Two Tickets to the Gun Show
I never saw the movie Tombstone, probably because so many other fantastic movies came out in 1993. The Fugitive, Sleepless in Seattle, Jurassic Park, Rudy, Robin Hood: Men in Tights… the list goes on and on. I’d actually argue that 90’s American cinema peaked that year, but it’s also possible I was just a very enthusiastic seven year old.
My shocking lack of wild west ‘history’ came to light when planning our road trip through Arizona. I thought Tombstone was a brand of frozen pizza-- but thankfully Richelle loves ghost towns and this one was a must-see on her list.
We left Tucson at daybreak, driving several hours south, not quite sure of what to expect from this ghost town we'd done so little research on. As we neared the border, we saw the roadsigns indicating that Tombstone was near. We pulled onto a dusty road on the edge of town, turned a corner… and arrived in 1881.
Cowboys, lawmen, and horse drawn stagecoaches roamed the town’s wide, cobbled roads, and our jeans and sweatshirts suddenly felt very out of place. We wandered, in awe of the rare time vortex we’d stumbled upon, until we came across the O.K. Corral— the notorious gun fight site that gave Tombstone it’s claim to fame. And, as luck would have it, we were just in time to witness history repeat itself at high noon.
We entered the building, giving little notice to the fact that the nefarious O.K. Corral looked remarkably like a modern day gift shop.
“Two tickets to the gun show please,” I said with a very self satisfied smirk to the man selling tickets. Hilarious, I thought.
He stared back silently, completely unimpressed, as he slid the tickets across the counter.
We were directed behind the building where we found eight terrifying, life sized, animatronic men gathered within a fenced off portion of the yard. The toes of their weathered boots curled skywards from the years in the desert sun. They all stood facing each other, ready for battle at the press of a button. For a moment we wondered if this was the show, and lamented the loss of $10. But at noon:07, a door swung open and we were ushered into an arena with stadium seating. We didn’t realized gun fights in 1881 were such a lucrative industry… but who are we to question history?
For the next 15 minutes we were entertained by Doc Holiday, the Erp Brothers, and a nasty band of handsome cowboys as they hemmed and hawed over an altercation neither of us quite understood. Gun shots rang out and suddenly half the cast was dead. We really need to watch the movie to bone up on what all the fuss was about.
After the show, an aforementioned cowboy asked us to give them a positive review on Trip Advisor, which must have been some kind of wrinkle-in-time miracle, because how the hell does a bandit know about Trip Advisor?! …And didn’t we just see you die?
As we continued our adventure through the town (and time) we slowly started to fall in love with 1881. We stepped into a saloon to grab a drink and debated whether we even wanted to return to our modern day lives. We could run a brothel together… own horses… wear fancy dresses with fluffy undercarriages. The odds were stacking themselves against 2015… but ultimately we knew we had to return.
We spoke to a kind man with long white hair (another time traveler, we presume) who had been a student in Berkeley, California, a policeman in Portland, Oregon, and is now retired outside of Tombstone, Arizona. He comes to town every day, dressed in his wild west attire, to spend time with his friends at the saloon. Sometimes he takes his horse and rides through the desert to New Mexico, sleeping under the stars and eating chili warmed on the fire. Some people retire in Florida— and some go all the way to 1881.
