For this week's
Round Robin Photo Challenge: History!, I asked to see anything historic, with a number of suggested ways to interpret that term. My inspiration was a recent trip to Ft. Lowell, which I've photographed before for this Challenge. We'll get to that in a moment. But I'm also reminded tonight of a walk I took in Lucerne, Switzerland when I was 15 years old. All on my own for a few hours (maybe my brother was with me; I dont remember for sure) during a family bus tour of Europe, I walked over an old wooden bridge on which were painted frescoes of the Danse Macabre. I absolutely loved it. Part of what impressed me was that that bridge was older than the United States. Arizona as a state is especially recent - it was the last of the lower 48, coming in on February 14th, 1912, just over a hundred years ago.
But it doesn't mean this place doesn't have much history. I've showed you the ruins of Casa Grande, which go back much further than that bridge in Lucerne. Indigenous peoples were all over this land a very long time ago. Then came Padre Kino and, separately, the Spanish conquistadors, and eventually the Anglos arrived. And in 1953, an architect from Switzerland, Josias Joesler, designed the church I attend and am employed by. It was one of the last of many well-regarded projects he did here in Tucson.
Let's start with Ft. Lowell. Now it's a park, but its main claims to history are the ruins of adobe buildings from the fort that was active there from 1873 to 1891, and a little museum.
Now it's well inside the city limits, but back in the day it was miles away from Tucson on horseback. Officers' wives looked forward to their shopping trips into Tucson, which wasn't exactly the Big City, and still isn't.
Among the people stationed there during the fort's brief heyday was a surgeon named Walter Reed.
Yeah, okay, maybe that's not the most fascinating history ever. Let's venture 70 miles southeast - to Tombstone!
As I mentioned in a previous post, I took my Dad down to Tombstone on Labor Day weekend, pretty much on the spur of the moment. I was planning to go to Bisbee, but Tombstone was on the way. As we drove through there were people in costume standing around and I thought, never mind Bisbee today! As we got out of the car I heard gunfire - but it turned out to be only where paying customers could watch it. No matter.
It turned out that Tombstone was hosting a Redezvous of Gunfighters that weekend.
And there were all sorts of characters wandering about!
I even saw Bat Masterson, who left town months before the gunfight that made Tombstone infamous.
Of course the gunfight that Tombstone is famous for took place at the OK Corral - except that it didn't. Virgil, Morgan, and Wyatt Earp, and Doc Holliday faced off against Tom and Frank McLaury, and Billy and Ike Clanton in a vacant lot and alley behind the corral, and on Fremont Street. But as at least one writer has noted, that doesn't look good on a move marquee..
The front of St. Michael's, 60 years after it was built.
I'm in the middle of promoting and preparing for St. Michael's 60th Anniversary. As I mentioned above, it was originally designed by a rather well-known architect named Joesler, who liked a "romantic revival" take on Spanish Colonial style. I've just started going through church archives and digitizing old photos and documents. I obviously didn't take any of those 1953 photos (I was only 6 years old, and living in Manlius, NY!), but if you're interested in history that goes almost exactly 60 years in Tucson, Arizona, you may want to scroll down for a peek at some of my recent entries. Then take a look at the other Robins' historic photos!
Karen
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as of Saturday, September 21st, 2013
1 AM MST
Okay, this is where I try to start blogging on a regular basis again. For several years I've mostly just used Facebook and someimes Tumbler, and generally only blogged here for the Round Robin Photo Challenges. But I'm going through a time in my life that is both stressful and interesting. I need an outlet, and the discipline of writing on a regular basis again, and a place to keep a log of what's going on in my life that I can crib from if I ever write that threatened autobiography. In short, I need a blog. How fortunate that I already have one! (Actually, I have a number of them. But this is the one that still gets some use!)
So.
My dad in February, before the beard came off.
If you follow me on Facebook, or even if you just read my Round Robin entries, you probably know that my Dad, Dr. Frank E. Funk, moved to Tucson in February 2013. It was not his idea, and he didn't quite realize he was coming to Tucson to stay. My stepmother, Dr. Ruth Christy Funk, had died on June 1st, 2012, and in the months that followed it became clear that his ability to live safely in his own Wilmington, NC condo was greatly diminished. Dad has dementia, and unskilled, round the clock care at home was getting to be both expensive and insufficient to his needs. So, after a stint in the hospital during which we thought we were going to lose him, we closed up his house and he came here.
By here, of course, I mean Tucson, not my house. He lives just a few miles away, in a memory care unit at Cascades of Tucson. The people there are friendly, caring and competent, and the location is extremely convenient for me, being close to both St. Michael's and my home. It means I can make up for all the years that I hardly ever saw him because we lived 1500 miles from each other. Now I see him daily, even if it's just for 15 minutes on my way home from work. And on Saturdays, we go out together for "lunch and adventures."
Today, for example, I decided to drive him to Bisbee, Arizona, there to see the historic town and a giant open pit mine. But Tombstone was on the way, and we got there just as shots were ringing out from the gunfight reenactment, and the town was having a big Labor Day Weekend Rendezvous of Gunfighters. Needless to say, we never made it to Bisbee.
Now, the fact is, Dad didn't actually enjoy visiting Tombstone today. I asked him whether that was fun, and he simply said "No." It was too long a walk for him, and I don't think he really grasped the history of the place, much less cared about it. But he had ice cream at the oldest continuously-operated restaurant in Tombstone, and rode on a stagecoach for a narrated tour of the town, and got to do some people-watching.
The part he really likes is the long drives. He enjoys seeing the mountains, watching the clouds build up, keeping an eye on my driving and, mostly, reading the road signs, business sign and licence plates. The drive from Tucson down to Tombstone is a fairly spectacular one, with mountains and desert and several historic towns along the way. There was also a big, dramatic storm on the return drive that we watched but didn't need to drive through. So that part of the day was a success.
NPR just tweeted a story about an envelope found in the Cochise County courthouse late last month. Inside was a series of handwritten eyewitness accounts from a coroner's inquest into the shootout at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona on October 26, 1881. NPR published one of the badly-yellowed, tape-damaged pages in PDF form, and I couldn't resist doing a dramatic reading for my own amusement of the words found there. Here it is, verbatim:
"...and there was 3 other gentlemen who some one told me was the Earps. Mr. Holliday was standing next to the buildings on the inside he had a gun under his coat he had on a long coat and I The way I noticed the gun is that his coat would blow open, and he would try tried to keep it covered. I stood in the door until these gentlemen passed and until they got to the second door and what frightened me and made me run back I heard this man on outside kind a looked looked at Holliday and I heard him say let them have it and Doc Holliday said Al right before I could get from the door then y I thought that I would run and run towards the back of the shot but before I reached the middle of the shop I heard shots - I don't know how many. an
I don't know who said give it to them I can not describe the party it was one of them that was with Holliday. -- Mr. A King"
Dramatic stuff, and like most Americans my age who grew up with Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger, et al. I find the whole Tombstone legacy fascinating and kind of cool. I've written before about the appealing historic kitsch of The Town Too Tough to Die and its sometimes laughable attempts at tourism, like the tiny figure of an Earp falling down with an audible clack during the Historama show. That was over 20 years ago, so maybe it's all high tech and flashy by now rather than endearingly low-tech. I should go back and see. Back in the days of non-digital cameras I took lots of pictures of the tombstones, drank sarsaparilla in the bar and toured the Bird Cage Theater. I'm clearly overdue for a return visit, especially now that Father Ireland of St. Michael's is now the Vicar of Tombstone. People from St. Michael's sent him down there with a cowboy hat, a tin badge and GPS.
But there's the thing I want to say about this. Much as I love Tombstone, and tales of the Old West recounted at the safe distance of well over a century, I don't consider the ethos of that time a good model for modern Arizona, or anywhere else. Those were the days when Cochise and Geronimo and other native leaders were unable to protect their people from the white folks who had taken over their lands, either through negotiation or through wars and skirmishes that included horrific acts on both sides. They were the days (well, okay, it was 20+ years later) of Pancho Villa, that famous, charismatic and controversial figure in the days of the Mexican Revolution. A century ago, and for a few decades before that, people in Arizona thought nothing of wearing a gun for a walk down the street, and arguably really needed to do so. Those were days of racism and individualism, of local sheriffs in conflict with US Marshalls, of a hundred little mines springing up with a hundred little towns around them, and no particular thought given to safety or sustainability.
Those days are gone, or should be.
Carly's been asking me to say a few words about the stupid, bigoted goings-on in the Arizona legislature recently that have made Arizona both the nation's laughingstock and the object of horrified scorn. All I can tell you is hey, it's not my fault. You've got to remember that Phoenix is largely Republican, as are some of the rural parts of the state. Together they outweigh Tucson Democrats at the state level, and we are unable to prevent the state from doing stupid things, such as passing a "birther bill" requiring Presidential candidates to come to Arizona, birth certificate in hand, before getting on the ballot; a law that allows concealed weapons inside bars as long as you're not drinking, and a newer one that allows a concealed weapon statewide without a permit.
Worse than any of these is a newly-passed bill the new Governor, Jan Brewer, has not yet vetoed, requiring Arizona cops to demand proof of citizenship of anyone "reasonably suspected" to be an illegal alien. You've heard of being pulled over for "driving while black?" Try "breathing while Hispanic." That's where Arizona seems headed, despite pleas from churches, public officials, newspapers and law enforcement organizations. The law was proposed by State Senator Russell Pearce, a right wing xenophobe who has posed for pictures with a notorious neo-Nazi white supremacist, so you just know he's got the Right on his side, one way if not the other. What makes this especially outrageous is that Arizona is 30% Hispanic. Brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking (often bilingual) people have lived here since long before Arizona was a state. We have plenty of Hispanic U.S. citizens whose families have lived here all that time, including, for example, the Ronstadts. We also have legal immigrants, and Mexican residents who legally cross the border to go shopping and then return home. And yes, we have undocumented immigrants too, sneaking across the border for the privilege - if they survive the dangerous desert crossing - of picking lettuce in Yuma or working some other job most Americans would not want.
Back when Janet Napolitano was the Governor of Arizona, she would veto nonsense like this "papers please" bill, but then she accepted the post as head of Homeland Security. All we can do now is hope that all the unflattering attention, demonstrations and phone calls in opposition to the bill will shame current Governor Jan Brewer into vetoing it. If she doesn't, expect the first lawsuit about an hour later.
Somebody needs to bring people like Russell Pearce into the current century. This isn't the Wild West, and this isn't a war of the white people versus the brown people. That kind of thinking should be as outdated as a shootout between Earps and Clantons. The time is long past for societal conflicts within these not-so-United States to be settled at gunpoint. We're better than that.
Janet of fondofsnape.com expressed an interest in Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, whose statues guard the back patio of the old railroad depot here in Tucson. I actually have some more material on them, some from a 2004 journal entry, the rest not previously online. So let's run with that, shall we?
Here's the best picture I got on Saturday of Wyatt and Doc. Wyatt Earp is presumably the one with the big mustache, as you can see from the portrait below.
This marker was also at the depot. I didn't actually read it, so now I must Google to find out what the story is. As you might expect, it all ties in with the feud between the Earp brothers and the Clanton gang, which seems to have been more a faction than an actual criminal gang. Certainly there was plenty of murder carried out by both the Clantons and the Earps, and the Earps didn't always have the law on their side. Based on an excellent article I just found about little brother Warren Earp, here's the gist of what happened:
The three who fell at or near OK Corral. Photo by KFB.
July 1881: deputy U.S. Marshall Virgil Earp takes a posse to "investigate" cattle rustling by Old Man Clanton. Gunplay ensures. It is thought that the senior Clanton was killed (among others) and Warren Earp injured.
October 26, 1881: the Earps and their friend Doc Holliday have it out with the Clantons and McLaurys in the Gunfight at the OK Corral. Frank and Tom McLaury and Billy Clanton are killed.
December 28, 1881: Ike Clanton, Frank Stillwell and others try to shoot Virgil Earp as he crosses Allen Street. Virgil Earp is injured. The shooters are eventually acquitted, and Wyatt Earp becomes U.S. deputy marshal.
March 18, 1882: Morgan Earp is shot in the back while shooting pool in Tombstone. Stillwell as suspected of being one of the group that killed him.
March 20, 1882: the surviving Earps, Doc Holliday and others leave Tombstone, ostensibly to join family in California. The train stops in Tucson, where the Earps hear that members of the Clanton faction (notably Ike Clanton and Frank Stillwell) are waiting to shoot them down. Wyatt reportedly spies both men at the Tucson depot. He, Doc and the rest get off the train. The next morning, Stillwell's "bullet-filled body" is found near the tracks. A warrant goes out for the Earps' arrest, and there are Clantons in the posse. The Earps return briefly to Tombstone for supplies and then ride out, killing three more of the Clanton faction in what becomes known as the Earp Vendetta Ride.
April 15, 1882: about this date, the Earps reteat to Colorado.
And so on: Wyatt and Doc are suspected of returning to Arizona that summer, long enough to kill Johnny Ringo. Others of the Earp faction kill Billy Claiborne and Frank Leslie before the whole sorry mess is over. Holliday dies of T.B. in Colorado. Warren Earp ends up in Willcox, Arizona, where he sporadically picks fights with people until he eventually gets himself killed. One of his surviving brothers, probably Virgil, is thought to have avenged his death. Wyatt drifts around the country, gambling and prospecting, and lives until 1929.
What a waste of human life. Seriously.
Of course, most of this takes place in and around Tombstone which Google Maps places exactly 66 miles from my house, or 1 hour 18 minutes. It's not exactly close by. I've been there a few times, but probably not since 1990. It's a memorable place, though. Some of the attractions are laughably dated and low-tech, but all the more endearing because of it. And it's real history, in a real place that hasn't changed all that much in the last fifty years or so. If you get a chance to go there, I recommend it.
My dad hangs out with the famous gunslingers, March 2005.
