Episode 5: Tales from the Backseat
On my family’s continuing journey to map the United States with our brown Oldsmobile station wagon, I learned many things. It was more than just the names and places, but outside of the confines of our hometown, I realized lessons of life, people and my parents that echo through my daily life even today.
In the dry dusty desert of Arizona, we ventured to the legendary town of Tombstone, depicted in many movies and television shows as the heart of the old west and the site of an epic gunfight between the lawful Earp brothers and the criminal Clanton clan.
A child of cowboy movies and serials in the 1950s, my dad was especially anxious to step back in time into a real 1880s western town, preserved for tourism. One of his favorites was Gunfight at the OK Corral with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. As we strolled through the dirt main street, he gave us a guided tour of the town, just as he remembered in the movie.
“Wow, look at this kids. It’s just like in the movies. You can even smell the atmosphere. Here’s the General Store and Doc Holliday’s dental office, the Sheriff’s office, that’s where Wyatt Earp worked, the Oriental Saloon and the Bird Cage Theater, that’s where the ladies danced for the cowboys and… “
“And nothing else,” my mother interrupted. “Ok, let’s go inside a building to get away from this horse stench out here.”
We walked along the railed wooden planks next to the storefronts and my dad’s eyes lit up like a kid in a candy store with every building.
“And here’s where the cowboys would park their horses and put their reins over the railing,” he said and demonstrated in pantomime how it would be done.
In the general store window, he saw some hats and excitedly smiled and rushed to the door.
“That’s what we need to get us all in the mood. Let’s get some cowboy hats.”
We all picked out different hats. My dad’s was a black cowboy hat with a braided leather brim and my brother and sister and I picked from the more colorful red and blue kids’ hats.
“Dad, I want the red one,” I smiled.
“Me too,” my little sister mimicked me. I rolled my eyes and sighed, tired of being copied by a little girl all the time.
“Why don’t you all get red, that way you’ll look like a cowboy gang,” my dad smiled and we walked out of the store with red hats and cap guns, ready for action.
Across from the General Store, there was a white building that stood out among the rest. It was the saloon. The sign in the window caught my dad’s eye. It read Real Sarsaparilla.
Again his eyes ignited with delight and he grabbed my little sister’s hand and led us into the saloon. The small space sported an ornately decorated mahogany-colored wooden bar with shiny brass rail and liquor bottles in all shapes and sizes gleaming against the mirrored back. In front was a man with a white shirt, red vest and a big curly mustache.
“What’s your pleasure, partner,” he said in a western accent.
Proudly my father stuck out his chest and leaned his arm against the bar, beaming at us as if he was being photographed.
“Five sarsaparillas, partner,” he said in a simulated western accent and laughed.
A few minutes later we were sitting at an old wooden table with glass mugs in front of us. The reddish brown liquid inside looked familiar, like Coca-Cola, so we eagerly drank up. But the taste inside was definitely different.
My brother and I were the first to stare at each other with squished disapproving faces. It tasted like the strongest Dr. Pepper ever made. You could almost taste the pepper as if it were shaken into the cup. We didn’t like it.
I watched my father’s face. He winced a little but glued on a smile to cover. I don’t think he liked it either, but he wanted to put on a good front.
“Aaaah,” he put down his mug. “Tastes like the old west.”
Forever shadowing my father, my brother drank up some more, but I shook my head and sat back in my seat. I was done.
Old buildings, with their musky mix of old wood and aged interior were difficult for my mother’s allergies and sensitive nose. So, she began to hold a Kleenex over her nose, which was a sign we needed to move on. Seeing her signal, my dad rolled his eyes at her.
“Let’s get some fresh air, partners,” he told us in his pretend western swagger.
We walked along the dusty dirt and gravel street again until we reached tall wooden fence that said “O.K. Corral.”
My dad was almost giddy.
“This is it, kids. The very place where The Earp Brothers gunned down those Clantons nearly 100 years ago. It was one of the most famous old west gun battles in history. Are you ready?”
Then we saw another sign. To see the site of the greatest gun battle in history, there was a steep tourism fee. In that instant, I saw my father’s excitement swiftly transform to unbridled indignation and disgust.
“What? They have got to be kidding. I’m not going to pay that to see a patch of dirt and a fence that’s 100 years old. That’s ridiculous! How do they think they can get away with that?”
And in that moment, our trip into yesterday, reveling in the days of my dad’s youthful wonder hit smack up against rabid commercialism and my dad’s biggest pet peeve…
“Do they think I was born yesterday? I’m not their sucker.” He ranted but then glanced down at the little band of red hat and holster-clad kids with their cap guns at the ready, looking up at him with their big brown puppy eyes in confusion.
Then his eyes grew big and he crept toward a knothole in the fence.
“Kids. Let’s play I spy and peep through the secret hole.”
One at a time, he lifted us up to see through the hole, narrating the tale of the gunfight as though he were there with all the detail and drama, even providing the sound effects of the bullets and the victims falling to the ground.
When I stared through the hole, all I saw was a big empty open dirt space, but it was his storytelling that made it interesting.
Shortly afterward we piled into the brown Oldsmobile station wagon and made our way west.
Of all the tourist traps we visited on this trip and others; I’ll especially remember this one as our peek into my dad’s little boy cowboy fantasies coming to life and then meeting head on with his adult reality.
Author’s Note: Tales from the Backseat is a continuing serial of a a typical family American vacation.
(c) Suzanne Rudd Hamilton 2024
SUZANNE RUDD HAMILTON 