wanted to join and his brothers, you know, and of course the option for you know why could either join the army or he can stay home and plant that stupid cornfield that he hated. You know, he didn’t want to be a farmer, but that’s what his father had him doing. His father told him, hey, you know, you’re this food goes to your brothers in the war, and white Events is like, you know, well, I’m gonna starve with them because I’m going to go fight the revs. And he runs away from home. His father tracks him down and he’s you know why, it’s all excited. He’s already got grounded, he got well, yeah, essentially. But he sees his father in his hotel and he thinks his father doesn’t see him, and he rushes back home. Well, his father had spotted him, and he almost got a whipping, but his mother saved him, and his father made him promise. It says, you will not join the military without the permission of your mother and you will attend to the cornfield. And so that was it. And then the family ends up leaving during the war and going to California. And I think the reason was Nicholas Irp. He already had three men that had gone to fight. He opposed the war. He was what they call a copperhead. He was a Democrat, but a copperhead. They were opposed to the war because they thought the war was really becoming about slavery and abolition.
00:50:48
Speaker 1: And what he wanted to be about, well, he thought it.
00:50:51
Speaker 4: Was about the constitution. Initially it was supposed to be out the Constitution and keeping the Union together. Why the term copper well, I don’t know where that comes from. Actually copperhead.
00:51:01
Speaker 1: So you’re like a democrat and you don’t want to be involved in the war about slavery.
00:51:05
Speaker 4: So not an abolitionist, no, oh no, that’s and that was what they were really opposed to, the abolitionists stance, because they felt they felt they became a war about abolitionism.
00:51:14
Speaker 1: Which they didn’t care about.
00:51:15
Speaker 4: No, no, And and you know Nicholas Irp, I mean you know, he had the racist views of the period. He didn’t think it was worth fighting to free these people that didn’t deserve it. So I think one of the reasons to go to California. He opposed the war, but he’s also taking his sons out of harm’s way. He’s getting white you know why it wants to join We’re going to go to California. He had younger brothers, Morgan and Warren, and who knows at this time it’s eighteen sixty four. They don’t know how long this war’s going to go. It might go for another two or three years. And I don’t want my sons, you know, in this war that I disagree with, so they go to California. So that was that was you know why why it’s closest encounter with the Civil War was his attempt to join up, but he got caught.
00:51:56
Speaker 1: Any of his brothers get killed there.
00:51:57
Speaker 4: No one brother. Jim was so badly wounded in his arm that it was his arm was unusable, so he kept his arm, but he just you know, couldn’t use it. And the Virgil I don’t think he was wounded in the war. And then he had a half brother, Newton, and he survived the war.
00:52:15
Speaker 1: Also, where did he go from California? Like, how did he get tangled up with hunting buffalo down in Texas and his kind of his whole gang did like the dudes he began to be associated with, did.
00:52:26
Speaker 4: Yeah, he met bat Masterson on the buffalo planes. Of course, you know it’s a little murky as to the chronology because he claimed. Now you know Whyett’s thing was he had a lot in his past that he preferred not get out to the public. I mean, he wanted to tell a story, but.
00:52:42
Speaker 1: Such as what.
00:52:43
Speaker 4: Well, so he’s he’s a constable in Missouri for just about well less than a year, and he loses his wife there. He absconds with tax moneys he had collected that were supposed to go to the county and gets his family in trouble because his father and uncle had signed sties on this bond, thousand dollars bond. He ends up getting arrested for stealing a horse in Oklahoma.
00:53:07
Speaker 1: Is he a pimp for a while?
00:53:08
Speaker 4: Well, that’s what I’m getting to. So, so from that horse theft thing, he escapes from jail, he says at that point, and he never mentioned he never admits to stealing the horse or any of the other things, but he says, then I went to the Buffalo Range and I was able to make five thousand dollars in hides or whatever. Well, there’s an interval in there where he went to Peoria, Illinois and he’s living in the home of a prostitute. There’s a prostitute that claims to be his wife, and he’s actually running a brothel. According to the arrest records, he’s he’s arrested as a pimp and one of his his last brothel operation, which I think is kind of hilarious. It was a floating brothel on the river.
00:53:49
Speaker 1: So, yeah, was it to get out of like the like like how you would have to gamble on the river to get out state regulation?
00:53:55
Speaker 4: I don’t know, because they still arrested him, but in the book I say it was. It was the true definition of a pleasure boat. But uh, anyway, joke. Yeah, So so he got arrested a few In fact, one time he got.
00:54:08
Speaker 1: He had a boat, yes, like what kind of like a keel.
00:54:11
Speaker 4: I think it was like some kind of a flat boat or it wasn’t an extravage. It wasn’t like not no, no, yeah, it wasn’t. It wasn’t one of these luxury boats. No, it wasn’t like that at all. I think it was a pretty basic boat. But he was arrested more than once. And one time when he was arrested, uh, it was going to charge him like forty four dollars and he didn’t have the money, so he chose to be in jail, him and his brother Morgan. So they sat out there there, you know, time in jail, and then they went back to doing the same thing. That’s when they got the boat or whatever.
00:54:41
Speaker 1: I want to narrow one on his boat. Okay, why are they running a uh like, why are they running a cathouse on a boat?
00:54:51
Speaker 4: Well, I think it’s the mobility moving target. Yeah, yeah, that’s yeah. No, I think it’s like you could the idea is and I’m kind of speculating here. I mean you could again, you could move from place to place or maybe move to a different town you know, down the river or whatever and conduct your business.
00:55:10
Speaker 1: So but but it’s funny that we laughed so hard about this years ago. Is uh, you’res to call there’s this whole dispute in this town where like this town is trying to ban ice fishing. Okay, remember this, Yeah, this town is trying to ban ice fishing. There’s like this city councilman who is given like the speech at the at the town meeting, and he’s talking about, well, if you allow ice fishing, then people are gonna have ice shanties. Okay, if you bring in ice shanties, that’s prostitution. And that killed it, right, and the guy became like the laughing style, you know. But it was like, but when you’re talking about the boat, I’m just trying to I don’t know, just somehow I thought like why, like I don’t get like the connection. Yeah, but yeah, you just can move around.
00:55:55
Speaker 4: Yeah exactly, Yeah, and who knows. I mean maybe it was a really inexpensive rather than have a you know, go to some building in town. But like you say, yeah, you’re mobile, and uh, maybe you’re here one night and the next night you tell you tell your guys they were gonna be on here five miles or whatever.
00:56:11
Speaker 1: Was his wife like, would you imagine was his wife a madam or was she an actual worker?
00:56:18
Speaker 4: Well, so he had four wives and or significant he only there’s only one legal record marriage record for his first wife, but the wife he had in Peoria, she apparently was not a madam but was actually a work girl.
00:56:33
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:56:33
Speaker 4: Now later yes, later apparently uh this uh this wife when he was in Wichita because she came with him, and apparently she was a madam or running a brothel. And you know, it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s really sad because these are one side of affairs. I mean, uh, you know, let’s say Doc Holidays, you know, big nos Kate. I mean a lot of times these these prostitutes, they had gamblers as their partners, and it’s like, well, you know, you lose a lot of money at the table while you’re having your your wife, you know, make you’re taking her money basically, or you’re just freeloading off of them and just adding a little getting a little protection form. You’re not really doing much work of the protection. So it’s it’s a sad. It’s uneven, I should say, as those relationships predatory exactly. Yeah. So but anyway, I the way I look at so so White had these unseemly things about his past, but he was in his early twenties. I mean, and uh, you know, I a little sympathetic because he he grew out of that, he became different, he aspired to something better, uh and when he ends up in Wichita as a policeman, even though his wife is still a prostitute. Uh, He’s they rave about him as a policeman there, and when he’s in Dodge City the same thing. I mean, he’s like the best policeman they’ve ever had. And when he gets to Tombstone, you know, he wants to run for county sheriff. I mean he’s trying to better himself. And one of the things about the American West is that you can leave your past behind. I mean there’s nobody on the internet looking you up, you know like they do today. I mean, you know, finding your high school yearbook photo or you dressed up in some weird character. I mean, it’s that you can escape your past.
00:58:19
Speaker 5: Why was he moving from place to place to be like? Was he following money? Was he getting recruited? Was he getting in trouble and having to leave?
00:58:28
Speaker 4: Like why did he bounce it? It’s a combination of all those things. So he had a good job. He was well respected in Wichita, but he got in a fight there. There was a man that was running against his boss, who for sheriff, and this man had said some unsavory things about why Ittt’s brothers, and so he hauled off and hit him. Well, you know, he got arrested and fined, and he was dismissed from the police force. Almost immediately there after, the mayor of Dodge City learns that Widrop’s available, and so he sends him a letter offering in more pay, you know, and the the cattle herd trade had shifted west. They have you heard of the deadline? You’ve heard of the phrase called the deadline. So yeah, So there was a tick born disease called Spanish fever, and the Kansas legislature they had a line.
00:59:18
Speaker 1: Not a livestock disease, but a human disease.
00:59:20
Speaker 4: No livestock, and they did not want these Texas cattle infecting the herds and the more settled places of Kansas.
00:59:28
Speaker 5: They’re worried about coming back.
00:59:29
Speaker 4: Now I don’t know, I haven’t heard about that.
00:59:33
Speaker 1: So anyway, there’s Texas fever. Well they kept they use that they spray those nilghai with that automated spray gun to try to like get the tick off right.
00:59:42
Speaker 4: Okay, Well, it was a tick born disease, so they kept moving the line west. And so they had moved the line west of Wichita, and so Dodge City became the headquarters and it was just perfect timing. You know, he needed a job. But as far as Tombstone, for instance, he had resigned his post in Dodge City. He’d heard about the strikes in Tombstone and he was going to go there to make money. In fact, he he said that he bought a concord coach, a stage coach, and he thought they we might need a stage line, and so his idea was, I’m going to take this coach. When he got there, there are already two stage lines operating. But he went to Tombstone to make money and actually to put down roots. I mean he builds a house for his wife at the time, I mean he buys mining claims. He’s first a deputy sheriff there in the county, and then uh, you know he’s wanting to run for this that when they when they create coaches county, Uh, he wants to run for the county sheriff. He really is looking to advance, uh, to better himself, I mean, to really settle down. You know, he’s like thirty three or no, he’s like thirty or well, I can’t remember thirty three. I think at that time, and uh, there’s opportunity here. And he got there right at the berth. I mean Tombstone was just starting to boom, and so he did have you know, he did have a real opportunity to make a difference, to be someone. The problem was the cowboys and all the outlawry and the wrestling that was going on, and you know when a stage was robbed, well he was on the posse, you know, when somebody was killed or you know they needed somebody. You know, White Earth was the one that was, you know, helping out or you know, representing the law, or his brother needed help. He was helping his brother because his brother was a deputy us Marshall and became chief of police in Tombstone. But he was really looking to change and to make himself better. And even the Earth women, you know, several of them had been prostitutes as well. But one of the things about in the Old West, if someone said, you know, why could say this is my wife, you didn’t question him. They just called her missus irp. I mean there was no this stuff didn’t follow you. So they really had hopes for a new beginning in Tombstone.
01:01:48
Speaker 5: Were his brothers like was it always like a family business or did they not join him until Tombstone.
01:01:55
Speaker 4: It wasn’t really a family business. But what it was was these brothers. I mean, they were a tight knit brood and they always tended to come back together. And you know, for instance, Jim RP was in Tombstone, but he wasn’t involved with White. He was, you know, a barkeep there at one of the saloons. Virgil RP. He didn’t invest in the gambling concession that Whitett had at the Oriental. You know, he was the deputy us Marshall and eventually chief of police. So they liked being together, but they weren’t really in business together. Now I think that they might have shared some mining claims that they speculated in, but over and over again they they tend to stay together as a family. And you know, Morgan comes down from Montana when he learns that Wyatt and the other brothers are in Tombstone and joins him there and he gets it. He takes White’s job as a sitting shotgun on a stage coach. After Whyatt becomes the deputy sheriff or whatever. So they just, you know, they they navigate together because they’re family you know.
01:02:55
Speaker 1: The thing that in reading about this era and different figures that that I’ve written about, and the Randalls researched about what you’re talking about, you get these guys that are with these incredible drifters. Like when we talk about the mountain man era nowadays, someone might think of like a mountain man, you know, like a hermit lives by himself up in a cabin. Oh, he’s a true mountain man. You know, this is up in his cabin, never talks to anybody.
01:03:26
Speaker 4: I think that’s a History Channel show, isn’t it.
01:03:28
Speaker 1: Yeah? So, but like the mountain men, like the actual mountain men would have been the most widely like the most some of the most widely traveled people in the country, I mean, criss crossing the country, right, And you think this is a time when you could be a farmer and spend your whole life in a twenty mount radius right in certain areas, like it’s not easy to get around. These guys get around unbelievably well, Like if you look at all the like how much do Irp’s move would it? Would that have seemed at that time? Would that have seemed weird that they lived in you know, I mean, you’ve lived in eight states, you’ve been to the West coast and back.
01:04:14
Speaker 4: No, I don’t think so, because in all these boom towns, people are coming from someplace else. Yeah, I mean they’re all I mean, especially if it’s now. A mining boomtown is different than a cattle boom town. So you know, when when gold or silver, Tombstone is a silver place, you know, people are coming all over to think they’re going to make their riches. And you know, what’s what’s odd is that there was one newspaper account where a guy’s write in a letter from Tombstone and he says most of the and like at one point there was like twenty men arriving a day early on, and he says, most of the people that arrive here are arriving broke. And he said, that’s not really a good idea to come here, because there’s not that many jobs. As far as you know, you could if if you’re a miner, you could get like working mine, or you get like four dollars a day or something like that. But I mean, it wasn’t that there were just all kinds of jobs ready to take these people. So you’ve got a lot of people that are wandering around, they don’t have a job, they don’t have the money. And then plus everything is super expensive there. It’s like double what you can find elsewhere. I mean, like a sack of flour and Tombstone with six dollars, you could get it in Kansas for less than three dollars, you know, or a bushel or whatever. So yeah, so it’s so the people are coming from all over, you know, for this, and all the talk is about mining. One of the funny stories I came across was, you know, there are always people always talk about these different claims. And anyway, in eighteen eighty was an election year and it was Garfield and I can’t remember who he’s running against, but somebody mentioned Garfield and they said, oh, where’s that claim and how much does it pay? You know, they thought it was a mining claim or whatever. And then another thing that it’s just really horrible. Actually, the diary is George Parson. We have his diary which is so great. But he mentions that there was a lightning strike at the lumberyard in Tombstone and it killed a man. And he says, you know, some of the people are talking about maybe it’s struck there because there was a large load of metal in that spot and kid, Yeah, they were talking about the guy that was killing them all. It’s like, I wonder, yeah, if there’s some silver there. It’s like, oh, yeah, who was that guy that was good? They didn’t even care about him.
01:06:28
Speaker 1: So yeah, uh, walk us through, walkers through Doc Holliday, Like people kind of carry it in their head that these guys are that these guys are our buddies became buddies but totally different upbringings.
01:06:40
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah. Uh, Doc had a little more advanced education than than why it did. And you can tell that, you know, if you look at the few letters that we have a Wyatt. He wasn’t the best speller or calligrapher, but I mean he had an education. We have no letters actually from Doc, and we know that he was a big letter writer. He had a cousin that he was some people think he had an affair with We’re not really sure, but he wrote her constantly, and I guess she burned all her letters after Yeah, she definitely had Yeah.
01:07:11
Speaker 7: There you go.
01:07:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, why did she have burned letters?
01:07:14
Speaker 4: She didn’t want anybody to see. I mean, you know, she’d burned all of them, So which is I mean, we would have had so much information. But according to there’s a family story that they saw these letters and they said Doc was talking about his experiences in the West and talking about what he was doing and what he was seeing, and we would have had so much more information. But to get back to your question.
01:07:34
Speaker 1: You know, was a doc.
01:07:35
Speaker 4: He was a doc. He was a dentist. He actually went to a dental The most prestigious dental school in the country at that time was in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Dental School, and he got a degree. He went there in eighteen seventy. He got his dental degree. One of the few photographs we have of him was taken in Philadelphia, and we think it was like a graduation photo or whatever, and it has his to get you’re on the back and it says, you know, J. H. Holliday, d d D or whatever. But anyway, so he also comes down with tuberculosis. His mother had tuberculosis, and their speculation that, well, you know, he probably got it from her. In the nineteenth century, people didn’t know was contagious. So you know today if somebody, oh, I got TV and you’re coughing over the places.
01:08:24
Speaker 1: That’s what I got right now.
01:08:26
Speaker 4: I don’t know if you’re taking some fit of silling. Yeah, but anyway, yeah you would. I mean people didn’t know that because they call it consumption y, yes, exactly. Yeah. Or they called him a lunger. What is it in the movie Tombstone and yeah, Johnny Ringo calls him a lunger or whatever. So anyway, there’s a couple of theories as to why he goes out west, and one of them is is that they encourage him to go west because of his health, you know, to go out to a different climate. It’s odd because he goes to Texas, which is Dallas, which is not that much different from where he is as far as humidity and all that stuff.
01:08:59
Speaker 1: But that comes up though, Yes, that comes up. Like the historian Francis Parkman, who wrote sort of like at the time, a definitive History of the French and Indian War. He gets advised by his doctor, you need to go out west for your health. So he goes out and starts hanging out in the Dakotas, probably goes to Crazy probably is in the same camp in the Guala Su camp. Probably in the same camp with Crazy Horse from crazy horses, like thirteen years old and he’s out there on his like doctor’s recommendation.
01:09:31
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was called the Prairie cure. Yeah they believed. Yeah, now, yeah, it was called the Prairie cure.
01:09:37
Speaker 1: And they see reference to it so much.
01:09:39
Speaker 6: You’ve got to get away from the miasmas.
01:09:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, the bad air, the.
01:09:42
Speaker 4: Well And there’s some amazing survival stories of a Josiah Gregg who wrote a book called Commerce of the Prairies. He was advised to go out west. This is in the eighteen thirties and along the Santa Fe Trail. He started his journey as an invalid, he could not walk. With in a few weeks, he’s up and walking, he’s eating buffalo meat, and he’s like, fully he fully recovered. What was his affliction, We don’t know. I mean, we don’t know, but he was. He was so bad off that he couldn’t even walk.
01:10:11
Speaker 1: I mean, I wonder if he just had celiacs. Well do you know what I’m saying. No, Well, think it through. He’s got he’s and also now he’s out there eating nothing but meat. No, you didn’t believe in It’s totally I believe in that. I don’t believe in gluten in tolerance.
01:10:31
Speaker 4: Okay, but what what.
01:10:33
Speaker 1: I believe in it as a partisan disease. It’s a political disease.
01:10:38
Speaker 4: What what history?
01:10:39
Speaker 1: Totally joking?
01:10:40
Speaker 4: What some history? What’s some historians think to it was refuted.
01:10:45
Speaker 1: I used to feel just I said something in sandiary, I got to clean it up. I used to feel that it was a just with all due respect to everyone else. No, I’m a believing. I came up with this theory based on just nothing, that gluten intolerance was a left wing affliction.
01:11:10
Speaker 4: Okay.
01:11:10
Speaker 1: I was like, why how could there be? So I questioned this legitimacy, like how could there be a health problem that seems that mostly strike people of a politically left persuasion. But then my buddy Spencer, our colleague, came to me with a quiz and it’s like it’s like breaks down different belief systems into like right leaning, left leaning ghost He’s like ghosts and I’m like, definitely left wing. He’s like no, no, if your right wing, you’re more inclined to believe. So anyways, once he walked me through, they didn’t do the gluten intolerance, but like, the one thing you can say is right wing people like a rare steak more than left wing people, but you can’t say that they get more gluten intolerance. I don’t even know where you sit politically. Well, you don’t need to tell me, but I just wanted to clear that up, okay, because I don’t want to rehash. I don’t want to opens.
01:12:05
Speaker 4: I’m glad you did a statistical study that.
01:12:07
Speaker 1: Well, that’s the problems I did. Oh but my friend did what caused you to rethink? And you challenge a lot of my assumptions, and then my theory fell apart, as many theories do. That’s all the Prairie cure. Yes, so we don’t know what Josiah greg No, we don’t what is affliction. But but I believe it was CELIAX.
01:12:30
Speaker 4: Okay, all right, Yeah, well they could very well be. I mean I have I can’t say either way, but a lot of historians think that that people that were ill that went west may not really have had tuberculosis to begin with. It might have been you know, something else. And also turriculosis can go into remission as well. So so but but but you’re right though, I mean, doctors were constantly referring, you know, go west or whatever, and.
01:12:56
Speaker 1: So in in in like medical hindsight, is it that that wasn’t like like that wasn’t a way to cure that, that wasn’t actually helpful if you had TV.
01:13:09
Speaker 4: I well, it might have been helpful just because you’re getting away from this, I mean, the West is arid, so you have dry air. You’re getting away from this humid You’re getting away from all the cold smoke, and that certainly isn’t going to make your TV any better. So I think it was helpful. And and you had all kinds of sanitariums popping up in the late nineteenth century early twentieth century. Colorado Springs was a huge place for sanitariums, and they had little huts and you’re supposed to get out in the sun, which is helpful, you know, getting sun lights on where Oh it’s it’s a huge complex for treating patients with tuberculosis, with like dozens and dozens of hundreds of individual huts. Yeah, and you would go I would.
01:13:49
Speaker 1: Have thought it meant like an insane asylum, a sanitarium.
01:13:52
Speaker 4: Yeah, sanitarium. Yeah, do you know this random? Mm hm.
01:13:55
Speaker 1: They covered that when the doctorate I mean glen Wood Spring.
01:13:59
Speaker 6: I believe Hot Springs used to be a sanitarium.
01:14:05
Speaker 5: Always springs, They’re always hot springs.
01:14:07
Speaker 8: Yea.
01:14:07
Speaker 1: I know this because I would have raised my hand like in trivia. I would have been like.
01:14:12
Speaker 5: But what that is was was Doc Holliday already like before he left the East to go west? Was he already like a ne’er do well gambler and drinker and all that?
01:14:25
Speaker 4: Well, there’s some some authors have written that he had kind of learned to play cards while he was in Georgia before going west. But here’s the other story that’s more unseemly about Doc Holliday that that counters the tuberculosis story. There was this fishing hole along.
01:14:45
Speaker 1: The river where this is a euphemism.
01:14:48
Speaker 4: No, no, it’s a real no, I’m sorry. It was a swimming hole. Sorry, a swimming hole. And uh anyway, it was enjoyed by both black swimmers and white swimmers. I’ve heard, yes and so so. The white swimmers, including Doc Holiday, did not want the black swimmers in their swimming hole, and they threatened them and says, you’re going to have to go someplace else. Well, the black young men said, we’re not going someplace else. You can go someplace else. Well, a few days later, Doc Holliday shows up with a double barrel shotgun and he yells at them all to get out, and then as they’re clamoring out of the fishing of the swimming hole, he unloads both barrels and apparently kills two of these young men. Yeah Holiday, Yes, and the story yeah, that’s right. Yeah, did his quate? So?
01:15:32
Speaker 7: Uh?
01:15:32
Speaker 4: The story is is that the family, I mean, apparently it wasn’t a horrible, you know thing to kill black men in Georgia right after the Civil War, but they suggested, oh, maybe you need to leave for a while and until things settle down or whatever. The family does have stories of this incident, but they say Doc Holliday fired over the heads of the swimmers. I can tell you that there are no legal documents known or newspaper reports that mentioned this episode.
01:16:05
Speaker 1: Or isn’t Does it seem like a thing that would have been reported on.
01:16:08
Speaker 4: It seems like if two men were killed, whether black or white, I think it would have been reported. But it’s a very strong story in the lore. And when Doc Holliday died in Glenwood Springs, his obituary in a Montana paper mentions that episode says he had killed a couple of black men or one black man in Georgia. So that story, you know how I said you could escape your past. That story stuck around. People knew that story, got it. I would just love to I mean, it would make me feel better if I found an actual document from the time or a newspaper report saying that these men had been killed or whatever. But it’s also believable. I mean, I can’t say it didn’t happen. It’s believable.
01:16:49
Speaker 1: So when he left, when he leaves Georgia, and whether it’s it’s because he’s got consumption, whether it because he’s worried about getting arrested. Yeah, he leaves dentistry.
01:17:01
Speaker 4: No, no, he sets up a uh he has a partner in Dallas, Texas and they have a dental He has a partner. His name is Cigar, Yes, Segar. And this is this is the cool thing. I mean, there’s a there’s a local fair, the Texas Industrial Association. They get a prize for like the best false teeth. Oh you know, so Doc Holliday is an award winning dentist. He not only has a dental degree, but now he’s an award winning dentist, and he’s in his early twenties, you know, but Dallas is also where he takes a different path. He diverges. He later in talking to a newspaper reporter, he said, yeah, I was part of the Methodist Church. He was even part of this uh you know group of uh you wouldn’t call it aaa, but it was, you know, a temperance organization. And uh. But then he says, uh that I swayed you know, uh something from rectitude or whatever. And so yeah, he started gambling. Bat Masterson says, you know, there was gambling was rampant in Dallas, and he says that was the one way to sure make money in Dalla because of all the places where you could gamble. We know that Doc was arrested there for gambling in Dallas, and apparently you know Doc’s life as a gambler.
01:18:18
Speaker 1: Well.
01:18:18
Speaker 4: In fact, bat Master says the only way to get an appointment was to sit across from at a poker table. You know. So I guess his partner got fed up and they separated. And only a few more times do we know that Doc Holiday does practice dentistry, or at least appear to, you know, he apparently set out in Denton, Texas. He set out a sign, you know, dentistry, and in Dodge City when he arrives there, he puts an ad in the paper, and so we have those newspapers. Yeah it says, you know, John h Holiday dentist. But after that we have no record that he actually practiced as a dentist. For instance, he was in Pressate, Arizona for a while. He was gambling. He was definitely not practicing dentistry. In Tombstone, he was a full time gambler. But the funny thing is in the eighteen eighty census for Arizona, his occupations linisted his dentist, but he wasn’t doing I mean, you know, it’s kind of like this is the other weird thing the Irt brothers. In the same census, they’re listed as farmers. They weren’t farming. White hated farming. But you know, I guess you tell the census taker what’s your occupation? Oh I’m farmer. Yeah I don’t. But anyway, I just thought that that census taker had to chuckle when Doc said, yeah, put me down his dentists because he was not doing dentistry. In Prescott Arizona.
01:19:36
Speaker 1: God if he if he if a guy like Doc Halladay filled out like his tax forms at the end of a year a gambling like he’s he’s showing like a gain. He yeah, I mean, like when when you read all these guys like he was a gambler, professional gambler, what’s that look like? Economically? There’s no house, right, Oh no, you’re just you’re playing at a table, just like anybody.
01:20:04
Speaker 4: Yeah.
01:20:04
Speaker 1: Well, is it there’s guys that are legitimately supporting themselves, or is it that you’re doing other nefarious stuff but you’re mostly spending your time playing cards, but your income is from well, prostitution or whatever the hell you got.
01:20:20
Speaker 4: Well, sometimes you’re actually just being paid as a dealer in a in a gambling establishment, and you’re not necessarily taking part of the women’s or winnings or you know, you get a concession. You can run this Pharaoh table and you’ll give so much to the guy that owns the place, and you keep so much.
01:20:38
Speaker 1: God, But the thing is, it’s not like that you need to win more than you lose. There’s other ways a turn a problem. There’s other ways a turn a living as a gambling.
01:20:47
Speaker 4: Yes, but I mean, Doc his income had to be so erratic. You know, he definitely had highs and lows, and the last few years were definitely lows. I mean, he’s bouncing around from one place to the other and has no money. This incident, well, here’s an example in Leadville. He borrowed like five dollars from this guy and he wasn’t paying it back and a guy kept harassing him. You know, I want, it’s just five dollars, you know, it’s not the end of the world or whatever. But Doc doesn’t have the money, and you know, he ends up pawning a bunch of stuff. When he dies in Glenwood Springs, he has hardly anything. He had a few possessions that were sent back to his family. There were no guns that were sent back, so he probably sold those long before. There was a stickpin, a gold stick pin that had a diamond in it. The diamond was gone, so he probably locked the hat and sold it. I mean, why the hell did he? I mean, it was sad.
01:21:42
Speaker 1: I was like, why did he get like, why did he get out of why not this be a dentist?
01:21:46
Speaker 4: Well, I guess he didn’t like it. I mean, you know, I mean gambling. He was a gambling addict. He was addicted to it. I mean he had to gamble drunk too. He was often drunk, yes, And you know, if you want to be sympathetic to Doc, you can say he was self medicating. I mean, he had tuberculosis, so there’s laudanum. Any kind of tonic that you took had all kinds of alcohol in it. So but the problem with the drinking was that, you know, he was what they would call him mean drunk. You know, he was not a good person, and and he was quick to get angry and get into fights. And his wife said, you know, Doc was his own worst enemy, and that was one of the things that kind of this bond that they had, you know whyet kind of and the brothers kind of took care of Doc when he got out of control. There’s an account when they were in Gunnison, Colorado, and the guy remembered all of them and he said, oh yeah, when when Doc started to get out of control, they kind of took him aside and took him away. I mean they kind of looked after him. And once they separated and he didn’t have that that you know, that family really to you know his other brothers. They were they were kind of like siblings in a way. Doc was three years younger than Wyatt. But but uh, anyway, it was really for Doc at the end. It was very sad. But but people that wrote about him said he was always a meticulous dresser and he didn’t dress over the top or what.
01:23:05
Speaker 1: But he’s just.
01:23:05
Speaker 4: Particulous even in Tombstone. Big Nose Kate says, when he went out that day that ended up in the OK Corral, it’s like, you know, yeah, he’ll be able to see me once I’m dressed or whatever. And so he got all dress. He had a cane, he had an overcoat and it was a very sharp you know, it looked took real pride in his appearance.
01:23:22
Speaker 1: If you were hanging out with Big Nose Kate, would you say, excuse me, Big Nose Kate.
01:23:29
Speaker 4: I don’t think she liked that at all. Yeah. Well, and uh that’s a name. Here’s the this is what’s so interesting That name comes from one person whiter said.
01:23:40
Speaker 1: She was always a bully too.
01:23:41
Speaker 4: Yeah, Big Nose Kate and big he coined the term. Well he’s the only reference that we have. We don’t see big Nose Kate in contemporary newspapers. But his account that he left he calls her big Nose Kate, and she left her own account. She never refers, you know, to that worse. Now, here’s here’s an interesting theory behind that name though. A buddy of mine, Ron.
01:24:05
Speaker 1: Hanson, she’s Hungarian, right, yes she is.
01:24:07
Speaker 4: Yeah, my buddy mine, Ron Hanson, who wrote the Assassination of Jesse j Dude.
01:24:10
Speaker 1: That is an unbelievable Look.
01:24:11
Speaker 4: It’s a great parties with him.
01:24:13
Speaker 1: Yeah.
01:24:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, he’s a friend of mine and he wrote a blurb but it’s on the back of that book. But anyway, Ron uh had a great theory and I included it in my book. He says, you know, I always wondered about that name, and I think I know where it came from. He thinks that it’s a corruption of the term for brabl the Italian term bonio, because Bonyo was a brothel. He thinks they called her Bonyo Kate and it it got corrupted into big Nose just to kind of irk her. That’s his theory, you know.
01:24:38
Speaker 1: So I mean, I don’t know. I mean, you know, I don’t want to be rude to her, but you’ve seen pictures of her.
01:24:43
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, but that’s like that’s later life. That’s a later life.
01:24:48
Speaker 1: You know, it’s terrible. When I was in high school, we had a friend. Her name was Michelle. She had a hook nose. Everybody called her hook. She called herself hook, and her boyfriend called her hook. Oh was the car nowadays?
01:25:05
Speaker 4: I’m sure it’s not that she.
01:25:07
Speaker 1: Wouldn’t say, oh wow, she’s tell her hook called.
01:25:10
Speaker 4: Well, you know, she was a perpetual I say in the book, a perpetual IRB hater. And that tells me how oh yeah, she hated it, But it tells me how close that bond was between White and Doc because she was so jealous of that relationship and she just hated She seethed against why she thought White was the one that ended caused all their problems. Beteaen her and Doc. You know, White just said, well they were always a quarrelsome couple. That was all he had to say about it.
01:25:36
Speaker 1: But she a big booze er.
01:25:38
Speaker 3: Two.
01:25:39
Speaker 4: No, I don’t think so. I mean, I haven’t seen any references to her being a drinker. But and she in her own account, she claimed that, oh, you know, Doc had a whiskey bottle with him, but he never really drank. Well, I mean, everybody else says he drank, you know, all the time, and he was often drunk. She was very kind in her recollections of Doc, but no, she hated the IRBs. She thought that was the end of their relationship. She thoughts at how everything went wrong and they turned Doc wrong, and and she actually, I mean she was so mad at Doc and they would often have these big, horrible fights. And she went to the sheriff Johnny Been, and implicated Doc in the Benson stage robbery. She said, oh, yeah, boyfriend, Yeah, her boyfriend. And then she later said this was my way of getting him away from the herbs. Well, she could have he could have been hung, you know, because there was a guy, couple of guys, you know, was a guy killed, No, two people killed in that robbery. So she was that angry with him that she implicated him. And then of course, the the prosecuting attorney once he heard the story and there was no evidence, he said, he just asked the judge dismissed the case. He said, there’s no evidence whatsoever that what she’s saying is true. There’s nothing to back that up. But no she did. She turned her lover in and tried to get him arrested. Well, he did get arrested, but it didn’t go to trial.
01:26:51
Speaker 1: All right. Set up? How set up? How it comes that like rather than like the way you talk about these guys, rather being like there’s a like super slick, you know, virtuous right, white hatted Western heroes. It’s there kind of just like drifters make and do well in a drinking.
01:27:18
Speaker 4: Yeah, in a way, I think I think Wyatt is a little more than that. You know, the fact that Wyatt builds a house in Tombstone tells me something that he’s aspiring to more. Doc Holliday, throughout his life, never bought a house. He was always rooming somewhere. In fact, in Tombstone he was at a boarding house, the Fly boarding House, which is right next to where Flies f l y. Their last name was fly cs. Fly was a famous photographer and he had a photo studio behind the boarding house. And anyway, so Doc had had had a room there, and that’s where Kate stayed when she would come to visit him. You know, they’d have these fights and they would separate, and then Kate said that she would get a letter from Doc could say, hey, would you come be it like to see you again? She came back at like three different times she came back to see him. There was this off and on again relationship, but she couldn’t stand the herbs. So I think that she couldn’t stand to be in Tombstone for very long.
01:28:13
Speaker 5: How did Doc Holliday and Wider? Like, how did it all start? Was Doc Hall just gambling out his establishment at Wider’s establishment and they got to know each other that way or like?
01:28:23
Speaker 4: So that’s a great question. I’m glad you asked it. And that’s that’s one of the reasons for the book was that, you know, when we see the movies, they tell us that they’re friends, but nobody knows how they became. They don’t even cover that. It’s like it’s just accepted. So what happened was is that Doc and White had first met about eighteen seventy seven in Fort Griffin, Texas. And why it was down there he was being employed by the Action Sepeak and Santa Fe Railroad to track down a couple of these men had been robbing the railroad camps and he was employed to track them down. And when he got to Fort Griffin, the owner of this saloon gambling establishment. Whitet asked him. He says, hey, you know, I’m looking for these guys. And he says, well, if anybody would know, it’d be Doc Holliday, do you know him? And White didn’t know him, and so they introduced each other and Wyatt talked about this a lot. He says, show at the time, I wasn’t looking for a friend. I was looking for information about, you know, where these guys might be. And Doc said, well, you know, let me ask around and I’ll see what I can do. And I guess Doc going a few leads that didn’t pan out. But but Doc had also pumped Wyatt about Dodge City, you know, because Doc was kind of looking for, you know, someplace else where it might be a good place to land. And he was with Big Nose Kde at that time. And so Doc ends up in Dodge City. And you remember I said he placed that ad for a dentist’s office. But one night, and this was happening almost constantly, you know, cowboys are being rowdy, wanting to shoot up the town. There was a big gang of cowboys starting to shoot off their guns and then they see Wyatt arp on the street near the long A Saloon by himself, and they quickly surround him, and they got their guns and they’re they’re said, we’re gonna get you now, you know what. They just didn’t like him, you know, he was the law and they were drunk, you know, and so we’re gonna, we’re gonna get you. Wyatt dearly, I mean, he thought he was going to be killed. He thought that was going to be it. Well, inside the Long Branch they had glass windows and Doc Holiday’s backs. Yeah, yeah, I don’t know, I doubt it. But anyway, he sees through the window what’s going on, and the guy at the dealer, he says, do you have a gun? And the guy says yeah. So Doc gets it. Doc has his own gun. He comes out the door with both guns.
01:30:37
Speaker 1: His gun and a barbed gun, kid’s.
01:30:38
Speaker 4: Gun and a borrowed gun. He said, hold up your hands, and of course the cowboys are all startled, and they do, and then Wyatt goes for his guns and they march him off to jail and lock them up. So Wyatt set this more than once, and he said, from that day forward, I was Doc Holliday’s friend, you know, with the friends. I mean, he’s he considered his life saved and he thought he was dead it. I mean, he really thought his life was in danger. And he says we were friends. And so no matter of the crazy stuff, Doc did, you know, White stuck with him and and the cowboys and Tombstone. They even tried to use Doc against him by by putting these you know, claiming he was a stage robber and he was a bad character. Because everybody in town knew they were friends. So by association, if they make Doc look bad, well how we’re not gonna elect White Herb. He’s a friend of this crazy, you know thief, you know, Doc Holiday. But that really says something to me about White Herb. You know that that he you know, had that bond. It’s like, you save my life. We’re friends, you know, doesn’t care what you do, what happens, We’re friends. And that’s the way it was until you know, they separate eventually after the Vendetta ride. Uh and Doc they they do see each other one last time in Denver and I actually found the notice. Often when people checked into a hotel, the paper would say who’s staying. You know, you could go through a list and why her Trinidad is staying at the hotel here. That was news and Doc Holliday read that and he went down to meet him at the hotel. And Josephine R. White’s last wife wrote an account and she said that, uh, they were just amazed. I mean Doc was just looked horrible. He was all thin, like an old man. But you know whyatt just had this not I don’t think like that. But anyway, I know it’s Steve your friend or yeah, but uh, anyway, they embrace and they go us to a table to the side, and they’re chatting and uh, and then they stand up later a few minutes later, however long it took, and they shake hands and she actually tells what White said, and and uh, you know, uh Doc said something like who would have imagined you know that that you know that that I would be the first to go or whatever between us and and uh, anyway, they.
01:32:57
Speaker 1: He’s prophesizing his death, yes.
01:32:58
Speaker 4: He is, and and uh, white Earth comes back to the table and there’s tears in his eyes.
01:33:04
Speaker 1: Huh.
01:33:04
Speaker 4: I mean there is no other account of white Earth crying. I guarantee you you’re ever going to see that. But he’s in tears, you know, after his friend parts and he just knows he’s not gonna ever see him again.
01:33:15
Speaker 1: Huh. Yeah, explain the mash up that occurs around the okay, corall like who the I’ve read accounts of this, I still cannot explain or understand who’s mad at who? Is there an efficient way of explaining.
01:33:31
Speaker 4: Well, I’ll try to make it byzantine. A lot of it has like.
01:33:36
Speaker 1: Like he’s mad about this and mad about that and was hired by him. It’s not like like.
01:33:43
Speaker 4: Well, there’s lots of under there’s lots of undercurrents. I mean, the Irk Brothers, they were on the side of law and order and uh whyaet earp had made this deal. Uh, and it was not it was not a good idea, you know, it was a form of gambling essentially. But uh, the stage had been robbed, the Benson stage had been robbed, and two people have been killed, the driver and a passenger. So we’re now this is the obskirts of Tombstone. Yes, so the stage coach was robbed and everything, and.
01:34:13
Speaker 1: This is a way, this is like a scheduled piece of transportation into Tombstone.
01:34:18
Speaker 4: Well, going out of Tombstone and it’s robbed of what Well, it wasn’t robbed because it went it went bad. So, uh, the guy that was the you know, the guy riding shotgun you know when the when the when the robbers say hold, uh, he goes I hold for nobody and they start blasting away and the drivers killed instantly. He falls down between the lines. So we got a runaway coach. They shoot at the coach as that’s going away. They kill a passenger on top, you know. A mile or two or several miles later, they finally get this, you know this the coach stopped, so they know who the robbers were. They were three men and there was a big hunt for him, Doc hollow They started initially, but Wyatt’s involved, ViRGE Warps Involvedohn beings involved, and they go out for miles and days.
01:35:03
Speaker 1: I got a quick question. Okay, this is where I started getting confused. Oh, how in the world is it Doc Holliday’s business.
01:35:11
Speaker 4: Cuz Doc Holliday, this is something that Virgil Orb said. Whenever there was a posse formed, Doc Holliday was always there to help out.
01:35:18
Speaker 1: It’s like, yeah, He’s like, I’m sick, I’m half dead, I’m drunk.
01:35:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, no, he he’s needed. Well, plus his buddies are there, you know, Well there’s Wyatt, there’s Morgan. He’s the same agent.
01:35:29
Speaker 1: So he just gets excited when there’s a posse, like your buddy drew a tag, you know.
01:35:34
Speaker 4: Maybe, well, I think he also thought it was the right thing to do and they need to help, you know.
01:35:38
Speaker 1: So he’s like, he’s one of the guys that likes to be in the posse.
01:35:42
Speaker 4: Yes, exactly so, but he wasn’t on that posse for very long. But regardless, so they know who the robbers are because they catch one of them. And now I think I mentioned that Wyatt he is eager to become the Coachese County sheriff. He thinks, if I catch these robbers, I you know, that’s gonna had a lot of credence to me and I’m going to be a hero. So he approaches this is the bad idea. He approaches one of the cowboys, Ike Clanton, who’s in cohoots with all that he knows everybody he’s in codes with him. He’s considered a leader of the cowboys actually, and he says a proposition. He says, you know, wells Fargo is offering five thousand dollars for the capture of these guys. If you help me capture them, I’ll give you the five thousand dollars. All I want is the glory. So just lead them to some place where we can get So Ike agrees, you know, he’s he’s going to turn in you know, these people that he knows for the five thousand dollars. Well later, uh, it gets a little complicated, but but yes, yes, but Ike Ike fears he fears that Wyatt didn’t keep his secret because Ike said, you know, I want to find out if you’ll if it’s if that award is good dead or alive. And so White finds out. He goes to the Wells Fargo office. They telegraph it and yeah, it’s good debt or alive. But he doesn’t tell the Wells Fargo man what’s going going on. But he reads the telegram and so he just kind of assumes that that he’s doing that Ike is doing something with White, and he approaches. Ike is, oh, yeah, you know you’re gonna go get Scott.
01:37:10
Speaker 1: I got Scott too confused. I have to understand I have to trust the other people. Are you confused? Uh, I’m I’m.
01:37:18
Speaker 5: Waiting to hear Gang is like making sure he’s not screwing him over exactly.
01:37:23
Speaker 1: But who sent the telegram?
01:37:25
Speaker 4: Whyatt sent the telegram to the will?
01:37:27
Speaker 1: Mike says, I the Ike, the inside man. Yes, he goes, hey, is that I get five thousand bucks? Dead or alive? Yes? And so they said, let me check. Yes, Whyatt telegrams the bank. Yes, well what’s now the bank? Wells Fargo. They say, no problem, Dead’s fine, But then what well, because I understand, like the then well.
01:37:48
Speaker 4: The Wills Fargo man sees the telegram from Wyatt, from Wyatt and back, and so he makes the connection, oh he and he’s he sees he saw Wyatt and Ike talking together. So he makes the connection that Ike is working with Wyatt, and he mentions it to Ike, and Ike starts freaking out because.
01:38:08
Speaker 1: So he goes, oh I understand you’re working Yeah yeah Wyatt.
01:38:13
Speaker 4: Yes exactly. Because Ike is fearing for his death because this happened to got men of the cowboys who got caught or or or spilled the beans they were they disappeared, and so Ike is terrified, and so he goes and gets mad at Wyatt. Then he accuses Doc of telling people, and he just goes into this rampage and he’s just angry and you guys, lie, I mean, you get you. You weren’t supposed to tell about this. And and then he gets drunk and he starts keeps ramting and raving all night long and he’s he says, you know, and then the next the next day, and I’m skipping over a lot of stuff, but it’s mostly Ike is the problem here. The next day, uh, he’s saying, you know, uh, he’s telling people. As soon as those brothers get up, I’m gonna get him, you know, or I’m gonna get Doc Holiday and interrupt you.
01:39:00
Speaker 5: Like, the cowboys are Ike’s gang, right, like.
01:39:05
Speaker 4: A loose Yes, it’s a loose amalgamation. And some people look at Ike as a leader or one of I just there wasn’t just one leader, but it’s one of the leading men. But yeah, the cowboys are all and you know, not all the cowboys were stage robbers. Mostly they were just rustlers.
01:39:20
Speaker 1: Are they like they’re like a mafia? It’s style, yeah, get away.
01:39:24
Speaker 4: I mean you know, there’s you got certain ranchers that are fencing the cattle for the rustlers. They’re actually going over the border to Mexico, which is just a day’s right away, and stealing cattle. And there’s you know, there’s butchers and others that they just wink wink and they buy the cattle. And and that’s why so many people and merchants and Tombstone tended to let things with the cowboys go because they were making money off of them, and the herbs were kind of a you know, monkey wrench and this whole you know, they were they were putting to stop those kinds of things. So anyway, I Ike is.
01:39:54
Speaker 1: On a ranch, You’re doing a phenomenal job.
01:39:57
Speaker 4: Oh thanks.
01:39:57
Speaker 1: Anyway, like the first time in my life I’ve ever understood this.
01:40:00
Speaker 4: Oh well good, yeah, well, I prefer you read the book.
01:40:03
Speaker 1: But no, no, I will. That’s why I’ve never understood this.
01:40:07
Speaker 4: Okay, Well, Ike’s on a rampage, he’s drunk, He’s making all kinds of threats. And these are on top of threats that other cowboys had made in the past. They just don’t like the IRBs, So the McClary brothers, they had threatened him in the past. So, uh, Doc Holiday arrives in town. He’d been in Tucson and Ikes gets at argument with him, and they’re threatening each other.
01:40:27
Speaker 1: And what’s there? What are they arguing about?
01:40:30
Speaker 4: Well, because Ike believes that Doc is in on it too, that Doc has been spreading a word about this because he’s buddies with the earth, he’s running with the herbs, and he’s in And Whyatt’s you know, so.
01:40:39
Speaker 1: These guys are like they’re drunk, they’re drunk, they’re accusing each other stuff.
01:40:43
Speaker 4: And Whyatt had Doc come in to explain because White tells Ike, I didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything to Doc, And when Doc gets here, he’ll be able to, you know, tell you well, Doc, you know he he gets angry quickly anyway, and so it’s just mostly just kind of this you know, shouting match between the two of them. But the next morning, okay, so Ike’s going around.
01:41:02
Speaker 1: I think that if someone had said, let’s all get together and talk this through, maybe let’s let’s just.
01:41:09
Speaker 6: Go forward with the five thousand dollars planning, Yeah, that we had lined out.
01:41:12
Speaker 4: Well, speaking of lines from the movie toostone, this is where it comes from. The So the night before the okay corral, your Doc is confronting Ike, and he says and Ike says, I’m not healed, you know, And Doc says, well, go get healed. You know, I’ll meet them either. That’s that kind of threats that are going on.
01:41:27
Speaker 1: But guy, I don’t have my gun.
01:41:28
Speaker 4: I don’t have my gun. I’m not healed, you know, I don’t have my gun. And Doc says, go get your gun. And and so Ike spends all night up and he’s gambling and he’s drinking, he’s not shaving. He’s for a pretty disheveled I’m thinking. And the next morning, you know, Virgil, people are You have to remember, people that spend the night as gamblers, they go to bed late and they sleep late. So all these guys that are involved, like the IRPs, they’re getting up like at noon or what I mean, that’s that’s the normal day for them. They’re sleeping until noon. So people are waking up Virgil and White and said, Mike’s going around here and he’s threatened to kill you guys, and he’s you and why it’s saying Okay, I’m gonna sleep a little longer. And then they weren’t too worried. It’s Virgil is the same way.
01:42:10
Speaker 6: So I’m still saying that the Western trope of showing a showdown at high noon is largely derivative of the Yeah yeah, I had.
01:42:19
Speaker 1: I dated a girl for a while. She was a flight attendant and a gambling addict, very erratic sleep hours. Got a double whammy there. Yeah.
01:42:28
Speaker 4: So anyway, finally they get up and and Virgil he says, Okay, I’m gonna go take care of Ike, and he finds he goes, He finds.
01:42:36
Speaker 1: Him, but take care of him in what way?
01:42:38
Speaker 4: Well, and arrest him, you know, and take his gun away because he’s armed. You that’s supposed to carry gun.
01:42:42
Speaker 1: So he’s like, Ike’s wanding around town hungover.
01:42:45
Speaker 4: Threatening people, you know, shouting, and he sneaks up behind him and cloppers him over the head, takes his gun. I mean it was a serious blow because he had to go to the doctor and get abandoned.
01:42:54
Speaker 1: But then they’s like a comic quality dog there is, so they take I’m not making fun of the book, like up up until the shooting, there’s like, yeah, there’s like a comic.
01:43:03
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, because I mean it’s it’s crazy. But they take him to the court in Tombstone and uh so Ike is there and Wyatt’s in there, and uh, you know he’s gonna get fined at course, but that’s where I says, you know, he starts yelling at White, and he says, all I want is four feet of ground, you know, and you took my guns away, give him all my guns and and uh there’ll be a reason for a corner’s in quote. I mean, he just gets goes on and on hands distance. All I want is four feet of ground between us to shoot you. He wants to have a gun fight, right, All I want is give me four feet of ground you And.
01:43:37
Speaker 1: Uh, why it didn’t have to say like what does that mean?
01:43:39
Speaker 4: No, exactly, yeah, and so uh anyway, then the McClary brothers arrived, or the McCary at one of the brothers arrives in town. And after this incident with Ike, uh, you know, the mccary’s had also been making threats. And why it comes up to uh to Tom mccrarury, who’s outside, and Tom McClary says something like, well, if you want to fight, I’ll fight you right now. Well, White gets his revolver and hammers them over the head. Took the fight right out of Tom McClary. But then when Frank McClary gets the town. It’s like, why did White hit my brother? You know? And so so now the McClary’s who are friends with the Clantons, they’re all mad at the Herbs and they’re continuing to make threats. And then people are so this is what’s amazing. So, you know, Virgil and White and Morgan, they’re kind of wandering around the streets. There’s a lot of people in the streets, and people keep coming up to Virgil says, there’s these guys that are going to kill you, you know, they’re threatning you or whatever, and it’s like he knows who it is, but but over and over and then there’s other men that come up and say there’s like this vigilante group or minute men, and it says, hey, I can get like, you know, so many men together if you want help or whatever. Verre just no, no, I don’t want any help.
01:44:41
Speaker 1: Like we’ll get guys to help you beat up Yes, exactly the rest of us.
01:44:45
Speaker 4: Yes, And Virgil says, no, no, you know, I can take care of it. And finally, you know, Virgil just gets so much of this and even Johnny Bean, who’s the uh, the sheriff, the County sheriff. Uh, Virgil says, well, can you go and disarm Humber whatever, and Johnny being I don’t really want to do that, you know, And so finally Virgil is fed up, you know, and after the last time, somebody says, these guys are down there by flies boarding house, which is where Doc is staying and which you know, that’s kind of interesting. They’re threatening Doc and here they are just right right next to where Doc lives. And so Virgil has had enough and he says, you know, those guys are carrying guns in town against the law. You know, that’s insult to me. It’s disrespecting me in my office. That’s disprected the laws. And I’m gonna go disarm him. And so he gets Wyatt, he gets Morgan, who are all there, and then uh, Doc Holliday, you’re not gonna leave me out, are you? And White goes well, he says it’s going to be a hard fight, and Doc says, that’s the kind I like. And so he’s deputized is paid gig? What’s that now?
01:45:45
Speaker 1: When Doc Holly joins a posse or Doc Holliday does this, there’s no financial.
01:45:49
Speaker 4: No, usually not sometimes wells Fargo would reimburse them, you know, kind of like a per diem or you know, if they you know food. I mean, sometimes they abould give them money for the time they spent going after these individuals. And that was also another kind of sore point between the Irt brothers and Johnny Bean Johnny Been, who was the county sheriff who was leading that posse after the stage robbers. We talked about he paid himself and his men, but he didn’t pay the IRPs and the earth will what about we were riding with you whatever? And finally Wells Fargo, I guess coughed up some money for him. But anyway, Virgil Arth decides I’m gonna go down there. I hear they’re down here by you know, flies boarding house. So we got Wyatt, we got Virgil, we got Morgan, we got Doc Holliday.
01:46:32
Speaker 5: And Virgil has the authority to do that because he’s a US Marshal.
01:46:35
Speaker 4: Well, it’s mostly because at that time he’s also the Chief of Police of Tombstone, so he’s both chief of police and a deputy US Marshall. So he’s in charge of enforcing Tombstone’s laws. And he’s just sick of these threats. I mean, you know, after a while, it’s like, you know, you can keep saying I’m gonna kill you, I’m gonna kill you, and you know, pretty soon you’re you’re kind of done with that, right because the guy might kill you. You don’t know when the threat ends and when it was I was real, But mainly they’re breaking the law. So I’m gonna disarm him. So they around the corner and they see the you know, they see the Clantons, and they see the Macari’s up there, and they see the horses. There’s a couple of horses, and they see Johnny Bean, and Johnny Bean has been talking to him, and Johnny Bean keeps starts rushing towards IRPs and Holiday and he keeps looking back over his shoulder.
01:47:19
Speaker 1: He’s scared, you know, and he’s shot in the back.
01:47:22
Speaker 4: Well not that you get shot about. He he’s scared of what’s gonna happen. And he’s says, Virgil, don’t go down there. They’re gonna, you know, they’ll you know, there’s gonna be a battle, there’s gonna be a war. Don’t go down there. And Virgil says, I’m gonna disarm them, and then Johnny Ban lies. He says, I’ve already disarmed him. Well, he had not disarmed him. And really, all Johnny Bean had to say if he wanted to prevent this, he could have said, they’re leaving town, because if you’re leaving town, you can have your guns. He doesn’t say that. In fact, you know, he asked him to leave town, but they said, oh, we’re gonna hang around a little bit longer. So anyway, he lies to him. He’s trying to get you know, I’ve already disarmed him. And so this kind of breathed a little air of relief into IRPs and Doc Holliday, Oh okay, they put their guns away, you know.
01:48:01
Speaker 1: Oh they believe them.
01:48:02
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, they believe them. Yeah, because but Virgil still going down there. But he had his uh, he had his revolver in his waistband at the front where he could grab it easily. So he pushes it back around or whichever side it was, and uh, he takes that he has this cane. It was Doc Holliday’s cane he was carrying. And then he had given his shotgun to Doc Holliday who was supposed to hide it under his long coat, which he which he did. But they’re not pulling out their guns. And like I said, White put his He carried his gun in a coat pocket, which is an aside. It is a very odd all the movies that were in gun leather, right, but not at the Okay Corral. These I mean White had his in a pocket. Doc Holladay had a revolver in his pocket, and Virgil had his gun in a waistband. It wasn’t even a gun holster belt. Uh So, anyway, they’re relieved, Okay, we’re still going to go down there. But they think that there’s no guns.
01:48:53
Speaker 1: Do you think they think that.
01:48:54
Speaker 4: They think that, yes, because that because they mentioned how they had put their guns away. They they believed the sheriff. You know, why would he lie to us? He says, I’ve already disarmed him.
01:49:04
Speaker 1: I don’t want to overplay this part, but at this point, how many of these people do you think are in some degree intoxicated?
01:49:12
Speaker 4: Well, Ike is definitely intoxicated. I don’t know that Doc Holliday was intoxicated. Some people believe that he might have been, but from what I’ve read, I mean he had just gotten up a short time before. I mean, there’s no accounts of him carousing in the bars and all that stuff. So I don’t think he was inebriated, but he might have had a few drinks.
01:49:32
Speaker 1: I mean, I don’t know, but they’re like there’s like a there’s a clear headed quality.
01:49:36
Speaker 4: Yes, And Whider wasn’t known to drink. I can’t say he was a teetotaler, but some people do. But he had stained for the most part. Virgil hadn’t been drinking. Morgan probably hadn’t been drinking. And I really don’t think either the McClary brothers, Frank or Tom had been drinking, or Billy Clanton, who was just you know, like nineteen years old. But I was definitely, I mean, he was way over the top, out of control drunk. And like I said, it was all his ranting and Arabian threats that really brought this to a head. So they get close and now keep in mind, this lot that they’re in near the Okay Corral is they say, from fifteen to nineteen feet wide. It’s a very constricted space. There’s actually a couple of horses there. They come down there and the first thing they see is these guys have their guns. They are armed, and so the first thing, Virgil says, boys, I want your guns. Well, they immediately reach for their guns and Virgil says, hold, you know, I don’t want that. He holds a cane up and White Irp admitted in his testimony that he was the first one to fire. He fires at Frank McCary. He said, I fired first because he considered Frank to be the best shot and the coolest under fire, so he wants to take him out first. He hits him in the stomach, doesn’t kill him right away. So whyaet Irp actually opens the gunfight there at the OK Corral after that.
01:50:53
Speaker 1: If he hadn’t shot, do you think there would have been shots fired?
01:50:57
Speaker 4: I don’t know. I I I do know that whyatt IRV thought that they were going to be shot, or he wouldn’t have done that. He felt that it was imminent. In fact, they even talked about They kept bringing up the word fight. You know, they talked about fight. You know what if they fight, you know, well we’ll shoot their horses and you know all this kind of stuff. They were kind of thinking about it. You know, White said, you know, we were pretty sure they were going to fight. And so when they looked like they were going for their guns, not to just turn them over, but they actually you know, kill. He decides I’m going to take out and that’s what he testized, that I took him out first. And there’s just that very split second. In fact, they say that Whyatt’s shot and the shot from Frank which missed, were with a split second. I mean they thought it was a single shot. It was very close, and then there was this brief hesitation or pause. It was like it was almost like this second, where is this really happening. It’s like they’re kind of processing this. We’ve actually started this thing, and then it just gets crazy. Thirty seconds, thirty shots. Doc Holliday fires is sh shotgun at Tom McClary. He’s kind of hiding behind a horse. Wyatt ends up hitting the horse. The horse, you know, jerks away, and then Doc Holladay hits him once in the side with the one barrel and Tom McClary starts running away and collapses like less than a block away. We sent like fourteen pelus rude into his chest cavity. Doc tried to sue shoot a second time. Something malfunctioned with his gun. He throws it down the shotgun, he throws it down, he goes for his revolver. By this time we have Frank McClary. He’s wounded in the stomach. He’s kind of holding onto this horse getting out to the middle of the street. The horse breaks away and Doc Holiday is getting ready to shoot. That’s when Frank says, Doc Holliday, I have you now or whatever? And Doc Holliday says, you’re a daisy if you do, and Doc Holiday fires. But also before dark callag get fired.
01:52:53
Speaker 1: Okay, why does he yell Doc Holladay, have you now?
01:52:56
Speaker 4: Because he had his gun on him. You know, Doc Holladay’s out there in the street, he has no protection.
01:53:01
Speaker 1: But he decides us to advertise this.
01:53:03
Speaker 4: Yeah, he says, I have you now? And then Doc Holliday and this is in the testim he says, you’re a daisy if you have But Morgan irp. He ends up shooting Frank and hits him in the head and Frank just goes down immediately, and there’s a big scuffle. I mean, people are starting, you know, it’s thirty seconds. People are starting to gather and they’re gathering around Frank McClary. He’s down here on the ground and Doc Hallady’s starting to yell he tried to kill me. I’m going to kill that sob or whatever. And they’re pulling him back. Morgan Irp. He was hit across his shoulder blades. But he’s the one that, even on the ground, he raises his revolver. He’s the one that kills essentially the killing shot of Frank McLaury. There’s one other individual, Billy Clanton. He’s up against the wall of this building, on the side of the lot and he’s wounded several times. And as he’s kind of you know, sliding down against the wall, he’s trying to fit. He’s fiddling with his revolver and c s fly the gallery owner. He has a Henry rifle. He goes up to him and he takes the revolver away and and Billy Clinton says, can you get me more cartridges? You know, he’s saying I need more cartridges or whatever. Yeah, and uh and they take him to a building and and he has a gruesome death. I mean people are coming in and get the people away, you know, get the crowd away, and and uh, yeah, it was not a pleasant death for him.
01:54:23
Speaker 5: What about drunk Ike what was going on with him?
01:54:25
Speaker 4: Oh, that’s a good question. Yes, so that’s what. In fact, that’s one of the big things in the gunfight.
01:54:31
Speaker 1: You know.
01:54:32
Speaker 4: Ike suddenly sobers up and he runs up to Wyatt after those first shots and he says, I’m unarmed, I’m on arm, you know. He says, well, you know, the fight has commenced. Get out of here, the fight has commenced, and so I takes off running. Yeah, he just runs away.
01:54:48
Speaker 1: Has a chance to shoot he could have shot him.
01:54:50
Speaker 4: Yes, but he says the fight has commenced and get out of here or get armed or whatever. I can’t remember the exact phrase, but he does say the fight has commenced, and he pushes like.
01:54:59
Speaker 1: The guys have as they say that just people wouldn’t say.
01:55:01
Speaker 4: Now, yeah that’s true. Yeah, it is so so yeah. Yeah, it’s so surreal also because I mean, you know, there’s black powder, smoke, there’s flame coming out of the barrels of these pistols, and Ike is up there with Wyatt trying you It’s like, I’m unarmed, you know, and don’t shoot me. And he’s the reason they’re there, He’s the reason they’re there. Yes, uh, And he runs away doesn’t help his brother. His poor little brother is getting murdered.
01:55:30
Speaker 1: He gets out of there unscathed.
01:55:33
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, and then I later, of course, he presses charges against the Herbs in the holiday, and that’s how we have this this hearing. It’s called the Spicer Hearing, and it’s pages and pages of testimony and it’s some of the most confusing reading. I mean it’s like one person says one thing, the other person was the other, and their eyewitnesses nobody really agrees with one another. And my favorite quote is from the dressmaker across the street and she saw the whole thing, and they asked her a specific she goes, I don’t know. It was all confusion, it was, and even for the people that were involved, it was confusion. I mean it was just a cotal chaos in those exactly. Yeah. But guess who’s not hurt. White Herb the one guy that doesn’t get, you know, other than Ike not a scratch on white earp and he’s right in the middle of it. Virgil Herb’s wounded. Doc Holla Day gets a flesh wound in his hip. Morgan IRBs gets a pretty serious wound in his shoulder, and then later Doc Holliday goes up his room and Kate Elder’s there, the Big Nose Kate, and she writes about this and and he starts crying, and he says it was awful, just awful.
01:56:40
Speaker 1: Well, didn’t you like about it?
01:56:41
Speaker 4: I think the killing, I think, you know what I mean, even though he’s a even though Doc is angry, it’s like, you know, when you kill somebody, I think that’s a whole different layer, right, Yeah, you know, I think it’s I think these men.
01:56:55
Speaker 1: I didn’t mean that like that. I thought there’s some other because I was when I said that, What was you crying about? Like none of his buddies got killed?
01:57:01
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, no, but it’s I think it’s just the fact that these men were killed and they had I mean they had to. I mean, uh but uh, you know, it wasn’t about his wound. I mean, it was just this. It was horrific to him that that they you know, I mean, he sent, you know, fourteen pellets into the chest cavity of Tom McCary and you know he’s dead. So I mean it’s it was I think, very sobering. But yeah, I I Clinton is the villain and all that he’s the one that really egged things on. And uh yeah, and Ike Clinton gets killed himself. Oh a few years later, and again he’s running away. He was he there were some guys looking for him for rustling cattle.
01:57:40
Speaker 1: And and looking for him for something unrelated.
01:57:42
Speaker 4: Yeah, unrelated to this. And he approaches cabin. He didn’t know that these guys are in there, and as soon as he does, he jumps on his horse and starts to know skidadling. And this is nobody’s afraid to shoot somebody in the back if you’re a long man. And so they blaze away at him and he tumbles off his horse and it’s the one time he wasn’t able to run away.
01:57:59
Speaker 1: So wow, dude, that’s a great uh understand good?
01:58:07
Speaker 2: Good, there’s the pre and post understanding.
01:58:10
Speaker 4: Ye, well, it’s more clear in the book. Sure, I’m a much better writer than I am a narrator.
01:58:16
Speaker 1: That must mean you’re pretty hell of a good writer.
01:58:18
Speaker 4: Oh well, thanks, I hope.
01:58:19
Speaker 1: So, yeah, what’s your next book? You’re doing?
01:58:21
Speaker 4: So the next book is focusing on Jesse and Frank James and the Civil Wars Bushwhackers and under Bloody Bill Anderson and a trail their Civil War time, yes, and how that and how that leads to their outlawry. And I’m going to talk a little bit about the birth of the American outlaw because they’re really the quintessential outlaw Jesse and Frank James, the James Younger Gang. So that that the book is called Bushwhackers actually, so it’s going to focus on that that period. But like I say, take us into how that led to their outlaw career.
01:58:50
Speaker 1: We just spent some time reading about because this project we’re working on about the Buffalo Hide Hunters. Uh, one of these main one of the main Buffalo high Hunters that wrote a very good account of his time. He was involved in those like those Borderland Civil War that was like yeah, the paramilitary shit.
01:59:16
Speaker 4: The border Ruffians like yeah.
01:59:18
Speaker 1: This kind of like the plane close paramilitary aspect of the Civil War. It’s gruesome.
01:59:28
Speaker 4: Well, you know, bloody Bill he earned that appellation. I mean he had scalps tied to his horse’s bridle. I mean they scalped the soldiers that they killed, and the hatred was so deep, yeah, I mean so deep. And the things they were doing to one I mean one of the things that led to Jesse joining the up with the Quantrille or Bloody Bill was. You know, the federal militia came to the home of his stepfather and mother and they whipped him trying to get information where Frank was. And then they strung up his stepfather, doctor Reuben Samuel. Some people think that it actually caused brain damage. They strung him up, they didn’t kill him, and that you know, it was so painful that the stepfather actually did tell him where Frank and the other bushwhackers were. But I mean to see that as a teenager, you know, and then the things he experienced as a teenager in battle and to see his friends killed, to kill people, I mean he was indoctrinated to this violence sure at just the right age to become a way of life.
02:00:31
Speaker 1: Mm hm. Ron Hansen, yes, yeah, uh. You know what he says in his book that I don’t know if it’s true, mate, any time, if it’s true or not. I asked, I’ve asked a lot of people this, okay. So uh. His book is the assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford. So a guy Robert Ford was unassassinated. Yes, so Robert Ford kills Jesse James and then a guy comes to kill Robert Ford, Ed Kelly and Robert Hanton in his book. In Hanson’s book, he says that that the guy that kills Robert Ford has a coach gun. Not only is the coach gun Loda was shot, but he takes a bunch of pipe filings. He explains that he takes little sections of pipe and takes a cold chisel and starts knocking off pipe fragments and uses a funnel to fill the barrels full of pipe fragments. And you hear different accounts Robert Ford gets cut in the half near the neck or gets cut in half near the waist? Is that true?
02:01:43
Speaker 4: So the pipe filing story, I just looked at the reports from Creed, Colorado up that we’re published in the papers in eighteen ninety two, and I’ve seen no mentions of the pipe filings.
02:01:56
Speaker 1: But so Royan Hansen maybe made that up.
02:01:58
Speaker 4: Maybe yeah. And then but as far as the reports do say it like severed the juggler, it was in the neck area and just ripped it out. It said that you know Ed Kelly. It was kind of interesting because Ed Kelly was kind of standing at the entrance to the bar and that he had a confederate or somebody that came up and handed him the shotgun. He didn’t walk up with the shotgun in his hands. Someone handed him the shotgun and then he raised it up and he said hello, Bob, which is what Billy said. Billy said that you know too, and Bob turns around and he said it. Bob Ford started to go for his vest or hip pocket, and just as he was reaching down that he let go with the shotgun. And it said, you know, it knocked Bob for it back and it said he rolled over on his side and died just like that with his hands still on his hill. And there was apparently Ed Kelly walked up and there was a gun a revolver there and Ed Kelly took the gun. But Ed Kelly ends up getting killed, you know, Oklahoma. Later, you know, he goes, he goes, he goes to prison.
02:03:06
Speaker 1: But all these he just killed for, just to be the guy that killed for I think.
02:03:10
Speaker 4: So yeah, Well, some people say he might have had some kind of connection, uh with Jesse. But here’s the cool thing. Guess who showed up at the funeral Bob Ford and Creed Frank James. What yes, Frank James went to pay his respects to make sure I think that was done. I mean, and I also think just to stand over him and say, you know, you killed my brother and respects. Yeah, not to pay his respects, no, but yeah, he made the trip from Missouri to Creed. But anyway, uh, yeah, Ed Kelly is killed. Well, you know, these people, all these people write a letter to get him released from prison. A few years later, and he’s released, but then he’s I can’t remember the town in Oklahoma, but he’s kind of a belligerent character and he gets he gets in a feud with the local policeman and then they have a fight, you know, and they’re grappling with one another, and and he’s trying to get the policeman’s gun. Ed Kelly fired all his bullets and was out and actually hits himself in the leg. But they’re still grappling and his policeman’s trying to you know, get his gun back, and so apparently a bystander went up and grabbed ed Kelly’s arm so the policeman could get his gun, and then he shoots and kills ed Kelly. So that’s the de mice of Kelly.
02:04:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, so did anybody then Avenge, No, I don’t think so.
02:04:24
Speaker 4: I don’t think so. I think that’s where the story ends.
02:04:27
Speaker 1: Wow, I didn’t know that detail.
02:04:29
Speaker 4: Yeah, but you know the Bob Ford it’s it’s a it’s a sad story. He thought he was going to be a hero for killing Jesse James, and you know, his brother Charlie commits suicide. And I think he commits suicide because he’s dealing with the effects of you know, having been a part of this, and you know, they have a stage play, they go around in their food and you know, it’s really a lot like the movie. Actually, I think the movie’s great. I think Brad Pitts the yeah, the best Jesse James ever. But no, it’s it’s uh yeah, he thought he was going to be wealthy and he was killing this famous aut law but uh, you know nobody thought that was cool.
02:05:05
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Yeah.
02:05:06
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well here’s the thing, Steve. I mean, this was like a political, a paid political assassination. You know, he wasn’t arrested. I mean, he hadn’t been tried. Uh, you know, the governor was in cahoots and actually you know, organized this assassination. It was a government funded assassination. I mean, Billy Jesse has been convicted of no robbery whatsoever.
02:05:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah.
02:05:30
Speaker 4: And then you know Jesse had always said and Frank says, all we want is a fair trial or whatever, and uh.
02:05:36
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, but those guys are cold blood well they were.
02:05:39
Speaker 4: But here’s my point. So Frank James, because you know, he sees the writing on the wall, you know, he thinks who’s gonna come after me? He says, I could be out chopping wood and somebody’s gonna shoot me or whatever. So he arranges this surrender to the governor. And Frank has tried twice for a crime and muscle shoals out of and also for the gallop and galloped and for the crime of a trained robber or a man was murdered near Winston, Missouri, and he’s acquitted in both things. He never committed a crime. For the rest of his life. He actually did exactly what he was going to say. You know, all I want is a fair trial. He got it, and he was a perfect citizen, you know. And this is the other bizarre thing about Frank and Jesse. You know a lot of people think of as like cycle pass. Like you said, they’re murderers or whatever. Man their wives after they were dead, both of them said that was the best husband you could ever have. I mean, they swore they were just the most gentle, the best husband that you could ever have. About Frank and Jesse, well, that’s right. Well, you know, here’s what I think about it. Have you read the book American Sniper by Chris Kyle?
02:06:46
Speaker 1: Familiar with it?
02:06:46
Speaker 4: Okay? Well, Chris Kyle writes about how the war in the Middle East he was a sniper, and how it can numb you to the violence and the killing. And there’s one point in here where he talks about at a distance, he shoots this enemy on a motorcycle and there’s a guy with him, a spotter, and the guy falls off his motorcycle. Kind of funny, and they’re laughing about it, you know, they’re laughing about killing this guy. Yeah, he’s become numb. You know, he’s over there seeing us, he’s killing people. And I think that’s what the Civil War did to Frank and Jesse. They did so much killing that they were just numb to the violence. And yet they could still you know, Jesse had two children. He could be a loving father, but if you threaten me or you get in my way, he had no hesitation about killing you. I mean, it meant nothing to him to kill somebody. So it’s this weird dichotomy. You know, you can be a family man, but yet you can kill at the you know, the flip of a switch.
02:07:40
Speaker 1: Yeah. I like those understandings though. I mean, it’s just like the complexities of people’s motivations. We get into that affair bit and talk about these like these, like I keep talking with his hide hunter thing.
02:07:56
Speaker 4: Sure, just how most.
02:07:57
Speaker 1: People have put these guys these like they’re just doing it for the killing buffalo, for the purpose of denying the future of the animals. Do you know what I mean? When it was like a much more complex picture of civil war economics? Right now?
02:08:12
Speaker 4: Is that an audiobook?
02:08:13
Speaker 1: Or it is?
02:08:14
Speaker 4: Okay? And when’s that coming out?
02:08:15
Speaker 7: Oh?
02:08:16
Speaker 1: Cool, and go listen right now wherever you gets your audio books, you know? Okay, Well, tell me some banjo jokes. Grab that banjo on top o. You said you know more banjo jokes.
02:08:26
Speaker 4: So what do you call a pretty gal on a banjo player’s arm?
02:08:34
Speaker 1: I got enough tattoo?
02:08:39
Speaker 4: What do you what do you say to a banjo player in a three piece suit, Well, the defendant, please ride. Those are really old jokes. So I’m glad you never heard of you before.
02:08:52
Speaker 1: No, no, I haven’t heard those.
02:08:53
Speaker 4: So this is a five string banjo, A Vega fulk Ranger nineteen sixty three. The style I play is a historic style. It’s called frail under clawhammer. But it’s an African style. I mean, the banjo’s an African instrument. It’s called it was called a bonzar, a banja and uh. Anyway, the knowledge of the banjo was brought here by the enslaved, and you know it’s it’s they tried to take everything from their humanity, but once they got to the New world, they made the things from their culture and the banjo was won. It was a gourd at the stick attached. Yeah, so with the banjo is a survivor of that really awful era. So what do you want to hear?
02:09:32
Speaker 1: Anything gives?
02:09:36
Speaker 4: Okay, Well I got Old Dan Tucker. Let’s see what Old Dan Tucker. I’ll just do one verse, Old Dan Tucker down in town right to go and give all to go, gave a jump throwed Old Dan Australia Stop get out the way, Get out the way, Get out the way, Old Dan Tucker. He’s too late. Get a supper and get out the way. Get out the way, Get out.
02:10:10
Speaker 7: The way, Old Dan Tucker.
02:10:11
Speaker 4: He’s too late to get a supper.
02:10:15
Speaker 1: All right, there you go. Is another one that was so short, so short, shorties.
02:10:22
Speaker 7: Okay, all right, get out the way. Different.
02:10:39
Speaker 4: So yeah, I heard some turkey straw. Yeah, Turkey and the Strong, Turkey and ahead Bullfrog as his mother in law play a little too called Turkey in the Strong.
02:10:50
Speaker 1: Well, that is a different song. Here’s what I’m sorry. Here’s what I thought you meant that. I thought I’m sorry. I thought you meant that I was asking for more Dan talking.
02:10:59
Speaker 4: Oh I just messed it up. But here’s one you’ll like. I’ll just do one verse at see. If Jesse was your friend on him, you could depend if it be true. I am sure he always wore the belt that would equalize the wealth. He would rob the rich poor the poor. It was with his brother Frank he robbed the Gallatin Bank, carry the money from the town. It was at that very place they had a little chase before they shot Captain Sheets to the ground. Jesse had a wife, the pride of his life, his children, they were bread. But the dirty little coward that shot mister Howard has lei, Jesse James and his grin.
02:11:53
Speaker 1: He’s speaking about fort. Yes, dirty little coward and Jesse James was living under the.
02:11:58
Speaker 4: Name mister Howard. Yeah.
02:12:01
Speaker 1: Wow, that’s great man. Oh thanks, yeah, So your work as a historian, your and your interests in banjo playing are they are they like hand in hand or was it different past?
02:12:10
Speaker 4: No, it’s hand in hand. But of course I always as a kid was fascinated by the banjo, and then my first and I was started to take, you know, lessons and anyway, my first summer job at the Park Service is at a place called bent sold Fort National Historic Site near La Hunt, and they were big in the buffalo robe trade on the southern plains, and so I had my banjo there and I quickly learned that scrug style playing was not around in the eighteen forties, that’s nineteen forties. So I started getting interested in the historic styles of playing the banjo and the historic music. And even today when I’m doing research in diaries and journals, if there’s a reference to a song or a tune, you know, I make note of that, and so I’ll do it in my programs. I’ll do programs the historic music of the.
02:12:55
Speaker 1: West, John Cook’s Memoirs Full of songs.
02:12:58
Speaker 5: Oh it is, yeah, I do know that did the Definitive Guide to the Santa Fe Wagons. You ought to do the history of the banjo.
02:13:04
Speaker 4: Well there’s been some books on that actually, so somebody beat me to the punch on that one. But you know, to me, it helps bring history alive when you can play the music, you know, the Jesse James or Billy the Kid. You know, Billy the Kid was a huge fan of Turkey in the straw. But he was actually but he didn’t call it turkey in the straw. He would tell the musicians he was a great dancer, went to the violets and fan Diego’s. He would say to the musicians, don’t forget the guyana, don’t forget to play the g So in New Mexico, well, in the New World, the Spaniards did not have a term for the wild turkey, so they called it the guyana de la tierra, the chicken of the region, or the ear.
02:13:43
Speaker 1: What about the wahalloe, the wahllo te yeah, like in Sonora they call Turkey’s.
02:13:48
Speaker 4: Oh really, I know, yeah, I didn’t know o no. But anyway, in New Mexico they refer to the Walterra as the Guyina. So when Billy the kids said, don’t forget the Guyana, he meant turkey in the straw. Really yeah, yeah.
02:14:01
Speaker 1: I got one last question, okay, because you strike me as a felt that would be able to do this. What you big turkey hunter are? Do you do you mouth call? Natural, natural mouth call?
02:14:10
Speaker 4: No, I don’t. Oh I have done natural mouth call sometimes, yes, but it’s not very good. It’s it’s just I mean, I just throw that in usually I do think, yeah.
02:14:24
Speaker 1: Turkey hunting, they can tear it up.
02:14:27
Speaker 4: That’s just in my you know tool box. Usually I’ve got a I’ve got a wing bone call, I got a slate call, then I got a giant box call. So I got those three, and then sometimes I’ll throw in you know that other sound which isn’t as good as those other things. But next time I have to tell you the time I was attacked by a Cody Well, I was turkey hunting. Just rip it right now, Okay, that’s what I’m I grew up at a town of five hundred people, so most people know me. There’s a guy that got attacked by the code, not an author. Yeah. So I’m set up with my back to a tree, right and I’ve got my and I hear these couple full of gobblers really far away. So I got this box call and I’m holding it up here and I’m trying to, you know, get this sound to him. And all of a sudden, I see like this patch of fur I just kind of appears here. And then I hear this this pain on my arm, and then I see bounding away this coyote just so it actually it saw that movement. Yeah, and I had I had a gobbler decoy out there too, so I guess he thought there were a bunch of turkeys. So he bites down on here, then he bounds away. I didn’t really think much of it because the pain went away quickly. And so a few minutes later, the gobbler comes in and I shoot my gobbler. Oh yeah. So and then I get home, I get where I was seen with by with By at my parents house, and I take off my wool shirt and there’s blood and I said, oh, well, you know, I didn’t know it was that that bad or whatever. And my mom says, you better call your doctor or whatever. So I called the doctor and he says, you got to get a Raby shot. And I said, well, the kyudi looked pretty healthy. Didn’t look like it. You know, I didn’t want to get a Raby shot.
02:15:55
Speaker 8: You know.
02:15:56
Speaker 4: He says, Mark, there’s no cure. You know, either you get it. I mean, who knows? So okay, I go to the I go to the emergency room in Liberty, Missouri, and they start the Raby shop process. You’ll go around the wound with all these different things. And I’m talking to the emergency room doctor and I’m and he’s tell you know, he asked me, well, how does happen? And then what do you do for a living? I’m a history and blah blah blah. And he goes, you sure lead an interesting life. You’re an emergency room doctor. You’ve got to have better stories than I do. But anyway, that’s my story. I got attacked by a coyote. And I tell people, I said, you know, I’m a pretty good turkey caller. I fooled a coyote.
02:16:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, sure, man, Yeah, you got a wedding ring on. Yes, how long you been married?
02:16:34
Speaker 4: I’ve been married since uh since the early nineteen eighties. I’m not sure what year, but anyway, yes, good run.
02:16:42
Speaker 1: I know.
02:16:43
Speaker 4: I’m sorry that hopefully my watch not listing there.
02:16:45
Speaker 1: What’s the secret to a big, long marriage like that?
02:16:48
Speaker 7: You know?
02:16:48
Speaker 4: Uh, we my wife and I share a lot of interest. She’s a museum curator. She very interested in the history in the past, and we love visiting historic sites together. I don’t know that my children enjoyed that as much as my wife and I did, but we took them too, just like my parents took me. But you know, it’s really kind of a common shared interest in the past, and we find artifacts fascinating and the stories of real people in the past, and we even find her own family histories interesting. She’s really big into her own genealogy and her family made a real mark in ute past. Colorado have been there for decades and decades.
02:17:29
Speaker 1: Mark Lee Gardner’s brand speak any new book, Wider Dot holl Day and a Reckoning and Tombstone, Brothers of the Gun is what it’s called. Got a lot of other books. Fantastic storyteller. Thanks for coming on.
02:17:41
Speaker 4: Man Hey Thank you for having me.
02:17:42
Speaker 1: Thank you appreciate it.
02:17:43
Speaker 4: Thanks
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