August 29, 2002
Left the house at 7:40 and drove to Wickenburg (65 miles) to do a radio interview on KBSZ. Typical small town radio station, with the on-air guy, Pete Peterson in a room just off the lobby with the door open and the receptionist just turning in her chair to say, “Hey Pete, he’s here!” Really quaint and refreshing from the big, corporate Phoenix scene.

Crystal Creel interviewed me. We sat at the back of Pete’s console and she held a mike and passed it back and forth. No headphones. It was fun. Talked about me buying True West, my Wickenburg memories (I scored 15 points against a Wickenburg JV basketball team in 1963), my art shows at the Desert Caballeros Museum (I have a Wild Women of The Wild West Show coming up in May of 2004). Posed for pictures and took off back to Cave Creek. Desert is dry but quite pretty. I really enjoy looking at the long views. It centers me.

Got back to office. Lined out several sidebars and hangouts. Came home and finished the painting of Butch & Sundance’s Final Shootout and whipped out the O Homo card painting (by the way, I use gouache). Started another quick study of beer bottle with can of sardines, got some great passages going, but had to leave at three.

Drove back up to the office, plugged O Homo, answered some questions, then took off in the other direction to go visit Mort Fleischer’s home and his legendary saddle collection. Got there around four, very stately ranch, huge electronic gate. long driveway, attack dogs (scared the piss out of me. Mort said, “Stand perfectly still, don’t make any sudden moves, they just want to smell you.” And of course they came lunging up to me and smelled my armpits—they were that big!—and I’m sure they would have smelled something more pungent, a little lower, had they not been so happy to see Mort). Looked at his incredible collection. I never knew there were so many types of saddles. It is literally like the car biz and the differences between a ‘57 Chevy and a ‘93 Ford Bronco. Very dramatic and amazing. He has actual Confederate Cavalry saddles, Maxmillion’s saddle, just jaw-dropping. Then he took me to his house where he had the really good saddles. Mort said, “On a scale of one to ten, these are twelves.” And they were. We will probably do several photo essays utilizing his incredible collection.

Then Mort showed me his machine gun collection, but that’s another story.