Bebo

Researching a Legend Part 3

North on Fourth and left on Fremont
I paused at the corner of Fourth and Allen and took out my 1881 street map to refresh my memory just to get a better idea of how it looked then. Some of the prominent landmarks I’d read about were still there some were not.
Walking north toward Fremont Street Hafford’s Corner Saloon was first on my right with the Brown Hotel, Gun Shop and News Stand farther along.
On the left was an Assayer’s office, Zeckendorf Building, a vacant lot, the New Orleans Restaurant and Saloon with Keatney’s Drug Store near the end of the block.
As you approach Fremont the US Post Office is the last building on the right then as you turn left into Fremont the first building on your right is the Courthouse. Some of the other buildings along that side of Fremont Street are the Exchange Building, Law Offices and Addie Bourland’s Dress Shop. On the left was the Papago Cash Store, which was under construction at the time of the shootout. Bauer’s Butcher Shop, Buck Fly’s Boarding House and Photographic Studio and then the infamous vacant lot where the shootout took place.
Once I got to the location I stepped off the yardage space that the gunfight was confined to. My immediate thoughts then turned to -- who had the best view of the fight? Of course it would be the combatants, but three of them were dead and the others you’d expect to give an account favoring their side.
Onlooker witnesses were of course possible. There was a vacant house on one side of the combat area; Buck Fly’s buildings were on the other. As I surveyed the area where the fight took place, I thought about the people that might have been looking out the windows of either of those buildings and chuckled. I bet they would have moved like a jackrabbit taking cover when the first shot rang out. And nobody in his right mind would have stayed by the window to watch the fight.
Then I looked at my map again and turned toward the other side of the street. According to the map Addie Bourland’s Dress Shop was adjacent to Buck Fly’s Boarding House and possibly far enough away from the action that a potential witness would not have been too frightened to watch the gunfight.
But today nothing remained of the dress shop, only a vacant lot. I walked across the street and took a position where the front window was probably located. And when I looked toward the vacant lot I was amazed at the view an observer would have had, a front row seat at the gunfight of the century. Was Addie Bourland at her shop window when all hell broke loose?

That was a question I didn’t need to answer right away although I’d heard a local historian talk about Addie Bourland’s testimony during the Spicer hearing. For me though, I would put a memo in my briefcase with all my other Tombstone notes that would be sorted out and corroborated later.
I had several more questions to ask about Tombstone but I was getting restless and decided to put them off until another visit.
Next stop Griffin, Georgia.
(To be continued)

‘The Goring Collection’
‘Could I please have my painting back?’ A personal note from Miriam.
Click here.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/c...

Prologue Part 3

Nothing was spelled out about Jacob’s transfer until a meeting with his regular KGB contact; a heavyset man named Alexei. They always met in a park at the end of a promontory overlooking the Baltic Sea. It was there during one a routine meeting when Alexei explained, in great detail, the KGB's plan for Jacob’s defection to the West. The escape would be timed to coincide with the 1960 Rome Olympics. Jacob was given a job as an assistant gymnastics instructor, and following a formal request Natalie was allowed to accompany her brother to the West.
The defection was set to take place during an Aeroflot charter flight in route from Potsdam to Rome. The

Researching a Legend Part 2

On the Ground in Tombstone
I was excited to actually see the town of Tombstone as I drove past the city limits sign. I found the motel I had booked, checked in and unloaded my bags. I doubt that I spent ten minutes in the room. I walked out to those dusty streets of Tombstone just to get a sense of place. The first day I didn’t carry a notebook or recorder, didn’t want to inhibit the atmosphere. All I wanted to do was walk, look and listen to the sights and sounds of tourist chatter and local small talk.
From reading and studying maps I had an idea of how the place looked in 1881, and of course the streets were the same today, but the buildings were a different story. Some of the 1881 buildings no longer existed and some had been refurbished. But not so many as to break that image a tourist might form of how it was.
Today’s Tombstone is not quite a circus, but more like the old county fairs once were with barkers hawking the next reenactment of the Gunfight at the OK Corral, or ‘Come on down to the Bird Cage Theatre and take a walk into the past.’ Then you spot a museum that sells the old Tombstone story and pictures of the Earps and Holliday along with the dead outlaws resting in their coffins.
Locals dressed in costumes impersonating some of the main players in the 1881 shootout Wyatt or Morgan Earp, Doc Holliday and Ike Clanton, were among those I saw. Those local performers would engage small groups of tourist then talk about and answer questions from their character’s point of view. I listened to those I encountered and heard several good exchanges between local performers and well-read tourists.
Late that evening, back at my motel, I could still recall the cacophony of street sounds and talks about the way it was from that afternoon experience. But somewhere underneath I had a sense that old Tombstone of 1881 was alive and well. And if I looked and listened hard enough I’d find a way to sort out the truth from the myth.
I took out my maps to get an idea about the country surrounding Tombstone and the places I wanted to see. Of course many of the small towns and mining camps no longer existed, but I still wanted to find those locations if for nothing more than place and their location relative to Tombstone.
It was early in the morning when I drove southwest out of Tombstone on the old Charleston Road toward the San Pedro River. As I drove along enjoying the cool morning I thought about the silver mines that were the original draw to Tombstone. During the 1880’s wagon roads crisscrossed the desert between mine and mill. Many of those roads wound up at the Charleston mill, but today there were few signs of that once flourishing mining industry.
I stopped short of the San Pedro River Bridge, found an off road parking space, got out of the car and began walking. There was a small stream running along the riverbed, which supplied enough water to sustain green vegetation within about 15 or 20 yards of the stream. I walked north following the San Pedro far enough to get a look at Charleston, or at least the few remaining adobe ruins that were once part of Charleston.
There was another site that interested me farther up the river, the Clanton ranch. However, from what I’d read no evidence remained that it was ever there so I turned around and walked back to the car.
I then drove over the bridge to the outskirts of Sierra Vista, turned south past Nicksville and Hereford before arriving at Bisbee. No disappointment there. The small town of Bisbee is steeped in mining history and is known more for copper than Tombstone was for silver.
And the locals, just as they were in Tombstone, were eager to engage a stranger in conversation and tell the Bisbee mining story.
While I ate lunch I listened to tourist enthuse about the role Bisbee copper played in the first cable link across the Atlantic. Following lunch I drove back to Tombstone and stopped by the Epitaph Newspa

Researching a Legend:
Part One
When we wrapped up the filming of Okefenokee (Georgia’s Heritage TV Series) we moved on to Valdosta and tackled the Holliday story. Both the character and the era interested me, but the story line seemed to leave too much out. I completed my work on the show and returned to Hollywood.
All the while that Holliday story continued to hold my interest and eventually I decided to do something about it. To begin the process I read everything I could get my hands on about the character and the era. Then I followed that up by going to the Central Library in Los Angeles. I spent hours researching and making notes from reference books that I couldn’t check out. Among them were Legends of the West, George Parson’s Journal and Eddie Foy’s biography, “Clowning Through Life.”
By that time the Holliday story definitely had my attention, and it wasn’t so much what was there, but what was missing. In every book I read Doc’s character was coming off about the same as the early Dime Store Novels that depicted him – that of a coughing, gun-crazed alcoholic.

Missing was the human factor, his family life, did he have brothers and sisters? What about his early education and where did he go to dental college? He was a dentist, but where did he practice? There were hints of a romantic tie with his cousin Mattie Holliday but no substance. And those were just a few questions I wanted to find answers to. In my mind you could not make a real three-dimensional character out of the stuff I’d read. But I’ll bet there are answers to those questions and I planned to go out and find them.
It was common knowledge that Doc Holliday suffered from tuberculosis. But none of the books or movies I was familiar with dealt with the disease in any way other than a superficial portrayal, that of a consumptive riddled ‘lunger.’
That line of thought sent me back to the library to root around the stacks looking for books on tuberculosis. Within a week or two I had read sections of and made notes from a dozen books on the subject.
The studies go back to 1020 when a pulmonary disorder was identified as a disease. But it wasn’t until 1839 when the disease was actually named Tuberculosis. And through all those years there was no consensus for any kind of a cure. During the late 1830’s someone had the idea to bring a number of tubercular patients into Mammoth Cave, with the hope that a constant temperature and purity of the cave air they might find a cure; the patients died within a year.
But in some perverted way that failed experiment might have pointed toward a natural cure – not cave air, but dry fresh air.
So that was about where the medical community stood during Doc Holliday’s lifetime, they had some of the answers, but not enough to lead them to an actual cure.

At that point I figured I’d get more answers on site than following up on footnotes written by people using flimsy one or two source methods to arrive at their conclusions.
My basic plan was to drive to Tombstone study the geography of the place and listen to the locals. Then to Griffin, Georgia where Doc was born grew up and owned property. Atlanta was next, then Philadelphia. Susan McKey Thomas, the historian on the PBS TV show we did was almost sure that Doc attended ‘The Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery’ in Philadelphia and believed that records at the University of Pennsylvania library would prove that fact.
My return trip was tentative, but I expected to make stops in Dallas, Central Texas and then make another visit to Tombstone.
My first working research trip to Tombstone
(To be continued)

The Goring Collection.
Prologue:
Part One
Berlin, Germany 1941
Jacob was six years old and his sister Natalie a year younger, when they stood on the windswept platform at Berlin Station and waved enthusiastically while their parents boarded the train. Jonathan and Anna Meyers had told the children they were