November 18, 2004
Our budget session was brutal but necessary. Took about three hours. We are growing faster than our plans and ambitions and it creates severe stress on the bookkeeping aspect of the biz. We whittled and whacked and I whined at some of the cuts, but we pruned it into shape. RG runs a tight ship and it is a blessing for us to have him, damn him.

Went to lunch yesterday with Dave Daiss down at the Desert View Deli & Breakfast joint. Had the scrambled eggs and sourdough toast ($15 cash, I bought). Dave had a Rueben sando (he said it is the first since he got sick last year). Talked about our Tombstone shoot. One of the local papers down there ran a small news item about us being in town filming. They made it sound bigger than it was. From there we laughed about the rough road we've been on and Dave told the anecdote about a botanist friend of his who worked at the Biosphere north of Tucson and how the branches on their trees kept falling off and Dave asked why, and the guy said, "No wind." The trees were protected inside the Biosphere, behind glass, so they never got blown about and it's the wind that makes the branches strong strong. No wind, the branches fall off and the tree moves back in with his parents. Kind of applies to raising kids too, doesn't it?

Finally got our "Ya'll Killed Two Cowboys" T-shirts in today. Really a strong design. What do you think?

One of the amusing and intriguing aspects of studying old newspaper accounts is the veiled, semi-censored cursing. Of course, it was very Victorian in the 1880s and they would censor even mild oaths with the first letter followed by dashes. It is still in vogue today with mainstream publications blanking out curse words like f----in' crazy. In the Old West they did the same and it's quite common to see a newspaper quote like this: "You s--- of b----- have been looking for a fight and now you can have it." That one is easy to decipher. But here’s one that’s driving me nuts. In the Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce story, Mr. Deuce (real name, Mike O'Rourke, I know, I know, how does a Mike turn into a John? When he solicits a soiled dove, perhaps?) was in Smith's restaurant in Charleston, Arizona (between Sierra Vista and Tombstone on the San Pedro) when he got crossways with a fellow diner. After an exchange over the weather turned ugly, O’Rourke muttered "Well, you’re a little too smart, anyhow." His antagonist, Philip Schneider, a mining engineer, suddenly leapt to his feet, and moving towards O'Rourke, waved his hand saying, "That will do now, I don't want any of that." O’Rourke claimed later to a newspaper reporter that Schneider called him a "d--d------," adding, "There were some ladies in the restaurant, and it made me awful mad to be called that." So, what is a d_ _ d_ _ _ _ _? All I can come up with is "dim dickhed" or "dead” something, maybe a “Dead Head”? Nah. I have a hunch it’s something very easy, but I can't see it. Can you?

"The strongest man in the world is the man who stands alone."
—Thomas Henry Huxley