) the other night. For some reason I can never find his phone number and thus I must always go online and search the white pages to get it. From that point on, however, it gets easy.
My long, lean, lanky, Lincoln, New Mexico friend is the only "Drew Gomber" in all these here United States. In more ways than one is Drew unique. Now at home in the town that Billy built (the Kid, that is), Drew is a much-sought, much noted, and much traveled, celebrity.
My hawk-eyed friend was a staple on "Wild West Tech" and a talking noggin for a zillion documentaries. A month or so ago, Good Gomber was in Spain shooting another film. He stayed in the same hotel where Clint Eastwood drank and sported during his spaghetti western days.
Last month, Drew attended the Golden Boot Award in Hollywood. Clint Eastwood was the feature attraction. Next month, October 26, Drew and ten thousand others will be in Tombstone for the big 125th anniversary celebration of the Gunfight at the OK Corral.
Drew agreed to be my OK imbed at the affair. I may get there myself and do my own embedding. Drew says it will be the "Disneyland" of the Wild West.
I suppose one can take that several ways. An email from my KC bud, Chuck Rabas. Chuck just may be the greatest Wild West authority still standing--which is saying a heap.
If Chuck says a certain arcane nugget is fact, you can take it to the bank. He mentions in his email that Johnny Ringo of Tombstone fame was related by marriage to Jesse James of Missouri fame. Fancy that!
Actually, this is not so hard for me to swallow. Vast as the West was, it was actually a very small world, demographically speaking. The Wild West was almost incestuous.
I once thought it strange that on the plains Wild Bill ( ) kept bumping into Buffalo Bill and Buffalo Bill kept bumping into Medicine Bill and Medicine Bill kept bumping into Wild Bill, and so on and so on, Bill on Bill on Bill. But when I realized that there were only a relatively small number of white folks out there at the time, and a relatively small number of towns and forts, and these men were scouts and hunters always on the move, then it made sense. That scene in where Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman) keeps running into the whisky peddler in town after town (and each time he meets him another body part is missing), is probably closer to the truth than not.
) the other night.
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