03Jun11
After placing an order for a Swiss cheese sandwich, the customer changed his mind. “Would it be possible to change his order to an American cheese sandwich” he asked.
“Naturalize that Swiss, “ called the counterman to the cook.
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On this day in 1924 Czech novelist and short story writer Franz Kafka dies in obscurity in Austria., In 1963, Pope John XXIII dies. He is replaced by Paul VI.
James Arness died today~~He was an actor who played Marshall Dillon on Gunsmoke~~An American television western. The old west~~what a joke the movies have made of this period of time in American history.
I have delved into this period of American history with some fascination. This period is usually referred to as the Manifest Destiny period of the United States when everybody was moving west toward California from the Eastern seaboard. It was a hard fought piece of land that the people of the United States struggled to settle against the Indians, adverse weather and other conditions with no real hope of surviving without fortitude and effort. It basically was an individuals hope to make anything out of his endeavors across this frontier. There were cattlemen and frontiersmen trying to tame this vast expanse of real estate. Frontier towns sprang up around forts and gold rushes and any place else where there was an expectation of having water and ways of making housing and food without interruption. Wagon trains were formed to get settlers from seats of civilizations in the midwestern united states to points west, where one might be able to build a homestead and raise a family. So much for the actual facts of this movement now to the advent of the movie industry in the early 1900’s and their portrayal of what individuals did during this time period d.
Movieland has made this piece of history a big fantasy world of cowboys and gunfighters and railroadmen and outlaws and saloons and bank robberies and cattle barons and whatever the imagination can put together for a good show that one will sit through. And I am a big fan of all this stuff but when I reflect on some of the stuff that I see on the screen and what actually happened in real life I really get a chuckle out of some of it. I have researched some of the stuff about some of the good guys and bad guys of that period which can readily be found in bookstores and the internet.
Hereafter is the truth as far as I can find out about what each individual actually did. No plot just living in a dangerous time.
Consider Wild Bill Hickok. Students of this period generally agree that Wild Bill got a cut in the sporting houses in Abilene Kansas, while he was a town marshal there. How else could he have gambled heavily, drunk the best whiskey the town afforded and dressed in such fancy style? Certainly not on the fifty dollars or so a month the town council paid him.
Hickok was a good man with a gun. In his celebrated duel with Dave Tutt in Springfield, Mo. In 1865, Wild Bill displayed the cool nerve and accurate marksmanship his legion of admirers claim was always his. The shoot out even went off according to fictionalized protocol, to a degree. After an argument each warned the other that the next time they met there’d be powder burned. Hickok killed Tutt at an estimated range of 75 yards the next day: Bill on one side of the town square, Dave on the other. Tutt, tensed and nervous, drew first and got off 4 shots –all misses-Before Bill, steadying his 1860 Army Colt with both hands, fired one shot that drilled Tutt dead center.
Contrast this classic shootout with a later bloody even in Abilene in 1871, when Hickok was marshal there. He got into a fist fight with gambler Phil Coe over Jessie Hazel, a local dancehall girl. Drunk and ugly, Bill was slapping the girl around for making up to Coe, when the powerfully built Texas gambler stepped in and beat up Hickok. If Jessie hadn’t intervened, Phil might have killed the marshal. In any case, Phil sealed his own doom by making a punching bag out of Hickok. Bill sobered up the next day and came around to Coe’s Bull’s Head Saloon to apologize to Phil. The two men shook hands, and Phil figured that was an end to the to the quarrel. He couldn’t have made a worse guess. Several days later Coe used his six-shooter to kill a vicious dog in the street. Hickok heard the shot and came running, his long hair flying, and demanded to know why Phil had fired. Coe started to explain when Bill drew two derringers and shot Phil in the chest at a range of 6 feet. Coe went down, gasping “Hickok, you bastard!” before a gush of blood from his mouth drowned his voice forever.
Out of the corner of his eye Hickok saw an armed man running toward him from across the street. He dropped the empty derringers, whipped out a sixgun and killed him. Only then did Bill recognize the second victim as Mike Williams, his own deputy who had been stationed at the theater down the street. Mike had heard the shots and was rushing to help Bill. Hickok dropped to his knees, took Williams’ head in his hands and sobbed wildly. “Mike was my friend!” he cried “I never meant to kill him!”
More despicable than this shocking incident was Hickok’s callous murder of a harmless old Sioux chief named Whistler in the fall of 1872, after Whistler had stopped at Hickok’s bufffalo hunter’s camp on the prairie to ask for food. The old chief made the mistake of also asking for coffee after accepting the piece of fried buffalo steak the white men gave him. Bill and partner, Newt Moreland, ignored the chief’s sign. Whistler walked to the pot hanging over the cookfire and made the sign of pouring. Hickok’s insane temper flared; he pulled a sixgun and shot the chief dead. The subchief tried to knock down Bill’s gun hand and was killed by Moreland. Hickok completed the slaughter by shooting down the nephew. The bodies were hidden in a gully west of camp and the killers lit out fast before Whistler’s band discovered the body of their missing chief and came after them.
Then there was Wyatt Earp, practically deified by author Stuart Lake in his book Frontier Marshal and immortalized by actor Hugh O’Brian in a lengthy television series. The truth is that Earp was a pretty shady character who often operated on both sides of the law. Ed Bartholomew, a Texas writer who has made a career of ferreting out the truth about these heroes of the Old West, makes this fact abundantly clear in his thoroughly documented books. (Wyatt Earp, The Untold Story) and (Wyatt Earp, The Man And the Myth) Among other indictments, Bartholomew accuses Earp and his cohorts of murder in the notorious OK Corral gunfight with the McLowerys and Clantons at Tombstone, Arizona. In September 1881. Ed also cites the interesting information that Wyatt was once arrested for horse stealing in Indian Territory.
Earp’s favorite sidearm was the 12 inch barreled Buntline Special presented to him by dime novel writer Ned Buntline. However, despite all the wild claims made about his gun-slinging ability, Earp preferred a double-barreled shotgun stuffed with buckshot when he had to face some hard-case gunman aiming to perforate his hide. The success of this tactic may be judged by the fact that cagey Wyatt died in bed at 83.
Incidentally, Buntline also presented one of his Specials, reputedly made to order for him at the Colt factory to lawmen Bat Masterson and Bill Tilghman in Dodge City in the fall of 1875, on the occasion of his gift to Earp. Each Colt had “NED” carved into its walnut butt and fitted smoothly into a fine handtooled holster. Each was also provided with a demountable stock and buckskin sling. The value of this fancy extra equipment obscure to the flattered recipients until Buntline explained that if a man was caught out on the prairie surrounded by hostile redskins, he could quickly convert his six-shooter into a rifle and make the rascals bite the dust.
Earp Tilghman and Masterson were unconvinced, but of course they promptly accepted the expensive Colts.
Masterson and Tilghman waited until Buntline left town, and then cut the barrels of their Specials down to 8 inches. Earp kept his intact, using it mostly to belt obstreperous drunks over the head with the footlong barrel. The gun was lost in the Yukon in 1901, when Wyatt lent it to a friend whose boat capsized in a storm. Private collectors are believed to acquired Masterson’s and Tilman’s Specials at their deaths in 1921 and 1924 respectively.
The tubercular ex-dentist, Doc Holliday, was another Old West gunfighter who preferred a shotgun to a sixgun when the chips were down. In the over-rated and much-publicized OK Corral fight, Doc packed his shotgun while Wyatt Earp unaccountably stuck to his Colt 45. Doc, who was especially dangerous because he knew he was doomed by “the bug” gave Tom McLowery a double dose of buckshot right in the bread basket as he later described it with his macabre brand of humor. Of the six men killed or wounded that bloody day in Tombstone, all except Tom McLowery were hit by revolver bullets. Significantly, all except Tom managed to get off a shot or two after being hit. Another famous shotgun yarn, probably apocryphal but possibly true, is Wyatt Earp’s melodramatic account of killing the outlaw Curly Bill Brocius at Iron Springs, Arizona Lord knows who Wyatt’s ghost writer was.
Earp’s story (condensed) “ I climbed down off my horse…As I stood there cocking my gun, I looked the nine men(outlaws) over. Every rifle seemed aimed at me. I rather resented that. I wanted to kill Curly Bill, I believed he had been in both plots that had resulted in the wounding of my brother Virgil and the death of my brother Morgan. I felt that if any one of these nine men killed me before I killed Curly Bill, he would rob me of my one chance of vengeance, and I’d never have another. I suddenly seemed to be praying, and my prayer was that I wouldn’t be killed before I killed Curly Bill. So I raised my shotgun to my shoulder and drew a careful bead on Curly Bill. As I sighted at Curly Bill, he was sighting at me. I could see the deep wrinkles about one of his eyes that was squinted shut. His other eye, held down close to his gun, was wide open. I noticed with curious interest that this one eye blazing murderously at me over his rifle barrel, was blacker than I remembered his eyes to have been when I saw him last. Then I pulled both triggers.
Curly Bill threw up his hands. His rifle flew high in the air. He gave a yell that could have been heard a mile as he went down. I saw him no more. Each one of my shot gun shells was loaded with nine buckshot. Both charges struck him full in the breast…My hat, added fearless Wyatt in conclusion, had 5 bullet holes in it, 2 in the crown and 3 in the brim. Bullets had ripped ragged rents up and down the legs of my pants. The bottom of my coat on both sides, where it had been held out by the holsters and the handles of my six-shooters, had been torn into strings and shreds. But, as by a miracle, I had not received a scratch.”
This alleged killing kicked up a storm of controversy around Tombstone. The pro-Earp Epitaph printed an account of Curly Bill’s death, agreeing in all detail with Wyatt’s colorful report. The anti-Earp Nugget ridiculed the story. Interested citizens asked the logical question. If Earp killed Curly Bill, what did he do with the body? Where is it?.
The Nugget offered a $1000 reward for proof that Curly Bill was dead; The Epitaph countered with an offer of $2000 for proof that Curly Bill was alive. It appears no search for the body was ever made, and no evidence ever produced that he had been killed. Wyatt Earp maintained a grim, mysterious silence.
This is just a couple that I have researched but if you are interested in these characters that actually lived you might want to do a little research of your own on Billy the Kid, and John Wesley Hardin. There have been books and books written on the men of this time. But the best sources for reliable and hopefully truthful information is from the old newspaper accounts of their time.
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Here is another story about Abraham Lincoln past President of the United States
After the battle of Antietam, when McClellan's army lay unaccountably
idle, Lincoln, whith his friend, O.M. Hatch of Illinois,
went to the front. They stood on a hill from which they
could view the vast camp, and Lincoln said:
"Hatch, Hatch, what is all this?"
"Why said Hatch, "that is the Army of the Potomac."
"No, Hatch, no," said Lincoln, "that is General McClellan's bodyguard."
