Wyatt Earp - "The Last Gunfight!!!"
I don't like to review books on Wyatt Earp and Tombstone and the "gunfight at the OK Corral" for several reasons:
2 Tossed a whiskey bottle out the back door of a deserted bar with
Ben Traywick to see where the cowboy dump is
3 Talked with Tombstone's Red Sample's (his great uncle was the last man hung on the gallows
To say nothing of an actual eye witness. What about someone who knows more about what it was like to step into that insanity, the fear, the sweat, the unknowing if you were going to be shot and killed, blown into eternity in the next five minutes? Can the author of the next Wyatt Earp book bring anyone into the scene?
On October of 1998 one hundred years to the very second, I stepped into the corral on the spot where it actually happened in front of television cameras and shot it out with a gang of cowboys dressed and armed EXACTLY like they did October 26, 1881 at 2:30 pm. And I know one secret only the men in the Corral knew at the time, which made us all sweat: ONE OF US WAS REALLY ARMED WITH A LOADED PISTOL.
And, he was going to shoot me first. He had two pistols, one with blanks, the other really loaded in case of "emergencies" he said, tucked in back. Six....real....bullets.
That was not in the book. Along with this: We were all scared to death, all of us, and we were only acting. We knew we were going to come out of it alive, and the nerves were on edge. We didn't even notice the crowds, didn't pay attention to the noise. We performed that act twice a month in Corral, didn't bother us at all. We performed in front of TV cameras all over the world, never bothered us.
The crowds that day were nuts. And, they were armed.
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- Almost every time, the new book or magazine article will use the term, "finally, here is " the TRUTH about what happened. then
- They usually grind out 99% of the same stuff everyone knows
- Next, some of the stuff usually takes jabs at experts in the field. I define that as people who have lived HERE, in it, in or around the Corral, Tombstone all or most of their lives and know what the dust of the Corral feels like in their nose and mouth. I.E. Ben Traywick and Glenn Boyer.
- I wonder if the self-styled experts who jet-in unpack in the local motels for a week, shoot video and record interviews, then jet-out, really do the gut work. Have they:
2 Tossed a whiskey bottle out the back door of a deserted bar with
Ben Traywick to see where the cowboy dump is
3 Talked with Tombstone's Red Sample's (his great uncle was the last man hung on the gallows
To say nothing of an actual eye witness. What about someone who knows more about what it was like to step into that insanity, the fear, the sweat, the unknowing if you were going to be shot and killed, blown into eternity in the next five minutes? Can the author of the next Wyatt Earp book bring anyone into the scene?
On October of 1998 one hundred years to the very second, I stepped into the corral on the spot where it actually happened in front of television cameras and shot it out with a gang of cowboys dressed and armed EXACTLY like they did October 26, 1881 at 2:30 pm. And I know one secret only the men in the Corral knew at the time, which made us all sweat: ONE OF US WAS REALLY ARMED WITH A LOADED PISTOL.
And, he was going to shoot me first. He had two pistols, one with blanks, the other really loaded in case of "emergencies" he said, tucked in back. Six....real....bullets.
That was not in the book. Along with this: We were all scared to death, all of us, and we were only acting. We knew we were going to come out of it alive, and the nerves were on edge. We didn't even notice the crowds, didn't pay attention to the noise. We performed that act twice a month in Corral, didn't bother us at all. We performed in front of TV cameras all over the world, never bothered us.
The crowds that day were nuts. And, they were armed.
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