April 7, 2006
Peaches got trimmed down to the nubs. When I picked her up last night after work, she looked like a coyote disguised as a poodle. She did look younger though, and I told her so.

Meetings, meetings and more meetings today. Planning session with Trish Brink, then Meghan Saar, then Robert Ray. Gun spinning master Joey Dillon came in after that, with images from the cup spinning scene from Tombstone. Robert Ray shot him doing the tricks so we can run it in an upcoming issue.

Marshall Trimble came out at 10:30 and we discussed a possible special project with him. Then Steve Sederwall, of digging up Billy the Kid fame, drove in from New Mexico and we went down to El Encanto for lunch (he bought). Ran into Minnesota Mike Melrose who was there also, with one of his good looking cousins and her daughter. Mike looked happy and threatened to come back out with Steve Benson, the Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist for the Arizona Republic.

Over a fajita salad and iced tea, Steve Sederwall spun out his CSI theories on the shooting of J.W. Bell (no relation) and the killing of the Kid by Pat Garrett. Steve has scored a sketch of the Maxwell house in Fort Sumner which appears to dispel the outside door theory which all of us Billy authors have promoted for a long time. If true it changes the scenario of the Pat Garrett shooting on July 14, 1881 and makes the official version seem very questionable, indeed.

Speaking of questionable writing, Stephen Colbert is writing a book and promises it will “change the world one factual error at a time.”

Mark Boardman Sent Me An Online Interview With Sam Elliott And Here’s the Question And Answer I Wanted to Read

Herndon, Va.: “Mr. Elliott: Any chance of you appearing in a ‘Western’ in the near future?”

Sam Elliott: “I'm always looking for a good western. Unfortunately, Hollywood isn't. I have a few that I'm trying to develop and I have every intention on getting them done. I personally love the western genre, you know, and I know for a fact that there's a worldwide audience for westerns.”

Another Criticism of One of Our New True West Moments
“I enjoy most of your True West Moments that appear on the Western channel. However, one that I think is not entirely accurate is the hitching post one. True, today most people do not take time to properly train there horses, but growing up on a ranch in Nebraska during the 50's and 60's, most of our horses were what was called "ground broke" as I'm sure 99% of the old west horses were.

“Any time the rein was down the horse stood still. Most would stand for several hours. This was done so that if you had to get off to tend to a calf or fence or whatever, you didn't have to look for a place to tie your horse up.

“Most cowboys would not like the thought of having to walk back to the ranch because his horse took off. So, even though the rein is wrapped once around the rail, to the horse it is still "down", therefore the horse would stay there.
—B Zimmerman, Las Vegas NV

Well, you make a good argument and it sounds like you've walked the walk, so far be it for me to argue with you (too much! ha.) While I've seen ground broke horses, I still have to wonder, if a bunch of movie star cowboys threw their reins over a hitching post the way they used to do in the Westerns, and then stayed in a saloon for an hour or so, I just have a hunch that more than one horse would take advantage of the situation. In fact, I've seen horses eat their way through a corral fence! Anyway, I'm just lookin' for something to talk about, and thanks for taking the time to write.

Another Across the Pond Dispatch
“Hope all is going well at True West. Was a foreign subscriber a while back, but what with the way 'Princess Tony' Blair and his tax collector Gordon Brown are running this country basically, into the ground), afraid we just had to make cutbacks. Times, there are, when we consider emigration! May your day go well, sir.”
—David Pilcher, Dorset, England

Favorite Onion Headline de Jour
Naive Teacher Believes In Her Students

“Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember and remember more than I have seen.”
—Benjamin Disraeli