July 11, 2003
“Most people come here to get as far away from 2003 as possible.” That’s Rocco Wachman talking, a native New Yorker, who owns Arizona Cowboy College, where tuition is $1,500 and 739 students have enrolled. Great quote and I think it applies to our magazine as well.

Mike Melrose ended up on the front page of his hometown newspaper, The Globe Gazette (serving Mason City-Clear Lake, IA). Wearing an “I’m Your Huckleberry” T-shirt and holding a beer, Mike is quoted as saying he likes to come home because, “Nothing changes. It’s comforting.” Mike is vehemently denying the latter part of the quote and claims he never said it. I don’t know why Mike would be so upset about using a word like “comforting.” Maybe he is gay after all.

We shot Abby in the “I Dig Billy” T-shirt and she looked great. The ad for the shirt will go in the next issue.

Finished my editorial for October around noon. Included the actual ad from a 1959 True West for Ed Bartholomew’s Biographical Album of Western Gunfighters. It was interesting to look at the ad today and remember how it grabbed me as a 13-year-old kid. So much so that I worked all summer to buy it ($15 for a book!). I wonder if they made any money off it? Experience tells me, probably not. However, pristine copies of the book are worth about $200 today.

Got a speech this afternoon for 500 teachers at Mountain Shadows Resort. Going to go in to Phoenix at noon to have lunch with Dan H. and talk about the Vera cover and the Classic Gunfights cover. Then a KXAM reunion party at six, and at seven Kathy and I are driving down to Willcox for the Michael Hickey confab for Warren Earp Days.

"If ignorance is bliss, there should be a hell of a lot more happy people."
—Old Vaquero Saying