Wyatt Earp - Killing Off Our Heros, (another new book)
I haven't kept count of all the Wyatt Earp books, short stories, OK Corral stories that have been published since the 1881 shoot-out in the lot behind the corral. I've even written a half dozen myself.
Yet another has just hit the market place. Not my gripe. I sow my seeds of discontent elsewhere. In the field of western history, especially within historical areas like the American southwest and our past that is not that far distant, the self-proclaimed "experts" have over the last 30 years annoyed me.
I have a lot of experience on the Corral and the gunfight. In October of 1981 at 2:30 in the afternoon, one hundred years to the second after the original fight, I stepped off as Frank McLaury, one of the gunman, and participated in the Centennial Gunfight, broadcast via live TV to 80 countries all over the globe. As an aside in an accident months later, I was shot in the leg during one of our shows, a minor affair, inside the corral.
That made me the only man shot inside the OK Corral in the 20th Century.
Back to the book. This new tome eviscerates Mr Earp's background, family life, history and reputation. Over the past half century variety of books. movies and the like have, like this book, covered their "NEW" publication with flackery detailing the 'TRUTH" about the famous " gunfighter " of the OK Corral. New information has revealed, blah, blah, etc.
Experts have emerged from Hawaii, Montana, and you name it, to "research" their brains out in libraries across the fruited plain to write their version of what they perceive came out of the dust, dirt, blood and sweat of that day in Tombstone.
Almost anything in print labelled OK Corral, Wyatt Earp, Gunfight in Arizona, Buntline Special, will sell well. Historians in this end of the country have rooms full of books, tapes of conversations with relatives, old letters between relatives, descendants outlining real history that has never seen an inch of celluloid film.this new author does NOT list either of these two FOUNTAINHEAD sources in his vast list of unkn
I know where Wyatt Earp's guns are. That is to say, I know who knows where they are.
This recent book " Wyatt Earp" ( oh God, not again!!), lists the author's sources in the back, FAILS to mention two most important sources of material: Ben Traywick of Tombstone, and Glenn G Boyer of Rodeo, New Mexico (long time resident of Bisbee).
Boyer and Traywick have decades of substantial research credited to their names, and Boyer knows where the bodies and guns are. He invited me to his house in Bisbee, spending the night there, in his spare room, I slept on a four poster brass bed, the same one Wyatt Earp died in while living in West LA in 1929.
Why authors feel moved to tear down our heros besettles me. Earp and Ike Clanton had a quiet discussion in the back yard of a saloon across the street from the Eagle Brewery just before the gunfight. They tried to settle their differences, but it didn't work. Glenn knows why.
Glenn and I spent the day among the ruins of Contention City where Earp and Holliday were put on trial. Glenn showed me the court house ruins.
The naysayers have nothing to write about, so they pick apart our heros. General Eisenhower won a war (but there were whispers about an affair), Alexandar the Great tore up half the world, but Hollywood couldn't help but portray him as bi-sexual (???)'
As for the Earp Brothers of Tombstone? Ben Traywick: " this has been my whole life!" Mine, too, Ben.
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Yet another has just hit the market place. Not my gripe. I sow my seeds of discontent elsewhere. In the field of western history, especially within historical areas like the American southwest and our past that is not that far distant, the self-proclaimed "experts" have over the last 30 years annoyed me.
I have a lot of experience on the Corral and the gunfight. In October of 1981 at 2:30 in the afternoon, one hundred years to the second after the original fight, I stepped off as Frank McLaury, one of the gunman, and participated in the Centennial Gunfight, broadcast via live TV to 80 countries all over the globe. As an aside in an accident months later, I was shot in the leg during one of our shows, a minor affair, inside the corral.
That made me the only man shot inside the OK Corral in the 20th Century.
Back to the book. This new tome eviscerates Mr Earp's background, family life, history and reputation. Over the past half century variety of books. movies and the like have, like this book, covered their "NEW" publication with flackery detailing the 'TRUTH" about the famous " gunfighter " of the OK Corral. New information has revealed, blah, blah, etc.
Experts have emerged from Hawaii, Montana, and you name it, to "research" their brains out in libraries across the fruited plain to write their version of what they perceive came out of the dust, dirt, blood and sweat of that day in Tombstone.
Almost anything in print labelled OK Corral, Wyatt Earp, Gunfight in Arizona, Buntline Special, will sell well. Historians in this end of the country have rooms full of books, tapes of conversations with relatives, old letters between relatives, descendants outlining real history that has never seen an inch of celluloid film.this new author does NOT list either of these two FOUNTAINHEAD sources in his vast list of unkn
I know where Wyatt Earp's guns are. That is to say, I know who knows where they are.
This recent book " Wyatt Earp" ( oh God, not again!!), lists the author's sources in the back, FAILS to mention two most important sources of material: Ben Traywick of Tombstone, and Glenn G Boyer of Rodeo, New Mexico (long time resident of Bisbee).
Boyer and Traywick have decades of substantial research credited to their names, and Boyer knows where the bodies and guns are. He invited me to his house in Bisbee, spending the night there, in his spare room, I slept on a four poster brass bed, the same one Wyatt Earp died in while living in West LA in 1929.
Why authors feel moved to tear down our heros besettles me. Earp and Ike Clanton had a quiet discussion in the back yard of a saloon across the street from the Eagle Brewery just before the gunfight. They tried to settle their differences, but it didn't work. Glenn knows why.
Glenn and I spent the day among the ruins of Contention City where Earp and Holliday were put on trial. Glenn showed me the court house ruins.
The naysayers have nothing to write about, so they pick apart our heros. General Eisenhower won a war (but there were whispers about an affair), Alexandar the Great tore up half the world, but Hollywood couldn't help but portray him as bi-sexual (???)'
As for the Earp Brothers of Tombstone? Ben Traywick: " this has been my whole life!" Mine, too, Ben.
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