An Airstream Behind Me & Uno Contemplates The Road Ahead

 October 20, 2026

   Thanks to Josh Noble for putting me up in an Airstream on old Route 66 last weekend. This was my view out of the "Oatman" Airstream at Tin Can Alley on Andy Devine Street in downtown Kingman.

Airstreams Genuflecting Towards The Hualapais

   I was in Kingman for the Centennial of Route 66 Festival and we had a grand old time. With emphasis on the "old."

  Now I am back home, but back on the road again. That would be on the road up to Morningstar.

Uno Contemplates The Road Ahead

BBB Gonzo Dancing

   Someone asked me if I am doing the Gator in this animated GIF from Rebecca Edwards. No way, Jose! The Gator is done with the dancer prone on the floor doing quasi-push ups in such a way that it appears someone is goosing them with a cattle prod in the rectal area. That is what the Gator looks like.

   Every time I drive by this lonely outpost on my way to and from Kingman, I think there is a bitchin' story to be made about it.

   I spend a lot of time creating scenarios where I tell stories that hopefully resonate with people. I met quite a few people at the festival last weekend who told me how much they appreciated what I do. One of them stood out with his praise and I intend to dedicate one of those stories to you, Rudy.

   Just got a report from Helldorado Days down in Tombstone. Our man on the road says he met some mighty fine folks and they bought some mighty fine books and magazines.

Steve Todd: Our man on the road

What I seek is part riddle, part cartoon, all gonzo storytelling

   You have no idea what I've been through. But you will, soon enough.

"A moving man eventually meets his luck."

—Old Vaquero Saying

The Wisest of The Wise Acres On 66

 October 19, 2026

   As you must know by now, I grew up in Mohave County and I swear many of my classmates were the cat's pajamas when it came to being a Wise Acre.

A Wise Acre Sunrise Over Ratcliff Ridge

   When our MCUHS English teacher, Fay Logsdon, asked a certain Wise Acre what the definition of chicanery is, he confidently replied, "stationary for chickens." It got a big laugh at the time (October, 1964). 

Fay Logsdon

Senior English teacher extraordinaire

   In another class, while Mrs. Logsdon was lecturing on witches and ghouls, she rhetorically asked, "We all know what happens to ghouls," and the same Wise Acre replied, "Yes, they become band directors."

Stanley Gould, MCUHS band director

   Another Wise Acre in the same class was this guy:

Boxlip Darell & Date

   I'd give you an example, but Boxlip Darell earned his nickname for being very, very profane.

   And it just wasn't in the sixties. There was an earlier time when Mohave County Wise Acres sounded like this:

"Hyde the fact," as in the editor of the Mohave County Miner, James J. Hyde. Oh, man, that is some serious Wise Acre behavior. And, I mean that literally: it's not even a little bit funny. But James was being a Wise Acre, Mohave County style. Which is to say, very lean on actual humor.

   Meanwhile, up the road, this guy was one of the wisest of the Wise Acres I have ever known.

Marshall Trimble, who grew up in Ashfork

"Our school was so small, we had Driver's Ed and Sex Ed in the same car."

—Marshall Trimble

Living On The Edge of Eternity

 October 18, 2026

   At noon yesterday at the Beale Street Theater I introduced this classic Kingman time capsule film: The Edge of Eternity.

   And, I must say, the title has a little more gravitas than it once had. Or, put another way, my life is closer to the title than it has ever been!

Living Proof I Am On The Edge of Eternity

   Josh Noble from the Powerhouse Museum gave me a table at the Centennial of Route 66 festival to sell my books and True West magazines and on Saturday a biker guy walked by, looked over at me, did a double take and blurted out, "You're still alive?" It was pretty funny, but it ain't new. I ask myself that question almost every morning when I look in the bathroom mirror.

Kingman Always Keeps Me Humble

   I was one of the featured speakers at the festival on Friday. They had a great big stage set up and when I was supposed to speak, I took this picture from the back of the audience area and counted how many people were there before I had to go up on the stage and introduce myself and talk for 45 minutes to a crowd of 17 people. That is a very humbling thing right there, but if it counts as a character builder, I think I can prove I am one.

Empty Seats On 66

Two-lane Blacktop In The Rearview

Dennis is gone, so is Laurie, although James

is still with us.

   Yes, I had such mixed emotions about being home where so many things have changed, but everything else is still the same. The 66 festival coincided with an all class reunion for the Kingman High crew. It was great to see so many of my old—and I mean old—MCUHS classmates at the Wine Bar in the old Central Commercial building on Friday night.

A few of my MUCOUS classmates, wise acres all

"A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it."

—Old Vaquero Saying

   The irony is, Kingman is where I grew up but when I finally drove home to Cave Creek yesterday, I saw it with new eyes.

 This Morning's View of The Edge of Eternity

Ratcliff Ridge all lit up again

"Success is wanting to be where you are."

—James Clear

Roadhouse 66 And I Iced My Share of Jugs

 October 16, 2026

   Going to be watching Roadhouse 66 for the second time today.

Jugs Iced Free Is Me!

   In case you didn't know it, I iced every single one of them with much enthusiasm!

I See You Need Some Cubed Ice!

   After the showing of "Roadhouse 66" I will be at Lewis Kingman Park for thr Centennial of Route 66 Celebration with a talk at 3.

   If you are in the area join me on Saturday at the Beale Street Theater to see the movie that captured that iconic offer, "Edge of Eternity."

   Get your tickets right here. Edge of Eternity

"Do you have any jugs you'd like iced—for free?"

—The line my father taught me that worked every time

Well, I've told you once and I've told you twice. . .

 October 15, 2026

   Heading for home today. Hoping to see some of these guys.

   There is going to be an all class reunion this weekend. Meanwhile, it's also the celebration of The Centennial of Route 66 and I will be introducing a couple classic 66 films, including "Roadhouse 66" on Friday at noon, and then on Saturday. . .

   "Well, I've told you once and I've told you twice, but you never listen to my advice."

—The Rolling Stones

"Well, this could be the last time, this could be the last time, maybe the last time, I can go home."

—The Rolling Stones

Join me this Saturday at the Beale Street Theater in Kingman, Arizona for a one time showing of the movie that changed my life.

Tickets for "Edge of Eternity"

"A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it."

—Old Vaquero Saying, (it's actually from George Moore, but I borrowed it for the ka-boys)

When It Rains It Pours And When It Pours It Floods The Buffalo Chip

 October 14, 2026

   We've had a ton of rain in the past week. Most of it courtesy of Ms. Rachel (the hurricane). I've lived in Cave Creek for forty years and I have never experienced what happened on Wednesday.

   Had a lunch meeting up at the Chip with two NASCAR drivers. One of them, Archie Kennedy, purchased a Wyatt Earp painting he admired and he wanted to meet there for the pay up and have a bite to eat.

   As we were waiting for our food a clasp of thunder shook the room and it felt like a micro-burst right over the Chip and then a deluge of rain rattled the windows and the next thing you know, a ton of water came right in thru the front door and surrounded us. I stood up and took this photo.

The Buffalo Chip Gets Swamped

   We weren't upset or angered, it was just bizarre and we laughed about it as the wait staff broke out the mops and squeeges and went to work like it has happened a hundred times before. Turns out it has. Several oldtimers have since told me they once had sandbags around the front door because the dirt parking lot is at a slant and it all drains right to the front door!

   Afterwards we went outside and one of the hard working staff took this photo of us.

The NASCAR Crew and BBB

outside the flooded Chip

   That's me and Archie Kennedy in the center with him hold his new painting, "Wyatt Miffed." 

"Wyatt Miffed"

   I met Archie and his wife Christina, on the right, back in 2007 when they invited me and Kathy out to PIR (Phoenix International Raceway) to be guests of Jeff Gordon. Archie drove Gordon's RV from race to race all around the country. He still does, but Gordon retired from driving in 2015 and is now Vice Chairman at Hendrick Motorsports. The NASCAR driver on the left is Bradly Mitchell, who drives for William Byron, Hendrick Motorsports 24 car. They are in town for this weekend's Freeway Insurance 500 out at Phoenix Raceway.

   So, that was fun. Then, on the way home, I ran into this.

Cahava Ranch Wash Rippin'

      Talk about too much of a good thing! Got home and finished this:

Daily Whip Out:

"Shady Sadie Comes Clean"

The Reason There Are No Early Photos of Sadie

   Sadie claimed that the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco, destroyed several of her and Wyatt's trunks along with most of her family's photos and possessions.

Daily Revised Whip Out: "Snake Eyes"

"Water wouldn't sound so beautiful without rocks in its way."

—Old Vaquero Saying

The Edge of Eternity, Indeed!

 October 13, 2026

This is a scene from the movie Edge of Eternity and I actually watched them film this!

Cornel Wilde pulls into the outside drive of

Al Bell's Flying A on Hilltop

outside Kingman, Arizona

And, when I introduce the movie at the State Theater (renamed the Beale Street Theater) in downtown Kingman this Saturday I will point to the seat where I sat for the premiere in 1959 and say, "If I was a teenager sitting in this audience and I heard someone say they were here 65 years ago for a movie, I would be aghast. And so should you!"

If you want tickets to this ancient flashback here is where you can get them:

The Edge of Eternity tickets

  Join us at noon on Saturday, October 17, for the special showing. It is a literal time capsule of old Arizona from the cars to the long gone businesses.

Another screen grab from the movie

Victoria Shaw blasts down Beale Street

in a'58 T-Bird with The Five & Dime,

The State Theater and JC Pennys on the right

and Central Commercial on the left. All are gone except for the theater.

"You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget."

—Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Shady Sadie Saves The Day

 October 12, 2026

   Down to the wire. What else is new? We have a Tombstone Epitaph doubletruck due today and I was going to do a full blown Graphic Cinema treatment on Wyatt Earp's bunco steering incident in LA, but I realized I need to do something about the AI look of it all. On the narrative level it looks great and Rob Mathiasch did an excellent job with the AI but I need to make it mine and I don't want to cloud the water with something half-baked.

Wyatt Earp Busted!

(in progress)

Shady Sadie Saves The Day

   I believe Sadie would be honest about the Truth being complicated. She might even have admitted, Wyatt did all of those things he was arrested for and more—but those are just the ones where he got caught! I also believe she would admit his biggest weakness was he wasn't afraid of anything—and that got him in trouble all the time. Sadie, of course, spent a lot of time trying to write up Wyatt's story to sell to Hollywood and every Sunday she and Wyatt and John Flood would meet to fashion a commercial story but their efforts were simply awful and cartoonish. For example, somehow Sadie got it in her head that Wyatt should save a damsel in distress from a burning building in Tombstone and that ham-fisted episode is in their story. They spent a lot of quality time on it (their final manuscript clocked in at 348 pages!) but no one was interested.

Wyatt Does A Flaming Fabio?

So When Did the Turn Begin?

   Stuart Lake is the one who turned the tide in 1931 with the publication of "Frontier Marshal" (it's a little ironic that Lake wanted "Frontier Gunfighter" as the title, but Sadie would not have it). Prior to this, Wyatt Earp was primarily known in the press as a "Gun Man" not as a lawman. And the O.K. Corral incident was more often than not described as the "Earp-Clanton feud," as in the Hatfield & McCoys embroglio. So Lake's prose and Sadie's restraint created the stalwart lawman that we know today.

A Myth to Beat The Band

"It does beat the band how the truth will be warped and misstated over the years."

—Wyatt Earp in a letter to William S. Hart

Sadie De-Aged To Beat The Band

 October 11, 2026

   Just got this from Australia:

  "Hi Bob, this is what AI did with The Real Old Sadie picture. I asked it to reimagine the image at age 20. I believe she was 18 or 19 when she met Wyatt."

—Bradley Ireland

Sadie De-Aged via AI

   Impressive, and frightening. Will we ever be able to trust photographs ever again?

   It is raining right now (6:14 a.m.) to beat the band. That was a favorite saying of my grandmother Minnie: "They were going to beat the band." She meant that they were driving really fast, but where in the hell did that weird saying come from and what does it really mean?

To Beat The Band!

   "It's from the late 1890s, to do something with maximum enthusiasm, great force, high speed, or to the greatest possible degree."

—Mad Coyote Joe

Minnie Hauan Bell on her wedding day

   Well, naysayers and the nitpickers will undoubtably claim that saying would only be in usage to a narrow Norsky immigrant clan from northern Iowa. Most certainly the saying was not in use anywhere else.

Detectives Trap Wyatt Earp, 'Gun Man,' In Swindle

   Or, so said the headline in the Los Angeles Herald on July 22, 1911. Apparently, the con was aimed at a LA real estate agent, J.Y. Peterson, who claimed he was lured by the three arrested 'sharpies' into a room at the Auditorium Hotel for a rigged faro game. Peterson became suspicious, left, and contacted the police. All three were booked as suspected confidence men and the newspaper claimed Earp was the ringleader.

So When Did the Turn Begin?

   Stuart Lake is the one who turned the tide in 1931 with the publication of "Frontier Marshal" (it's a little ironic that Lake wanted "Frontier Gunfighter" as the title, but Sadie would not have it). As you will notice in the headline above, in 1911 Earp was primarily known as a "Gun Man" not as a lawman. And the O.K. Corral incident was more often than not described as the "Earp-Clanton feud" as in the Hatfield & McCoys embroglio.

   As author Gary Roberts aptly points out, there were plenty of dissenting voices when it came to debating the newly coined American hero Wyatt Earp. Arizona historian Frank C. Lockwood called Earp a "very crafty and suave dissimulator."

"It does beat the band how the truth will be warped and misstated over the years."

—Wyatt Earp in a letter to William S. Hart

   Meanwhile, this just in. . .

Why Cow-Boy And Not Cowboy?

   "Bob I just read your The Illustrated Life and Times of Wyatt Earp and thought it was excellent but why did the word cow-boy have a dash between it?

—Kenneth Haines

   Before the word "cowboy" became a modern word, journalists across the country used the hyphen to indicate and portray what they saw as miscreants who were somewhere between a biker and a pirate. The term Cow-boy was, at that time, a derogatory term and I used it as a flashback anomaly because I thought it was kind of groovy. 

"The shortest distance between a human being and the Truth is a story."

—Old Vaquero Saying

Good Neighbors Are Juan In A Million

 October 10, 2026

   Another big storm blew through this afternoon. Got some rain with it, but nothing like two weeks ago when we lost our adobe wall at the front entrance. Patsy, up the creek, gave us some burned adobes off her property and then Juan came by and rebuilt our wall in about an hour and a half. He is so damn good.

Juan Begins

Juan In A Million

   He came at seven and was finished by 8:30.

Judy Darbyshire's Face In The Wall Replaced

Judy Places Her Hoot Owl In Saguaro

   Unfortunately, the saguaro didn't last, but my friendship with Judy has. And thanks to my neighbor Bob Hoss for turning us on to Juan.

       Life is good.

Daily Whip Out: "El Rojo Bandito"

"When you arise this morning, think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love."

—Marcus Aurelius

Images of Sadie: All of them True. None of Them Real Authentic

 October 9, 2026

   There are no known photos of Josephine "Sadie" Marcus Earp in her prime. Bat Masterson claimed she was a dead ringer for the actress Jeffreys Lewis.

    Beyond that, our imaginations have tried to fill in the gaps.

Daily Whip Out: "Tombstone Temptress"

A Fantasy-Bogus Image of Sadie Foisted On

An Unsuspecting Public by Glenn Boyer

   True, there are several maybe-wanna-be photos that rabid Old West collectors try to pass off as her, like this one:

Maybe Sadie

   Meanwhile, the movies have had their run at her early likeness as well. . .

Dana Delaney, Tombstone, 1993

"I want one."

(on spying her first Earp)

Joanna Going as Sadie in Wyatt Earp, 1994

Marie Osmond as Sadie in

I Married Wyatt Earp, 1983

   And, certain cartoonists from Kingman have made their run at her as well.

Sexy Sadie by BBB

The Real Old Sadie

“Time may be a great healer, but she’s a lousy beautician.”

—Old Vaquero Saying

If Sadie Defended Wyatt Earp What Would She Say?

 October 8, 2026

   Given all of the sordid details of Wyatt Earp's crazy life that have come to light, it's still a bit of a mystery how much he still matters to so many of us. After all is said and done, I think Thom Ross, nails the reason.

Busted!

The Crazy Contradictions of Wyatt Earp's Life

   As a lawman he served valiantly and honorably—some would say exceptionally well, but it is his checkered career on the other side of the ledger that almost defies gravity. Horse theft? Check. Claim jumping? Check. Attacking a police officer? Check. Spousal abandonment? Check.  And, believe it or not, it gets worse.

   Marked cards and a fake name? How low can a hero of the American frontier go?

W. W. Stapp, The Swindler, 1911

New sequence by Rob Mathiasch

   If you listed any one of these against any other law enforcement personage it would be a total deal killer, but somehow Wyatt Earp keeps getting a by. Why?

   Perhaps his longtime live-in girlfriend can cast some light on this. Never mind that she has her own sordid baggage, but let's start with the only known photo of the two of them together:

This camp photograph says it all to me.

   Love. Serenity. A calm desert bliss and the love of a dog.

My Take On Sadie

   I believe Sadie would be the first to tell you the Truth is complicated. Yes, she might even have admitted, he did all of those things and a few more—those are just the ones where he got caught! Ha. But, I think she would add that he made her laugh. He loved his dog and his last words probably referred to a running joke they had, "Suppose none of this is what it seems."

   Stubborn? Damn that gorgeous man was hard headed. His biggest weakness was he wasn't afraid of anything—and that got him in trouble all the time. My sister said he "had every talent except the talent to use it." Yes, but he was so brash and so cocksure, and he paid the price for it.

   His greatest strength was his greatest weakness and that space between knowing that and feeling that, that's where the tears live.

   Did I mention he loved that damn dog?

Wyatt with "Earpie"

   So, that's me channeling Sadie and I put together this quasi-what-if-eulogy and sent it to a few of my history friends and I got this very astute reply from someone who knows a thing, or two, about the real Wyatt Earp:

   "Sadie did sort of write her own eulogy for Wyatt. After his death, she said simply, 'He was a man.' At that time, being a man was not simply about genitalia, it was earned by strength, and strength of character. 

   "In the Cason Manuscript, she said: 'Enemies made life hard, but he held no malice. But we had many fine friends who added happiness to our lives. He loved children and flowers and animals. He loved his home; stayed home as much as possible and read a great deal. He had a quiet, friendly attitude.' 

   "In his last few weeks in Los Angeles, he spent most of his time sitting in a chair, with his angora cat Fluffy curled up in his lap. Fluffy usually did not jump up on the bed, but on the final night of Wyatt’s life, Fluffy kept jumping up to be near Wyatt. Sadie had to keep pulling the cat away." 

   "Perhaps what Sadie could do best was to make Wyatt laugh. The Welsh family told a story of how Sadie did something to make Wyatt mad, then they went upstairs together and talked. Before long, the Welshes could hear Sadie’s high-pitched giggles, that sounded like the clinking of champagne glasses, the Wyatt unleaded a deep ho, ho ho. That was a fit of laughter for Wyatt."

—Casey Tefertiller, author of Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind The Legend

"We remember Wyatt Earp not for who he was, but for what he means."

—Thom Ross