Sixgun Dan’s Gunfighter Blog

Mike Carrafa, the owner of Six Gun City, had his day in court Thursday May 21st. The case was heard in Sierra Vista where it was moved to as Six Gun City’s lawyer did not feel they would get a fair and impartial hearing in front of a Tombstone judge.

I was not there but I spoke with some who were, including Mike Carrafa himself and I was told the judge said (and I paraphrase as I do not know the exact quote) that this had gone on long enough and that he was not going to shut down the business.  The judge then ordered the city to tell  Six Gun City what had to be done to comply with the Tombstones building code (Mike had been trying to get a hold of the city’s contracted inspector since the beginning of April but was given the run around and then told he was ‘on vacation’ and thus unavailable) and get the patio back open by 5Pm. They were back open on Friday.

I also heard that the city was told to ‘get over it you lost’.

The Tombstone News, owned by Mayor Dusty Escapule, which seems to consistently spin the news in the mayors favor reported as its headline for the May 22 edition “Six Gun City to Comply With Preliminary Injunction”.

Ok, so Six Gun City agreed to do what had to be done to comply with the building code and complete the construction on the outside patio - which is what owner Mike Carrafa has been trying to do ever since the city all of a sudden decided that the previous inspectors inspection was invalid and the venue was not in compliance with international building code.

The paper makes it sound like the city came out on top and that is definitely *not* the case. They were in court to try and shut down Six Gun City *completely* - the inside *and* the outside - effectively putting the venue out of business. Instead the city was told to get the patio back open and produce whatever documents that were needed so the owner could complete the construction in compliance with the building code.

Even in light of this decision there are people in Tombstone who still want to insist that Six Gun City didn’t win the case. This boggles my mind. It amazes me that some people are so dense.

The bottom line is that Six Gun City’s owner forced the issue because he *wanted* his day in court, he got his day in court, and he was proven right. I am going to see if I can get a video interview about the court case with Mike Carrafa to post here on the site.

I’m happy to report that, not only were we open for business today but we had record crowds as well. There were a LOT of folks (tourists) I spoke with who had seen the news reports on the patio situation and who told me they were happy to hear the city was unable to shut the venue down.

As a sign of defiance (towards those who will obviously try anything, no matter how low and underhanded, to try and stop Six Gun City’s growing success as a restaurant bar and show venue)  and in a nod to the movie Tombstone, while they were on the streets advertising the show,  all the Six Gun City gunfighters wore sashes made of the yellow caution tape that had previously marked the patio as closed

Of course, this time the cowboys beat the marshal and the city…

This is actually old news but since I have been so dang busy I just have not had time to post any of the things I have been meaning to for some time now. Heck, I still have not even made a logo for the blog yet!

If you have ever been to Six Gun City in the past then you know we do a 35-40 minute show. This is not counting the 10-15 minutes or so of narrative stories about the history of Tombstone, the people who lived there and events that took place there.  Up until recently the skits in the show were:

1. Luke Short and Charlie Storms
2. T.J. Walker and E.L. Bradshaw
3. The Breakfast Cowboy
4. Buckskin Frank Leslie and the Shooting of Billy Claiborne
5. The Commancheros

Well about a month or so ago now the show was changed slightly. The Breakfast Cowboy skit was dropped and two new skits were added in its place:

1. The Shooting of Marshal White
2. The Shooting of Lester Moore

The Marshal White skit was added because the cabin he lived in used to sit on what is now part of Six Gun City’s grounds. It was located approximately where the kitchen is now.

On the night of October 28 1880, just two days short of a year before the Gunfight at the OK Corral, Marshal White left that cabin to investigate a ruckus in an empty lot just up Allen Street. When he got there he found five cowboys and  among them was Curly Bill Brocius. Marshal White tried to relieve Curly Bill of his six shooter and was accidently shot in the process.

The Bird Cage Theater, which was opened by one William Hutchinson on December 25, 1881 (almost exactly three months to the day after the Gunfight at the OK Corral), was later built on that lot.

Our skit starts with Curly Bill Brocius ‘treeing’ the town and ends, of course, with Marshal White being shot.

The other new skit is of the events surrounding the death of Lester Moore who was forever immortalized by the epitaph on his tombstone which reads “Hear lies Less Moore. 4 Shots from a 44. No Less. No More.”

I actually had never known what caused that shooting to take place until we stated doing this skit. Apparently ol’  Lester was making some deliveries for the Wells Fargo company and the recipient of one of the packages he was carrying was quite upset about the condition in which it arrived. It was in particularly bad shape having been badly damaged in a stage coach accident before being delivered. Words were exchanged and a gun battle, which left both participants dead in the streets of Tombstone,  ensued.

If you have not been to Six Gun City recently then the next time you visit you should swing by Six Gun City and see the show again so you can catch the new skits.

Tombstone recently got coverage in the Los Angeles Times concerning the ongoing battle between the gunfighter groups for tourist dollars.

You can go to their website to read the story “Too many Wyatt Earps walking Tombstone’s streets“

KGUN 9 On Your Side came out and filmed today. I’ll post more info about what is going on later. For now here is a link to the video. In the meantime, if you have ever been to Six Gun City and you loved it (of *course* you did - why wouldn’t you?) please Digg this story to help us get exposure. We want the national media to come and put the town under a microscope.

A letter to the editor, from Daniel Stanford of Cokeville Wyoming, was published in the Tombstone Gazette on March 9, 2009 (Vol 01 Issue 30). In that letter Daniel laments the shutting down of the street show portion of Huckleberry Productions Main Event which is their production of the Gunfight at the OK Corral.

Daniel,

The cancellation of the street show which you brought your friends to Tombstone to see was not the decision of Stephen Engdahl who owns Huckleberry Productions. The closure of the street portion of the show was a decision the city made.

There has, for sometime now, been a fight going on in Tombstone over the advertisement of the various gunfight reenactment shows (specifically the passing out of hand bills on Allen Street by off Allen Street businesses) and, as well, over the right to perform in the street.

Apparently you need a permit to perform in the street and Huckleberry Productions has been denied one. In actuality all the commercial venues, to the best of my knowledge,  have applied and been denied permits to perform in the streets. I know for a fact that Six Gun City has tried to obtain a permit to do so as has Huckleberry Production. I’m unsure of whether or not Helldorado Town has or not but I’d be willing to bet that they have.

To understand to some degree just how out of control it has gotten recently know this: Three members of Huckleberry Productions were recently sited for performing on the streets.  They insist that they were only talking amongst themselves and are fighting it. Their case is, I believe, still pending but the code they were originally cited under carried a penalty of six  months in jail and $5000.00 fine for each of them. (It was later reduced to a charge that carried a lesser penalty.)

The only groups that have been granted permits are the not for profit groups (The Tombstone  Vigilantes and I believe as well, recently at least as I know they will perform in the streets for Founders Days, The Wild Bunch). This of course has led to some aggravation on the part of the commercial venues who, rightly so, feel they should be allowed to perform in the streets as well. On top of that, on the days when the non profits perform in the streets it is perceived by the for profit gun fighting venues to hurt their business.

I can tell you it definitely adversely affects the ticket sales at Six Gun City. The reason this is a big deal is that the gunfighters don’t make that much to begin with and they feel it really hurts their income. The not for profit group members I have spoken with seem surprised that only performing a few days a month as they has such a perceived impact on the other gunfighters.

It is a disagreement that has years and years of history behind it and I’m doubtful it will be resolved anytime in the near future though we can always be hopeful.

But back to Huckleberry Productions. They were denied a permit to perform in the street but they still do the  show in the OK Corral itself so you could have gone to that if you had really wanted to see the show. Or perhaps it was that you were only interested in the free show? If that is the case then I can tell you I hear that from more than just a few tourists who come to Tombstone, having not been for years, and who are disappointed that the free street shows no longer happen daily.

Many of the gunfighters in Tombstone are not yet receiving Social Security benifits and as such they still have to make a living. Whether it is the crew from Huckleberry Productions or the crew from Six Gun City or from Heldorado Town they all need to earn a living. To be honest, I’m not quite sure what to think of the tourists who come to Tombstone and profess they love the town but yet are unwilling to put their hand in their pocket and pull out $5 or $10 to support it.

Tombstone’s income comes from tourists and, at the end of the day, the town will surely die just as quickly if the tourists who come are penny pinching while on vacation as it will if it can not work out its own internal struggles about who gets to perform when and where.

Well, it has been a few weeks back now as I am so busy with work that I have not had time to post here but something happened in Tombstone that I thought I would share.

Now, I was not there to see this but I heard it from several sources. Apparently there was a group of tourists who had spent some money in town on period attire and after changing into their new Cowboy duds they went for a walk up Allen Street towards 6th (the opposite direction from the OK Corral).

I’m told they were walking up the street when they were approached by on of the Marshals men who told them they were not allowed to walk in the street dressed as Cowboys. The supposedly queried as to why and were told that they could be cited for doing a "walk down" without a permit whereupon they informed the officer they were in fact not walking down but walking up and went about their business.

Kind of reminds me of Wyatt Earp in the movie Tombstone when Behan tried to make an arrest after the gunfight at the OK Corral - "I don’t think I’ll let you arrest us today, Behan."

Score one for the tourists and for *sanity*!

As I am sitting here thinking about getting ready for the gunfights down in Tombstone this weekend it occurs to me that I have not yet posted anything regarding the ongoing war being waged in there between the Allen Street merchants and the off Allen Street merchants (and *trust* me there is a *lot* to say about it). The issue , simplified and in a nutshell, is that  the Allen Street merchants don’t want the off Allen Street merchants passing out handbills on Allen Street in an attempt to draw tourists to their locations. As I said this is a simplified explanation of what is actually going on with this issue in Tombstone right now and, as I’m sure you can imagine, there is more going on than meets the eye.

In order to give you enough information so that you can understand the story that I am about to relate I’ll need to give you a little bit more background.  Suffice it to say for now that the tensions between the two groups have risen to such heights that the mayor, the city council and the Marshall’s office are all involved in the dispute and the lengths that citizens on all  sides of the disagreement have been willing to go to are in some cases nothing less than  amazing.

Help! Help! My Business Has Fallen and it Can’t Get Up!!!

For instance several weeks ago, as reported in the January 30th edition of the Tombstone News,   Sylvia Prysant, the owner of an off Allen Street establishment known as the Tombstone Boarding House & Lamplight Room, allegedly dialed 911 and requested that the dispatcher send over a Deputy because she was dying a slow death.

She later, as reported in the February 13th edition of the Tombstone Epitaph stated that she had dialed the Marshall’s office, not 911, from her cellphone and asked for Marshall Larry Talvy as she wanted to document a dying business. Last I was aware Marshall Talvy had stated he was waiting to review the tape of the call to "get better facts".

While there is still as far as I am aware some confusion over which number she actually dialed (of course Tombstone is the kind of small town where you wold not be surprised if dialing 911 got you a payphone out in front of the local laws office - but I digress ) there is no doubt that the Tombstone EMT’s were dispatched to the Lamplight when the call was placed.

That’s right the local volunteer paramedics were rousted from their warm beds to rush over and provide emergency medical services - to a dying business!. The call was placed in the evening so the volunteers had to leave their homes to go to the Lamplight only to find out there was in fact no one in dire need of medical attention. When they got there they were told they were not needed and so they left. Each of the volunteer fire fighter/EMT’s that responded were said to have received their standard $10 for going out on the call.

In Sylvia’s defense I can understand her plight. Without advertising on Allen Street probably 80% of the Tourists would never even know that most of the off Allen Street businesses existed. This is because, sadly, most tourists blow into town, see the three blocks of shops selling tee-shirts and shot glasses that make up most of the Allen Street downtown historic district, maybe grab a bite to eat or see a show and then head home or over to Bisbey. It still amazes me to this day how many folks make the long drive to Tombstone and only stay a few hours. (It really speaks volumes as to how poor a job the town is doing to promote itself…)

Whether or not calling 911 (or even if it *was* just the Marshall’s office) in the evening to report a "dying business" was a bright idea on the part of Mrs Prysant I leave up to you to decide for yourself. One thing is for sure though and that is if she was trying to make a point she sure got it heard.

That is just one of many sad but also strangely amusing tales of the skirmishes in the ongoing battle between the on and off Allen Street merchants in good ‘ol Tombstone Arizona.

If it Walks Like a Dog and It Talks Like a Dog…

On another occasion one of the Gunfighters I work with at Six Gun City, Toto, was cited and had to go to court for "barking like a dog". The barking was allegedly directed towards Steve Goldstein, the owner of Big Nose Kate’s and one of the main players in the current war between the on and off Allen Street merchants. I never really asked him why he did it but my guess is that it was social commentary on the ongoing battle between Goldstein and Mike Carrafa who owns Six Gun City where I work.

Six Gun City is technically an off Allen Street venue even though the building that Spur Western Wear is in as well as the empty one next to it (both of which buildings are owned by the owners of Six Gun City)   are both on Allen Street so, *technically*,  one could argue that Six Gun City is on Allen Street.  Big Nose Kate’s is smack dab in the middle of Allen Street and  Goldstein does not like all the Six Gun City barkers that pass out fliers and bark, on Allen Street,  to advertise for the restaurant and gunfight shows there as he feels Six Gun City is taking business away from his venue.

(Get it? Barkers - barking like a dog?)

As an aside, Toto is the manager of the gunfighters and the show at Six Gun City though a recent article in the Tombstone Epitaph  a few weeks back reported that he was the manager of Six Gun City. Honestly, with as much misinformation as I consistently see printed in that paper, if it has always been like that (and since not much seems to have really changed in Tombstone in the past 125+ years I’m guessing so)  it is no wonder no one knows for sure exactly what happened back on October 26th 1881 when the gunfight at the OK Corral happened.

So, now you that you have, hopefully,  some sense for the absolute insanity that is Tombstone Arizona  (and yes I love every minute of it and no I wouldn’t change it for the life of me - well ok maybe I’d change some of it…) I can finally get to telling the story I actually set out to tell this evening.

This particular incident  took place in Tombstone several weeks ago now and  appears to be directly related to the infighting between the on and off Allen Street merchants. At least that is the conclusion most of us who know about it have come to. This is basically a story of collateral damage.

Don’t Take Your Guns to Town Son… Seriously

While hanging out in the ticket booth at Six Gun City with some of the actors during our lunch break one of Tombstones current temporary residents (he’s recently finished his enlistment in the armed forces  - Navy if I recommember correctly - and is in town for an extended stay to decided whether or not to become a permanent resident) stopped in for a drink. On the way in he told us that he had just been accosted by one of the members of the Marshall’s office for being dressed like a cowboy (in period clothing) and carrying guns on the boardwalk!

Excuse me? Say again!?

Nope I had heard it right. A private citizen carrying not even a real gun but a replica non-firing gun, in a state with an open carry law no less, was told he could not walk down the boardwalk in Tombstone Arizona dressed like a cowboy and carry a firearm. Apparently this officer told him that if he was not a member of one of the gunfighter groups he had to surrender his "weapon". As best as we could figure the issue must have been that he might be out there to covertly promote one of the gunfight shows in a place that it was not currently allowed to be promoted.  (for the past I don’t even know now *how* many months the "rules" about that have changed on a week to week basis).

Now, I’m sorry but that is just plain *whack*. How many tourists come to town either already dressed in period clothing and carrying guns (both real and replica non-firing) or show up, buy the cloths and the gun, change and then stroll down the boardwalks? Hell it happens so much that the town itself even has *name* for it. They call folks who do just that “Boardwalkers”. There are a *lot* of them (Boardwalkers) and even my wife and I were just plain ‘ol Boardwalkers until I started acting in the gunfight reenactments.

I seriously don’t get how anyone in that town, no matter what the current issues between merchants happens to be, could even for one iota of one second *ever* venture to believe that preventing folks from carrying guns in town while dressed like a cowboy was anywhere *close* to being a good idea! How long do they think that town will continue to survive if the tourists ever show up and find there are no cowboys in the streets any more? Since I was a kid, for as long as I can remember, that has always been one of the major charms of Tombstone  Arizona.

Tombstone without cowboys? Puh-leee-zzz!

Anyway,  it is possible that the poor guy (who for the life of me I can’t recall his name even though I’ve chatted with him probably a half dozen times at least) was singled out since he is currently a local Tombstone resident and that the officer may really not have known the poor guy was just minding his own business and not secretly trying to advertise for an off Allen Street merchant. Even so that incident still sticks in my mind as one of the more retarded things I have heard in town in a while.

If I see the feller this weekend I’ll ask him whatever came of that incident and I’ll post it here.

And now its time for me to go and get my cowboy gear ready for another weekend of killing and being killed all in the name of entertaining tourists so, until next time, keep yer powder dry and don’t squat with your spurs on!

~Sixgun Dan

I rolled into Tombstone Saturday morning and was unloading my gear at Six Gun City when our narrator, Ricochet Randy, gave me the news. One of Tombstones gunfighters had gone to that last great gunfight in the sky. He told me Little Steve had passed away and that there would be a walk down for him Sunday. He said he thought I’d like to know since I had performed with him, in the OK Corral, as a part of the Tombstone Gunslingers.

Little Steve, also known as Shlomo and by the gunfighter name Slim, played (at least when I knew him) Whitey McCord in the comedy skit at the OK Corral that preceded the reenactment of the Gunfight at the OK Corral. He also played Doc in the Gunfight.

That's Steve on the right, in profile, as Doc right before Virgil buffalos Ike Clanton

As Whitey McCord in the comedy skit he would be (in the end) goaded into a gunfight with the foreman (played by Fred in the days when I was in the show) to a bunch of cowboys. I always played one of the cowboys. I have a few pictures of this I will get around to posting soon.

Anyways… back to the show. The foreman would ask the audience for suggestion on how to get Whitey to come away from his bar table to fight him and, after several unsuccessful attempts based on audience suggestion he would invariably walk over to Whiteys table and pout out his drink (or sometimes bottle) on the ground. Whitey would become indignant and exclaim something along the lines of “that’s it! You can insult mother. You can kiss my girl. But *NOBODY* pours out my lemon flavored ice tea and gets away with it!”. What he actually said was obviously dependent on what the audience had suggested the foreman say or do. At one show I recall someone in the audience suggestion that the foreman throw a rock at Whitey. A suggestion that was, of course, ignored.

A gunfight would ensue in which Whitey shoots the foreman and the foreman’s gun fails to fire. Whitey goes back to the bar while the foreman aims his gun at him and tries several times, unsuccessfully, to make his gun fire. Eventually the foreman would at the audience, say something to the effect of “Well, its a comedy right?”, point his gun at Whitey and yell BANG! whereupon Whitey would fall the the ground.

Now, what I just described was the last bit of a very funny skit. Oddly enough there was, on occasion, one or more tourists who didn’t the fact that this last shtick with the broken gun was an actual part and they would comment on it afterward out on the street. I’ve even seen at least one poor lost soul who posted a clip of this on YouTube and whined about the fact that the gun didn’t go off. He thought it was broken. I guess some folks just ought not be allowed to watch comedy.

Actually, there is an interesting side note about that comment I saw on YouTube. The same poster complained that one of the actors was drunk and that he could not understand his lines most of the time. That actor would be Tommy who often times played a bartender. Now… Tommy has had something like three or four strokes and somewhere along the way this affected his speech so that it is slurred and maybe hard to understand, occasionally, and probably most certainly from the bleachers in the grandstand at the OK Corral. He wasn’t drunk. Of course, I always thought it sorta worked for him when he was playing the bartender…

The other character that Steve did was Doc Holiday. There is really not much to say about that bit. I think everyone knows who Doc Holiday was and what his role in the Gunfight at the OK Corral was. It didn’t even seem to bother the kids that he was in his 60’s and playing a man who had died almost 125 years ago when he was almost half his age. They still wanted to get their pictures taken with him

Even when Steve was not on stage he was still quite a character. He was in charge of the scheduling for the show when I was in it and watching him trying to get things organized or trying to tell the boss (Lou who runs the Butterfield Express stage coach tour that departs from just outside the OK Corral) how many guys there were and who was playing what parts always left me in stitches. He’d start rattling off names whilst counting on his fingers, get about halfway through, start shaking his head and get lost and have to do it all over. This would go on a few times and then he’d either get it or decided he had to go in and consult the schedule. Even funnier was the fact that he repeated this exercise every time someone asked him ‘hey how many guys we got and who’s playin’ what part? I actually think some of the guys must have asked him several times a day on purpose just to watch him go through the routine.

I’m serious. You’d have to have seen it to understand so just trust me,. It was about hysterical.

So, as I said at the start of this post, when I arrived in Tombstone this past Saturday morning Ricochet Randy informed me of Steve’s passing. He told me that there would be a walk-down in Steve’s honor that Sunday and that it would end at the OK Corral where the owner, Bob Love, had graciously (and according to some - surprisingly) allowed for a small service to be held for him inside the Corral itself.

Now, some of you reading this may knw what I mean when I say there was a walk-down for Steve on Sunday. Some of you may be thinking of the OK Corral walk-down where the altercation between the Earp’s and the Cowboys that led up to the Gunfight at the OK Corral is reenacted on Allen Street. Some of you may not know what the heck I mean by a walk-down.

A walk-down in this sense is a Tombstone tradition for honoring the dead. It is a funeral procession down Allen Street, headed up by a stage coach (the Butterfield, driven by Lou, is the one I have always seen used), and followed by friends and family. Most folks will be dressed in period attire - especially if the deceased was a gunfight reenactor or someone who embraced the tradition of going about town dressed in 1880’s attire.

We gathered at 6th and Allen, out front of the Silver Nugget and the Bird Cage Theater, starting around 9:30AM or so. I saw a lot of familiar faces there I had not seen in a while working, as I do, at Six Gun City and considering the currently still exiting tensions between the local gunfighter factions; Wrong Way Jay and Fred and the kid (in this case “the kid” meaning Corry - there are a lot of “the kid” ’s in Tombstone…) to name a few.

The walk-down, scheduled to begin at 10AM got started just a tad bit late as the mules that pull the Butterfield Stage coach were acting up and Lou had to walk it out of them before we could begin. As is always in Tombstone whenever a large group of folks in period dress begin to gather tourists were loitering around on the sidewalks waiting to see what was going to happen.

Some of the tourists knew it was a funeral and some thought it might be a gunfight fixin’ to happen. It has always amazed me that tourists would stand and gawk at people clearly expressing their grief at someones passing and stand there and take pictures of it. While taking pictures all last year in preparation to put up this site I often wanted to document a walk-down with the intention of eventually posting it here but I am torn over whether it would be disrespectful to the mourners.

While I think I could be ok with doing so for the purposes of documenting the tradition I just can’t wrap my head around tourists taking pictures of a funeral for their holiday scrapbooks. I don’t know, perhaps it is only because I have been so involved with the town for so long… maybe that would have been me on the boardwalk gawking with a camera six or eight years ago?

Well, tourists with cameras who knew the event was not a performance aside there was a walk-down to do and once Lou got the mules settled down we all fell in behind the old Butterfield stage coach and began the slow solemn walk to the OK Corral. On the way down some folks cried, others spoke softly amongst themselves - some about Steve, some about events they had been present at together with Steve and some about current Tombstone events to, I think, take their minds off of Steve’s passing.

When we arrived at the OK Corral there was someone there to open the shop next door so that anyone carrying guns could leave them there to be locked up during the service as firearms are not allowed in the OK Corral (unless you are on their entertainment list and, of course, no there was as they are basically an opposing gunfighter faction. Steve fought with the Boothill Gunslingers while the current group id Huckleberry Productions. I won’t go into details here but I could, and probably will, blog for days about the current gunfighter wars in Tombstone).

I initially left my guns thee but was informed by Toto that we had to go back to Six Gun City to set up for the days shows so, unfortunately, I was not able to attend the service.

Later in the day a group of mourners from the funeral procession came over to Six Gun City and went to the inside restaurant to talk amongst themselves and remember Steve.

Good by Shlomo. You will be missed by all your friends.

The story of how I got shot in the head on Valentines day 2009.

The crowds were out in force in Tombstone for Valentines day this weekend. I have not seen so many folks on the streets of Tombstone since the last Helldorodo Days! Saturday we played to a packed house all four shows.

Because of the way we do our head counts for the show it’s hard to say exactly how many folks we had in the audiences but at several of them we had over 100 adult ticket sales. This equates to a lot more than 100 spectators as we do not count children under 6, who get in free, and children under 13 who’s tickets are only $2. There were a *lot* off wee little ones in the audiences on Saturday.

With the exception of perhaps Helldorodo I have not performed in front of audiences this big since I did the Gunfight at the OK corral when I worked with the Boothill Gunslingers where we routinely did shows in front of several hundred folks at a time.

Not only did we have huge crowds but we were also short handed. This made for a rather interesting if not hectic day for us. Several employees did not show up for work as well as one of the Gunfighters. I know, you’re wondering how anyone could possibly be a no-show for such a cool gig. Well it happens. In his defense he lives in Benson which is about 22 miles north of Tombstone and he had car troubles (no car).

Actually I was supposed to be of Saturday and only ended up working because this particular Gunfighter could not make it to work on time.  Honestly, so far, there has not been a day yet I was scheduled off on that I did not end up working at least *part* of due to someone not making it in or needing to leave early. Such is the gunfight re-enactment business though.

On top of all this one of the other scheduled Gunfighters also works as a cook in the kitchen and at one point in the day we were so slammed he got pulled back into the kitchen, during a show, to help out. It was during that show that I got shot in the head.

Now, we use real guns in our shows at Six Gun City. Actually almost all the Gunfighters in Tombstone I know, or have ever worked with, use real .45’s when they perform. The only exception I can think of are maybe some of the guys from Huckleberry Productions who I have seen with replica blank firing only guns down at the OK Corral. We use real guns but, obviously, we use blanks and not real bullets :-).

The blanks we use in our shows are loaded with eighteen grains of black powder capped off with vermiculite to hold the charge in place. Some folks think that blanks are not dangerous. They are wrong. Blanks can blind, maim and even kill a person. From closer than ten feet they have the capacity to blind you. At close range they can easily maim you. At point blank or near point blank ranges they can kill you.

Being a professional Gunfighter is not necessarily the safest way to almost make a living that there is…

Anyway, as I was saying, during one of the shows on Valentines Day we had so many customers ordering lunch that one of our Gunfighters (who is also a cook) got pulled into the kitchen to help out. Luckily this didn’t really impact us as the Gunfighter I was covering for showed up for that show with a group of folks he had in from out of town and they wanted to see him perform so he was filling in and we still had our four Gunfighters plus a narrator and a saloon girl.

In our shows we do five reenactments based on historical accounts of gunfights that took place in Tombstone in the 1880’s. The first four are meant to be historically accurate and strictly serious in nature while the last skit is loosely based on a historical event and we throw in some comedy to work in some audience interaction as well as to lighten the mood at the end of the show.

That last skit is based on an incident involving the Comancheros and the law and usually has a Marshall and his Deputy facing down three Comancheros. I always play one of the Comancheros; either a slightly intoxicated third henchman who does not really have a speaking part (just a lot of grunting and agreeing with the leader) or Pedro who is, by all appearances, the leaders right hand man.

Well, the kitchen gave us back our Gunfighter just in time for our fifth skit and he joined the ranks on the side of the Comancheros. Both of us were playing extra henchmen.

At the end of the skit when we face of with the Marshal and his Deputy (in a disagreement over who killed Margarita and his pet parrot - hey I said we were bad guys didn’t I?) we spread out across the set and, when I’m the extra henchman, I always fall out closest to the buildings at the back of the set. From here I can safely advance on the Marshal and Deputy as I fire off two rounds, firing a third as I am shot and fall to the ground, and I know I am a safe distance from the other Gunfighters gunfire.

On this particular day however, with the extra Comanchero in the mix and all the insanity we had been dealing with due to the large crowds and the staffing issues, looking back I suppose didn’t stop to think long enough about the different dynamics of three versus four shooters on my end of the set. I ended up with a shooter on both my left and my right side when we lined up for the gunfight and I did my normal bit.

When I step up towards the Marshall and his deputy I now had a shooter on both sides of me and I realized as I advanced that we were not spread out as well as we should be for me to be standing where I was. Of course by the time I realized this it was a bit too late.

When that .45 went off behind me I felt the heat of the muzzle flash on the back of my head and neck and my right ear started ringing like crazy. I have tinnitus and my ears ring all the time anyway but this ringing was deafening.

Probably the thing that saved me from a serious injury was the big goofy sombrero and wig I was wearing. The sombrero shielded most of my head and the wig covered my ear so it did not get too burned from the muzzle flash. Even so it gave me one helluva start and, at first, I was unsure of exactly what happened or if I had actually been seriously injured or not.

I’d always though those sequences in the movies where people are in close proximity to gunfire and everything goes wonky for a few seconds were just Hollywood being Hollywood - especially since I work around gunfire all the time and had never even come anything close to an experience like that and I’ve been peppered at close range on more than one occasion before.

I suppose it has something to do with adrenaline and the ringing in your ears and the concussive shock of a gun going off WAY too close to your head. Whatever it is those scenes are not far off from the truth.  For a moment or two I was really kind of disoriented.

At the end of the day I was not seriously hurt (thanks for asking though the experience is one I won’t forget and, if I’m ever in a situation where I have to line up with three other shooters again. I’ll be sure to be standing on the far end next time.

They say whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I suppose it can make you wiser as well.