October 25, 2003
Worked late last night. Had much catching up to do. Robert Ray stayed also, re-outputting the entire Gunfight book (Theresa at Tri Star found a half-dozen corrections). I worked on copy for “How Did Davy Crockett Really Die?” which will the be the Classic Gunfight for the January issue. Had to call the big dog to find out the real skinny (the Alamo is not one of my obsessions). Fortunately, Paul Hutton is obsessed squared. He sent me two packets with all of the death scenarios and excerpts from the big, important books. Of course, the big question is: did Davy die fighting, or did he surrender? This is a contentious question and can still get you a serious butt whomping in Texas, just for asking. The new movie from Disney, will be out on Christmas Day and they do a clever take on this (one of the actors in the movie told me the scenario). R.G. and I debated using this info in the feature, but ultimately decided we didn’t want to spoil the movie for you, and besides Disney has a vicious pack of lawyers.

Treated all the staff who worked on the Classic Gunfights book. Took R.G., Meghan, Robert, Gus and Abby to Tonto for lunch ($80 biz account, includes tip). Fun talking to them. It was Abby’s birthday and the waiter picked up the cue and brought her a creme de la something. Fun time.

Paul Cools from NOLA dropped by yesterday and we had a nice talk. He’s watching our progress at True West with some interest (he like many of my friends is torn between wanting more solid history in the magazine and realizing what we’ve got to do to attract younger readers). He has good ideas for NOLA and hopefully some of those old codgers will listen.

Got home around 7:30 last night. Tired but happy. I really enjoy magazine problems

One of my good friends almost died yesterday. The doctors thought he had not one, but two brain tumors and he was fading fast. It looked like his check out time might be literally hours and minutes. Got the call last night that the brain surgeons operated on him for about four hours and discovered the twin tumors they thought they saw on the MRI was actually just an infection. He’s not out of the woods, but needless to say, we are all relieved and thrilled. His wife is convinced it’s a miracle and who can deny her that conclusion?

Today is Old West Days in Cave Creek and I need to go up and man the offices. We also had a cover change, but I’ll talk more about that in the next couple of days.

”If you do things well, do them better. Be daring, be first be different, be just.”
—Anita Roddick