November 6, 2004
It's Wild West Weekend in Cave Creek and we've got the crowds. Horses everywhere. The Merchant's Association has a winner.

I was in the Territorial Bookstore in Tombstone on Wednesday talking to Doc Ingalls (he's the guy who coined the phrase Wild West Ghetto) and a couple came in and pointed at my book knowingly. When I casually asked them why they said they were True West subscribers from Virginia City, Nevada. I shook hands with Mike and Joy McDonough and we had a good laugh. Mike said he is thinking about joining the Maniac Club and I told him he'd better get a move on because we are at 940 and counting. I started to leave and his wife asked me if I’d sign a hardbound Classic Gunfights and as he pulled one down from the shelf I said as diplomatically as I could, "I need to tell you that you get a free Classic Gunfights if you join the True West Maniac Club," and Doc gives me a dirty look as the guy considers putting it back. "Great Bob," Doc snarls, "we're trying to make a living here, you know." I told the guy to buy the book and he did.

The Moral: When in Tombstone do as the Ghetto Boys do.

Got up this morning and went for a bike ride in my slippers (hmmmmm, ex-DJ, red shorts. . ), came back, took the dogs to the creek. A guy came in last week with a map of the upper Verde, drawn by the military and commissioned by a Lt. C.C. Cooke, I think his name was, and the guy told me he has a carved inscription by Cooke up on his property near Seven Springs and it's dated 1868, or so. He told me Cooke also signed his name in the CC Cave, supposedly in the ceiling. So when I walked over there this morning I took a good look, but couldn't find it. The earliest inscription I have found, besides the sinagua pictographs, is 1903, or so.

Bailed into drawings and did six Old West sketches, then bailed into a gunfight image of Luke Short out front of the Oriental. Then took a stab at two big night scenes of Tombstone's deadliest intersection. Got about half done. Did a big gouache of Tom Waters looking belligerent in his black and blue plaid shirt. Very good undertone. Excellent smokey barroom effects. Can't wait to ruin it tomorrow.

At 2:30 went up to Foothills Photo and got the prints from our nighttime shoot in Tombstone. Really struck out. Most everything is badly underexposed ($27 something, biz account). Win some, lose some. Mike P. said he'd pop off some stills of the video and I'm counting on that for some good effects.

Yes, Emma, we shot the horses reined up at the hitching post but it looks a tad phony. The intro is good, but the shooter had the Cowboys cheat and pull their horses off the rail and it looks, well, it looks phony. We may try it again, but the problem is the Cowboys don't want their horses running with loose reins because they're concerned their cayuses will step on them and get hurt, or break the reins, so they weren't real thrilled to actually let the horses "do their thing." This is funny, because one of the cowboys, (his initials are D.D.) was kicked out of Tombstone a few weeks ago because two of his horses pulled out a light pole. Now I wish I had video of that!

"The truth may not be helpful but the concealment of it cannot be."
—Melvin Konner˜