Friday, July 22, 2011

First Western Showdown Garden Herbs


On July 21, 1865 Wild Bill Hickok killed Davis Tutt in Springfield, MO. What a crazy-ass time/place the Wild West was. Here's the story told in dialogue lifted from the Wikipedia page, edited for tense:

SCENE 1:
"I think you are wrong, Dave," says Hickok. "It's only twenty-five dollars. I have a memorandum in my pocket."
"Fine, I'll just keep your watch 'til you pay me that thirty-five dollars!"
[Humiliated and stone-faced with anger, Hickock quietly warns Tutt not to wear the watch in public.]
Tutt sneers back, "I intend on wearing it first thing in the morning!"
"If you do, I'll shoot you," Bill replies bluntly and calmly. "I'm warning you here and now not to come across that town square with it on."

SCENE 2:
[At a distance of about 75 yards, Hickok stops, facing Tutt.]
He calls out, "Dave, here I am."
[Hickok cocks (or ckoks) his pistol and holsters it on his hip.]
He gives a final warning, "Don't you come across here with that watch."
[Hickok's bullet strikes Tutt in the left side between the fifth and seventh ribs (in the sixth rib?).]
Tutt calls out, "Boys, I'm killed."

SCENE 3:
[Judge Sempronius (Sempronius!) Boyd gives the jury two apparently contradictory instructions. The jury deliberates for only "an hour or two."]
They pronounce their verdict, "Not guilty."
[As stated by a modern historian, "Nothing better describes the times than the fact that dangling a watch held as security for a poker debt was widely regarded as a justifiable provocation for resorting to firearms."]

There's no recipe here. The photo above is of chives, curly parsley, sage leaves, and some runty onions A. and I harvested after weeding our host's little plot in the community garden. The onions are really starchy but taste pretty much like potato fries when deep fried.

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