Cowboys don't live long in Deadwood!

I probably have the worst memory of any one you know. There is no way I could write a biography of my life. I doubt any one would even ask me to. But I do remember some things. Like wanting to be a cowboy.
I had to be 7 or 8 years old. That particular Christmas I got a toy rifle, gun and holster. The holster had a little chess knight horse on it. The one I had was similar to the one in the picture. It shot caps. Kids today have no idea about loading a toy gun with a roll of caps. When you pulled the trigger the hammer on the gun would come back and then go forward striking the cap making a noise like a gunshot (more a like a weak firecracker). The reason I remember the gun set was what happened to the rifle the very day I got it. Well, that Christmas morning I was showing off my cowboy get up when one of the older boys suggested putting a real firecracker in the barrel of the rifle. We expected it to shoot out a small flame and smoke. The rifle was made of plastic and it blew the gun up.
Now 50 years later I will watch a cowboy movie every day of the week if it were possible. If it has a Gene Autry, John Wayne, Roy Rogers, Slim Pickens, Tex Ritter, I'm watching it. This summer I also watched TV episodes of Bat Masterson, Kit Carson, Sugar Foot, and Maverick. Also I watched an old TV western called "Have Gun Will Travel." Turns out he was a professional gunfighter named Paladin. He had a business card with a chess knight on it "Have Gun, Will Travel ... Wire Paladin, San Francisco. So the guns I got some 50 years ago were just like his. A hired gunslinger. I'm surprised that I'm not in prison today because the TV standard people says this show is "tainted" by violent content. The rationale seems especially ludicrous, considering the graphic mayhem depicted in today's programming.

Have you ever been to Deadwood, SD? Back in the 1870's Deadwood was one of the wildest, meanest towns in the Dakota territory. It was so bad the town did not even have a sheriff or jail. Today Deadwood is a famous tourist town due to the fact that Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane are buried there. Wild Bill Hickok has been portrayed in movies and also had a TV western from 1951-1958. You pay a dollar to visit the cemetery. A tour bus takes you through the cemetery also. You have to pay to park at the town information center. A reenactment of the killing of Hickok is done several times a day in the (rebuilt) saloon he was shot in. On August 2nd, 1876, Wild Bill Hickok was playing cards in Deadwood. Jack McCall, seeking revenge for the death of his brother, shot Hickok in the back of the head. At the time of his death, Hickok was holding a pair of black aces and a pair of eights, and this became known as "A Dead Man's Hand". He had only been living in Deadwood 2 weeks when Jack McCall killed him. When McCall was caught the town did not have a jail to put him in. So they put him in an outhouse and kept a guard posted till the trial was over. Jack McCall eventually was hung.

The person that is buried next to Hickok is Calamity Jane. What I knew about Calamity Jane before visiting the grave and hearing what the tour guide said about her, was what I had seen in the movies. I'll tell you now, the real Calamity Jane definitely would be flattered on who played her in the movies. Women were not encouraged to work in professions belonging to men in those days and so she began to dress in men’s clothing and developed a reputation as a hard drinking woman who could out-swear and out-spit any man. Calamity Jane was a woman of many professions. Her swearing abilities were no doubt the result of having been a bullwhacker in the Black Hills, delivering supplies between Deadwood and the outlying camps. A bullwhacker drives his oxen team with the sound of his voice and uses commands shouted at the top of his lungs to direct them as needed. Albeit these commands usually were interspersed with language not befitting a man of society, let alone a woman, Jane was able to handle a team smartly and the language seemed to come naturally.

Her legend grew and she later (1895) became a part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, although she was fired for her continued drunkenness.

She wasn't an incredibly attractive figure. In fact, a Deadwood resident by the name of Jesse Brown said in 1876 that she was “about the roughest looking human being I ever saw.”

In the summer of 1903, Calamity Jane returned to the Black Hills for the last time. In the final stages of raging alcoholism and carrying her pathetically few belongings in a dilapidated old suitcase, she found refuge at Madam Dora DuFran’s brothel in Belle Fourche. For the next few months, Jane earned her keep by cooking and doing the laundry for Dora’s brothel girls.

However, by August, Calamity Jane was dying in a little room in the Calloway Hotel in Terry, near Deadwood, South Dakota. Her last request was to give her the date - August 2, 1903 - and then requested that she be buried next to the great American gunfighter, Wild Bill Hickok, on Mt. Moriah overlooking the town of Deadwood.