OK CORRAL --- I spent a lot of time carrying a gun in there
Part of the plague of being a retiree is you have a lot of time on your hands... to think and reminisce about what you've done over the past 70 odd years.
On my computers I keep a screen picture of the front entrance of the old O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. Yes, "the" shoot out site for Earps and Clantons, October, 1881. Looking back over the landscape of my life I ponder "the highlights" or as one fellow Wharton graduate asked me,
" what's the most thrilling thing you did that made it all worth it?"
At 2:30 pm on a cold October afternoon in 1981, exactly 100 years to the minute, I stepped off in the OK Corral to start the Anniversary Gunfight at the OK Corral, in the Corral, on the exact same spot, time, date, carrying the same type gun, clothes as used in the gunfight a century before.
In 30 seconds (timed) we fired 28 shots (exactly) everyone was either wounded or shot dead as history proscribed (me, included), all caught on live satellite television for the world to see.
I belonged to a group called " THE WILD BUNCH," centered in the Silver Palace Saloon in Tombstone, right on Allen Street. We met there twice monthly to organize Sunday shows only in the corral for paid admissions. For three years, I was thrilled to be a part of that group, demonstrating gun techniques to visitors, talking history, and on rare occasions, disarming guests who had come to engage in " saving" the Earps. No harm done, pistols were available to them at the Sheriff's office, unloaded.
I know every square inch of the OK Corral, and that history records that the gunfight spilled out to the highway in back of the corral. The Hollywood movie that most depicts history was Kurt Russell's "Tombstone." A lot of dialogue mirror's history.
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On my computers I keep a screen picture of the front entrance of the old O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. Yes, "the" shoot out site for Earps and Clantons, October, 1881. Looking back over the landscape of my life I ponder "the highlights" or as one fellow Wharton graduate asked me,
" what's the most thrilling thing you did that made it all worth it?"
At 2:30 pm on a cold October afternoon in 1981, exactly 100 years to the minute, I stepped off in the OK Corral to start the Anniversary Gunfight at the OK Corral, in the Corral, on the exact same spot, time, date, carrying the same type gun, clothes as used in the gunfight a century before.
In 30 seconds (timed) we fired 28 shots (exactly) everyone was either wounded or shot dead as history proscribed (me, included), all caught on live satellite television for the world to see.
I belonged to a group called " THE WILD BUNCH," centered in the Silver Palace Saloon in Tombstone, right on Allen Street. We met there twice monthly to organize Sunday shows only in the corral for paid admissions. For three years, I was thrilled to be a part of that group, demonstrating gun techniques to visitors, talking history, and on rare occasions, disarming guests who had come to engage in " saving" the Earps. No harm done, pistols were available to them at the Sheriff's office, unloaded.
I know every square inch of the OK Corral, and that history records that the gunfight spilled out to the highway in back of the corral. The Hollywood movie that most depicts history was Kurt Russell's "Tombstone." A lot of dialogue mirror's history.
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