November 5, 2003
My good friend Paul Northrop brought through an English group of tourists at nine this morning. There were about 35 of them, half from Scotland and the other half Brits. R.G. and I met them out on the porch and preached the gospel to them in a tag team way. “Welcome to the Wild West! Just last week we had horses riding into saloons all along Cave Creek Road (it was Wild West Weekend, but I didn’t need to tell them that) and you are standing on the spot of one of the last Wild West locations on earth” (or something like that). They were a good group and bought quite a few books and magazines. We gave them our usual focus group quiz: “You can have any magazine on this table, the only catch is you have to tell us why you picked it.” The response to Native American images is quite amazing, especially when they don’t do well for us on the newsstand (we haven’t been brave enough to put an Indian on the cover in two years!). However, after they left, I did go over to our new cover and change the head to: “Tommy Lee Jones Goes Apache.” (in the new movie The Missing, Tommy Lee has been living with the Apaches for 25 years). We’ll see. It’s all a gamble. But if it works, Hey, thanks Brits!.

Came home for lunch. Walked the dogs to the creek. Had fun with them. Beautiful day out (low 70s). Rounded up art reference for the last two images for Classic Gunfights (Zip Wyatt Vs. Everyone In Western Oklahoma).

Got back into office at about 1:30 and had a conference call with an attorney. They want changes in copy on two articles on fakes. Seems a tad drastic to me, but we need to protect ourselves against litigious wackos. No wonder the Old West is such a popular fantasy: you just shot ‘em. Ha.

Hey, speaking of litigious wackos, the new poll is up: Have you purchased any Western memorabilia, thinking it was authentic only to learn it was fake? Some are saying we are in an epidemic of fraud and hoaxes on e-bay, and we want to know if you’ve been affected (or infected). Click here to cast your vote.

Sometimes I think we take ourselves too seriously (at the magazine and in my family). Let’s look at the words of a founding father:

“I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.”
—Thomas Jefferson (obviously not a subscriber to True West)