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Gunfight At The OK Corral.

| Lifestyle, US

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Just after daybreak, we were on our way out of town. We decided to leave the back way on New Mexico Highway 9, a secondary road that parallels the dangerous (according to the media) US and Mexico border from Columbus to Animas, NM.  From Animas it was north to Cotton City where, other than a few speed limit signs and an occasional dog, there’s not a lot to see.  In Benson, AZ, we had lunch with relatives and then headed to Tombstone and our next adventure.

The town is “Old West,” complete with dirt streets, stagecoaches, period dress and…bullet holes.  The proprietors of the businesses are well versed on what caliber pistol made what hole in the saloon’s walls, and when you belly up to a bar, it’s possibly the same one the Earp Brothers and Doc Holiday leaned on 127 years before.  Some wanna-a-be cowboy tourists were dressed in authentic looking period clothes.  One, judging by the clothes he wore, aspired to be to be Buffalo Bill Cody but, because of his diminutive stature, he came up a little short of his goal.  We looked like the other dude tourists: cameras hanging around our necks, baseball caps, running shoes, with pants and shirts made in China and bought at our local big box store.

It was 1:15 and after some deliberation, we decided on a rendezvous time of 4:00.  Collectively, we surveyed the street ahead and, stepping up on the boardwalk, we went our separate ways.  Left to fend for myself, I leaned against a false front building with my back against the wall.  I checked to make sure I was prepared for what might happen next.  I felt ready; my camera battery was charged and the memory card was empty.  I stepped off the boardwalk into the street, steely eyed, right hand ready for a quick draw and my index finger on the shutter button.  Thoughts of Gary Cooper and “High Noon” flashed through my mind.  Thoughts like…”Would there be anything I could make into an article without repeating what others had done many times before me?’  Or, ‘Would I die that day, a literary unknown?”  Only time would tell.  Since no Bull Durham tobacco pouch or rolling papers filled my shirt pocket, while keeping a wary eye out, I reached into my camera bag, pulled out a few business cards and slipped them loosely into the empty pocket for a quick draw. 

Reading other’s body language is an art that gun fighters, photographers and freelance writers have to instinctively know.  It allows you to pick the right time, place and people to talk to.  By being observant, you can get lots of useful, survival information.  Information that can be the difference between life, as a photojournalist, or death, as a greeter at Wal-Mart.  .   

The gunfight at the OK Corral took place in Tombstone and, when the re-enactors were walking around town to advertise their next show, I took a few pictures and passed out my business cards, which got me two free tickets to the next performance and it was worth it, even if I’d had to pay.  But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Most people, including myself before the performance, don’t know the background circumstances about why the gunfight took place.  Before talking with the reenactors, I’d walked into a saloon only moments before one of the incidences, a fist fight between Ike Clanton and one of the Earps, broke out.  Actually, the gun fight had been festering for some time and the fight in the saloon was only one of the events that brought it to a head.  Fortunately for me, it wasn’t 1882 and I wasn’t one of the participants.  When the fight broke out, I wasn’t prepared for what took place.  I was changing from the telephoto to regular lens and didn’t get the lenses swapped until the episode was over. 

A few minutes later, I met up with Virgil, Wyatt and Doc Holiday.  While the four of us were talking in the dusty street, our son stepped out of the shadows and onto the boardwalk.  I walked quickly over, pointed to the three men standing in the dusty street and whispered,  “Would you like to have your picture taken with them?”   If one looks closely at the picture, it’s in the “Gunfight In Arizona” slide show on Associated Content with a link on our website www.newliferoadmap.com, you can tell which one’s our son.  He’s the one with the Shaka hand, Hawaii T-shirt and a tan.   

The reenactment answered a lot of questions about that day etched in Old West history. Before the actual gun fight took place we, the audience, were filled in on a lot of facts, details and background about what happened there in 1882.   There are two reenactments in town, the one I went to was at the OK corral.   

It almost 5:00 by the time the performance was over.  Stepping back into the present, we walked quickly back to the car. We’d planned to make another stop on our return to Benson, but our son had to catch a plane to Kauai, and airplane flights wait for no man.      

 

Filed under: Lifestyle, US
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About Larry Miller

I was born in Los Angeles in 1940. My father was a fighter pilot instructor during WWll and we moved from coast to coast, maybe that’s where I got the nomad in my blood. After graduating from high school in 1958 I joined the Marines. That lifestyle wasn’t for me and upon my discharge I went on with my life, and have never looked back. I worked briefly for a Caterpillar dealer in Riverside, CA before moving back to N. California where I was a welder and truck driver for a chemical company. Truck driving wasn’t my calling anymore than being in the Marines, and I went back to work for another Caterpillar dealer steam cleaning dirty tractor parts and welding. They sent me to schools, lots and lots of schools. I spent as much time going to trade schools as I did at work. I went from cleaning parts to apprentice field mechanic, to mechanic to the parts department to satellite store manager in less than two years. They wanted me to move to Sacramento and be a salesman: I moved to Oregon to learn to commune with nature. I went to work for another heavy equipment dealer and was later contacted by the World’s largest Lorraine Crane dealer and offered the position of purchasing agent and general parts manager. In 1967 I was offered a line of automotive parts and supplies and went into business for myself. My business revolved around eleven race cars that we maintained for others, driving race cars professionally and maintaining high end sports cars. I was a championship and regional champion driver. My business was the largest import parts and service, non dealer, in the state until I sold it in 1979. We went sailing in 79, first to Mexico and then Hawaii. I was an award winning Trans-Pacific sailor and sailor of the year, Hawaii, Island of Kauai. An opportunity presented itself in Hawaii during 1981 and I was back in business, importing Japanese auto body and hard parts. I also felt the pull to write and began freelancing for magazines and newspapers in 1982. My main focus in my articles is, and always has been, health, wellness and fitness. Most of us have heard the saying, “Time is all we have.” I disagree. Our health is all we have, because without our health, we have no time. I was a US Olympic team hopeful in racewalking and held all the records for the state of Hawaii. As a sponsored athlete in my forties, I finished first in nine marathons in a row in my division, qualified for the Ironman® and was the state USCF cycling champion five times in Hawaii and Oregon. Celinda and I were married in 1988 after a three year engagement. We sold our businesses and organic farm and sailed back to Oregon. After our sailboat boat was sold, we moved to Joseph, Oregon, two miles from the trailhead into the Eagle Cap Wilderness. We were caregivers for my mother the last ten years she was alive. We moved to New Mexico in 1995 because it was too cold for my mom in Oregon during the winters. Celinda designed, and I engineered and built our strawbale house. I began writing the weekly health column for a local newspaper in 1996, and still do. In 2000, I took the summer off to do a four month, 4000 mile, hike, bike and kayak odyssey. I’d been writing health, fitness and sports articles since 1982 and the journey produced a full-length, nonfiction, first person adventure book, Yol Bolsun, May There Be A Road, which can be bought from Amazon.com and others over the Internet. The summer of 2001 was spent hiking. kayaking, fishing and exploring the southwest. In 2002 Celinda and I spent the summer in Canada learning the hospitality business at a resort in preparation for doing promotion for the resort in the US. Most of 2003 was spent reestablishing the trees and landscape that had died during the stay in Canada. We had a house sitter and the house sitter had an ex-husband, and that’s a long story. In July of 2004 I did a solo kayak trip on the Snake River, taking pictures, writing articles and pencil sketching the journey. I hope to do another kayak adventure on the Snake River during the summer of 2008, on the section I missed in 2000 and 2004. In 2005, I returned to Canada to the resort where we’d spent 2002. I was supposed to be there for the month of June. I’d contacted people I’d met in 2002 and they came back to Canada to fish, hike and spend time at the resort, Echo Valley Ranch and Spa, while I was there. My one month became five and then it was off to Spain to do the El Camino de Santiago as a travel companion with one of the guests who’d returned to Canada in June. During the summer of 2006 a friend from Ireland, who I’d met in Spain the year before, came to visit in NM and we fished, hiked and explored the White Mountains of AZ. He’d never slept out in the wild in a tent before, and it was quite an experience, for both of us. My newspaper articles were put on the Internet beginning in 2002. I was asked to give public speaking engagements, photo and video presentations, on various subjects for the library in Deming, NM and continue to do so. In 2006 I videoed and produced a DVD for the Smithsonian Institute’s travel exhibit “Between Fences.” NMFILMS had a conference by invitation only, which I attended. While attending the conference, I realized that film making wasn’t what I wanted to do but I still wanted to use my sixteen years of experience and enjoyment of videoing and photography. During the winter of 2005, I discovered that no one on record had ever run from the Arizona border to the Texas border, a distance of 165 miles. During the spring and summer of 2006 I trained for the run and the run was completed in October, 2006. In late 2005, I began building and maintaining websites incorporating all the things I enjoyed about video, photography, travel and the out of doors. 2007 has been a summer of upgrading the home and property which resulted in a downgrading of my enthusiasm for being located in one place. If we don’t like what’s happening in our life, we need to change what we’re doing. Celinda and I are ready to pull up roots and move on. I guess I’ve come full circle. I’m ready to revert back to my childhood, and a nomadic lifestyle.

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