and the Devil himself...

and the Devil himself...

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Band Names

Friends suggested these and they were so hillarious I had to post them!

1.   The Loaded Guns
2.   Outlaw Samuel Clemens
3.   Redneck Sasquatch Patrol
4.   East of Dixie
5.   Hillbilly Pastafarians
6.   The Islama-Bads
7.   The Ramadan Noodles
8.   The HooDoobies
9.   The Bourbonites
10. The Crow Magnums
11. The Crow Holler Carnies
12. The Barn Burners
13. The Gypsybillies
14. The Lonesome Roads
15. Lonesome Liz and The I Don't Think Hank Done It This Ways or better yet....The Hank Probably Done It This Ways!
17. The Cryin' Crawdads
18. The Don't Give a Damns
19. Quicksand Mojo
20. The Mojo Rustlers

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Big Nose Kate, Doc Holiday's True Love

Wedding Photos, Doc Holiday and Big Nose Kate

Katie Elder, aka as Kate Fisher, Big Nose Kate, Nosey Kate, Mrs. John H. "Doc" Holliday, Kate Melvin, and Kate Cummings was born Mary Katharine Haroney in Hungary on November 7, 1850. She died in 1940, buried under the name Mary K. Cummings in Prescott Arizona.

She was born November 7, 1850 in Budapest, Hungary, the eldest daughter of a wealthy physician/aristocrat named Dr. Michael Haroney. Very well educated, she spoke several languages, including Hungarian, French, Spanish and English.

In 1862, Dr. Haroney left Hungary for Mexico to accept a position as personal surgeon to Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. When the government crumbled in 1865, Dr. Haroney took his family to Davenport, Iowa. When his wife died that March, the doctor in May of that same year, both of unknown causes. 14-year-old Kate and her younger siblings were placed in the home of their uncle, Gustav Susemihl, and in 1870, they were left in the care of an attorney, Otto Smith.

At 17, Kate stowed away on a steamboat to St. Louis, Missouri. The captain adopted her and sent her to a convent school in St. Louis. Kate claimed after that to have married a dentist named Silas Melvin and to have had a child with him, though no record survives of either. She said that both her husband and the baby died of fever.

By 1874, Kate had made her way to Dodge City, Kansas. She worked in a brothel run by Nellie Bessie Earp, James Earp's wife. Some historians speculate that she had a relationship with Wyatt at the time, but Kate denied it and, in fact denied knowing him, (impossible in a town that size!). The fact that she denied knowing him in a way supports that something had gone on at some point. 

Either way, by 1878 Kate had moved to Fort Griffin, Texas. There, through Wyatt, she met Doc Holliday. Doc once said that one of the reasons he had loved her was that she was his intellectual equal. She's said to have been as tough and stubborn as he was, with just as much of a temper.

By the time she met Doc, she was a hard drinking, gun slinging prostitute. The pair may or may not have been married at some point, (historians can't seem to agree on that). The deciding moment of their love affair seems to have been when she helped Doc escape from the law after he knifed and killed a man in a barroom brawl. She saved him from hanging by an angry mob. He must have made quite an impression on her.

The two registered in a rooming house in Dodge City Kansas the following year as Dr. and Mrs. John H. Holliday. They both gave up their lawlessness for a while, but he ultimately returned to gambling and she to prostitution. They're said to have had terrible fights, and finally, one was so bad that he left her in Dodge City and went to Colorado then to Las Vegas, New Mexico.

Doc returned to Dodge City after a gunfight went bad in Las Vegas but found both Kate and Wyatt Earp, who had also been there, were gone. He heard that Wyatt was headed to Tombstone so decided to follow him there. Kate was on her way to Tombstone too and the two ran into one another in Prescott, Arizona. They arrived in Tombstone together. However, there, Kate and Doc got into another argument. She reportedly became drunk and abusive, so Doc threw her out.

A few days before the incident, four masked men attempted a hold up on a stagecoach near Contention and in the attempt, killed the stage driver and a passenger. The Cowboy faction of Tombstone immediately seized upon the opportunity to accuse Doc Holliday of being one of the holdup men. The sheriff who was investigating found Kate drunk and berating Doc for throwing her out. He gave her even more whiskey and talked her into signing an affidavit that Doc had been one of the men who killed the stagecoach driver.

Kate sobered up and the Earps rounded up witnesses who could verify Doc's whereabouts on the night in question. Realizing what she'd done, Kate repudiated her statement and the charges were thrown out. But Doc was over it. He gave her some money and put her on a stage out of town. The two reconcilled, however, and seem to have continued an on-again off-again relationship until Holiday's death.

Wyatt told a colorful tale of how Kate got Doc out of trouble in Fort Griffin: Doc was dealing cards to a difficult man named Ed Bailey, who was used to getting his way and not being questioned. Bailey was unimpressed with Doc’s reputation and was trying to irritate him by picking up the discards and looking at them. (Looking at the discards was strictly prohibited by the rules of Western Poker to the degree that doing it was understood to forfit the pot.)

Holliday warned Bailey twice, but Bailey ignored him and picked up the discards again. Doc raked in the pot without showing his hand, or saying a word. Bailey immediately brought out his pistol from under the table, but before the man could pull the trigger, Doc slashed the man across the stomach with a knife. Bailey lay sprawled across the table, blood and guts spilling across the floor.

Doc didn't run because he'd acted in self defense. He was arrested but imprisoned in a local hotel room because there was no jail in town. A vigilante group formed to seek revenge. Knowing that the mob would quickly overtake the local lawmen, Kate devised a plan to free Holliday. She set fire to an old shed, which started to burn rapidly, threatening to take the entire town.

While everyone was busy fighting the fire, Kate, a pistol in each hand, confronted the officer guarding Holliday, disarmed him, and she and Doc escaped. They headed to Dodge City, Kansas on stolen horses the next morning, registering at Deacon Cox’s Boarding House as Dr. and Mrs. J. H. Holliday. Sources say that Doc was so happy about all of this that he gave up gambling for a while and returned to being a dentist. Kate gave up saloons and prostitution. But neither lasted long in 'normal' life.

They spent the next few years together going to Dodge City, Kansas, Deadwood, South Dakota, Las Vegas, New Mexico Territory, and Prescott, Arizona Territory. Their relationship was allegedly turbulent and sporadic.

Kate rented a boarding house to miners in Globe, Arizona Territory. In 1880, she may have run the Grand Hotel in Tombstone, (or it may have been run by another Tombstone prostitute named Rowdy Kate, who she's often confused with). Doc Holliday, had a great run playing faro and poker in Tucson and joined her in Tombstone later that year.

Kate went back to live in Globe, and in 1887, she traveled to Glenwood Springs, Colorado to see Holliday before he died. He also spent some time in a cabin owned by one of her brothers near Glenwood Springs, when he was ill but he ultimately went into town to die. Kate went with him. Since Holliday is known to have been destitute by this time and it's probable that Kate helped support in his final months.

After Holliday's death, Kate married a blacksmith named George Cummings in Colorado. They moved to Bisbee, Arizona, where she briefly ran a bakery. After returning to Willcox, Arizona, Cummings became an abusive alcoholic and they separated. She worked at the Cochise Hotel, where no one was aware of her real identity. Cummings committed suicide in Courtland, Arizona, in 1915 and Kate then lived with a homestead miner in Dos Cabezas, Arizona, until his death in 1930. She does not appear to have received very much in his will.

Using the name Cummings, Kate, increasingly frail, applied to the Arizona Pioneers Home, a state establishment in Prescott for elderly and destitute Arizona residents from frontier days. Though a lifelong friend of the Governor at the time, who helped her become one of the first residents of the home, it took six months to place her there because she had never become a U.S. citizen. She became an outspoken advocate of residents rights and helped others while there, writing many letters to the Arizona state legislature, and when she was not satisfied contacting the governor.

When she was 89 she wrote a letter to her niece revealing that she was with Doc in his room in Fly's Boarding house, next to the O.K. Corral, and that she actually witnessed the shootout.

"In Kate's story, on the day of the gunfight, a man entered Fly's boarding house with a bandaged head and a rifle. He was looking for Holliday, who was still in bed after a night of gambling during which he'd had one argument with Ike Clanton that had been stopped by onlookers. The man was turned away by Mrs. Fly. He was probably Ike Clanton, although how Clanton's head had come to be bandaged is unknown.

"Clanton was known to have headaches, and perhaps he had been treated for that even before Virgil Earp hit him over the head and removed his weapons a short time later. In any case, Clanton's actually entering Holliday's rooming-house with a rifle would have given Holliday and the Earps all the reason they needed to believe that a gunfight between Holliday and the cowboys was inevitable.

"While Clanton was being disarmed, arrested, and taken before a judge, Kate claims that Holliday put on his clothes and went up to see the Earps. They had gathered at the corner of 5th Street and Allen, where they could keep an eye on the courtroom to the South, the O.K. Corral a block west, and the various cowboys who were believed to be coming and going from out of town.

"Eventually, the Earps and Holliday walked down Fremont Street to confront the cowboys in the vacant lot West of Fly's (and Holliday's) boarding house. Kate would have been able to see the fight, just feet away, from her window overlooking the vacant lot. In Kate's version of the gunfight, Holliday had a problem with this "rifle" after the shooting started. He threw it to the ground and drew his pistol. This report fits with what is known of the events, although what Holliday actually threw down would have been his double-barrelled short shotgun (the gun he had emptied when killing Tom McLaury)."

After the fight, Kate said that Doc Holliday went back to his room, sat on the edge of the bed and wept from the shock of what had just happened. "That was awful," Kate claims he said. "Just awful." Kate stayed at the Arizona Pioneers' Home until her death on November 2, 1940, five days before her 90th birthday.

Kate said of life: "Part is funny and part is sad, but such is life any way you take it."

Top 10 Things Lonesome Liz Has Encountered in the Land of the Outlaw Amish



1. Conversations with Non-Outlaw Amish.
2. A boy galloping by on a horse.
3. Cowboys herding cattle on horses with lassos.
4. An undiscovered Adena mound.
5. Steps to a stone age structure in a ravine with curious caves and a stream you can still drink out of.
6. Hoodoo blue.
7. Coyotes who come very close but don't threaten.
8. A double barrel shotgun to fire.
9. A tortise shell.
10. The fearsome mountain lion.

What these and other animals mean in Native American lore at The Conjure Woman's Corner

Thursday, October 14, 2010

My Interview at AllPulp.com

More Things Found in Lonesome Liz's Travel Bags



1. A magic wand she made.
2. Neolithic sculpture from a cave near a burial mound.
3. Curious pendulum full of fossils.
4. Kara Clark's CD.
5. The Golden Tarot
6. Ticket to Nashville.
7. Lovely stones.
8. Bob Dylan ticket.
9. Michael O'Neill's CD.
10. Travis Louie's Curiosities.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Cowboy Sayings


Don't judge people by their relatives.

The best way out of a difficulty is through it.

A gun is as good or as bad as the man using it.

When you lose, don't lose the lesson.

Talk slowly, think quickly.

We all got pieces of crazy in us, some bigger pieces than others.

Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
 
Don’t go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path. . . and leave a trail.
 
Don't interfere with something that ain't botherin' you none.
 
Speak your mind, but ride a fast horse.
 
If ya don’t know a where’s you’re a goin, it’d be a good idea not to use yer spurs.
 
If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin'.
 
Whoever said a horse was dumb, was dumb.
 
The biggest troublemaker you'll probably ever have to deal with watches you shave his face in the mirror every morning.
 
When you give a personal lesson in meanness to a critter or to a person, don't be surprised if they learn their lesson.
 
If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's dog around.

Don't worry about bitin' off more'n you can chew; your mouth is probably a whole lot bigger'n you think.

Generally, you ain't learnin' nothing when your mouth's a-jawin'.

Tellin' a man to git lost and makin' himdo it are two entirely different propositions.

If you're ridin' ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it's still there with ya.

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.
 
If you’re riding a high horse there’s no way to get down gracefully.
 
When you're throwin' your weight around, be ready to have it thrown around by somebody else.

Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin' it back.

Never miss a good chance to shut up.

Black Bart - Outlaw Poet

Left at the scene of a stagecoach robbery, August 3, 1877:

"I've labored long and hard for bread,
For honor, and for riches,
But on my corns too long you've tred,
You fine-haired sons of bitches."

- Black Bart, 1877



Left at the scene of a stagecoach robbery, July 25, 1878:

"Here I lay me down to sleep
To wait the coming morrow,
Perhaps success, perhaps defeat,
And everlasting sorrow.
Let come what will, I'll try it on,
My condition can't be worse;
And if there's money in that box
'Tis munny in my purse."
- Black Bart Po8

Black Bart, (Charles Earl Boles), was born in 1829 and was last seen on February 28, 1888. An Englishman by birth, his family emigrated to New York when he was two and by 1849 he and a cousin joined a California Gold Rush. Though he married soon after and raised a family of four in Illinois, he was to become one of the most notorious stagecoach robbers of the 1870s and 1880s. After service in the Civil War he had an incident with Wells, Fargo employees, around August, 1871. A letter swearing vengance on them was the last his wife heard of him. He became an outlaw and was soon as well known for his daring image and poetry as for his daring robberies.

He robbed his first stage in July, 1875. Victims described him as unusually polite and well-mannered. They said his voice was deep and resonant and that he asked that the driver, "Please throw down the box." In future robberies, it was noted that he was always considerate and didn't curse and that he disguised himself, covering his body with sacks and linen.

Boles based his persona on a dime western serial character, Black Bart. Black Bart dressed, of course, in black and had wild black hair and an unruly beard. He robbed Wells Fargo stagecoaches, striking terror in the hearts of all who encountered him. Boles said later that the idea of assuming the name came to him after writing his first poem and once signed, the persona was assigned to him from that point forward.

As Black Bart, he successfully robbed stagecoaches across Northern California. He was shot in a robbery in 1883 and fled the scene. He left his glasses and a handkerchief behind, among other personal items. Keeping $500 in gold coins, he buried his shotgun in a hollow tree. The stage driver in this last robbery, Reason McConnell, wrote a manuscript detailing his version of the events 20 years later.

The Wells Fargo Detective who investigated the robbery, James B. Hume was said to have looked enough like Boles to be his twin. He tracked him down by the laundry mark on the handkerchief he'd left behind at the scene. At first, Boles denied that he was the notorious outlaw but eventually admitted to the robberies committed before 1879, it is speculated because he thought the statute of limitations had run out on these. He gave a false name when booked, but police found his real identity in a Bible among his possessions.

"The police report following his arrest stated that Black Bart was "a person of great endurance. Exhibited genuine wit under most trying circumstances, and was extremely proper and polite in behavior. Eschews profanity."

Wells Fargo only pressed charges against Boles for his last robbery. In 1888, after 4 years in San Quinten, when he was released for good behavior, it's said that his health had visably deteriorated. When reporters asked if he was going to rob any more stage coaches he replied, "No, gentlemen, I'm through with crime." When another asked if he planned on writing any more poetry. He laughed, "Now, didn't you hear me say that I am through with crime?

He never returned to his wife, Mary but did write to her once released from prison. In his letter, he said that he was tired of having Wells Fargo on his trail, that he felt demoralized and that he just wanted to get away from everybody. In February, 1888, Black Bart vanished.

A man believed to be a copycat thief robbed a Wells Fargo stage a few months later. He left a poem that read:

"So here I've stood while wind and rain
Have set the trees a-sobbin,'
And risked my life for that damned box,
That wasn't worth the robbin."

Rumor had it that Wells Fargo then paid Black Bart to keep away from their coaches, but the rumors were, of course, denied.

What became of him was never known. Some said he died quietly in New York City. Others said he'd gone off to seek his fortune in Montana or Nevada. In the summer of 1888 an unidentified stagecoach robber some believe to have been Black Bart was killed near Virginia City, Nevada. It is surprising that he wasn't identified, however, if that was indeed who he was.