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Volume 5, Issue No. 3 March, 2007
Who Could Have Asked For A Better Day?
On March 24th, the sun rose in the east and moved across the range to the west – sometimes. It’s true. The big, round target that moves across one of the ranges on the cable was painted yellow and moved across the range as shooters shot their rifle targets. The trick was to miss the sun: if you hit it, it was a miss. But sometimes, the sun would get stuck and either moved slowly, or stayed in the east. Maybe that’s what happens in Alaska when they have them long days and nights. In any event, 68 shooters participated in a terrific shoot. The weather couldn’t have been better. The Rev. Adam Jones even commented that if it didn’t rain before long, we might have to pray for rain on shoot day. Ouch! And it was an eventful day: Outrider showed up wearing a new hat, Coffee Joe – make that Ah Ah Choo – showed up to shoot in a Chinese bathrobe and funny blue hat with a pigtail, and Donsie Darlin’ and Fiddleback announced that they are gonna be parents.
No. It ain’t Hey Boy shootin’ at Paladin or Hop Sing shootin’ at Hoss & Little Joe. It’s Coffee Joe shootin’ as Ah Ah Choo.
Awful Close shoots his ’73 Winchester as Ocoee Red times. Awful Close shot a clean – no misses – match.
S.A. Pondwater was the Top Gun of the day and won the pre-shoot side match. His pop, Tabasco JOT, won the Senior competition and shot a no-miss match in doing so. Last Kiss was the top shootin’ cowgirl. Interestingly, Fast Harley and Last Kiss placed 16th and 17th overall. We haven’t had that happen with a shootin’ couple before. In the Buffalo Shoot, Marshal Too Tall won the Long Range Single Shot Rifle shoot and the 25 Yards .22 Cal. competition, and somebody named Dave won the Long Range Pistol competition. The Top 10 Shooters were (1) S.A. Pondwater (2) Ocoee Red (3) Widowmaker (4) Polecat Carl (5) Tabasco JOT (6) Unpleasant (7) Fiddleback (8) Slater (9) Cherokee Maddog and (10) Pleasant. 8 cowboys shot No-Miss matches: Polecat Carl, Tabasco JOT, Lightning McCoy, Moonshine Roberts, Awful Close, Deadman, Tellico, and Bad Eye Tom.
Pop and Mom to be – Fiddleback and Donsie Darlin
SHOOT RESULTS
TOP GUN – S.A. Pondwater … BUFFALO SHOOT – Long Range Pistol – David … .22 Cal – Marshal Too Tall … Long Range Single Shot Rifle … Marshal Too Tall
Senior1. Tabasco JOT 2. T-Bone Angus 3. Outrider |
Gunfighter 1. Widowmaker 2. Pleasant 3. Fast Harley |
Traditional 1. Unpleasant 2. Fiddleback 3. Slater |
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Black Powder Cartridge 1. Judge’m All Duncan 2. Catoosa Kid 3. Owlhoot Hardin |
Cowgirl 1. Last Kiss 2. Killin’ Time |
Modern 1. S.A. Pondwater 2. Polecat Carl 3. Wildcat Wilkey |
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49er 1. Ocoee Red 2. Marshal Too Tall 3. Festus D. Deputy |
Classic 1. Cherokee Maddog 2. Lightning McCoy 3. Dustin Clays |
Duelist 1. Rusty Spur Slim 2. Horseshoe John 3. Awful Close |
Outlaw
1. Badlands Beck
2. Rawhide Rex
3. Curly Bill
Tellico shot his 1st no-miss match at the Cleveland Range TO DATE, WE HAVE RECEIVED $168.10 IN CONTRIBUTIONS TO BUY PRIZES TO BE AWARDED AT OUR ANNUAL CHRISTMAS SHOOT AND FAMILY EVENT.
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The Ocoee Ranger page 2 March 2007
THE REEL WEST, REAL WEST AND THE WEST
OF OUR IMAGINATION
THE REEL WEST – Harry Woods 1889 – 1968
You’ve probably never heard the name Harry Woods. But in the heyday of B – Westerns, ol’ Harry was a very familiar face. And he even appeared in some A – movies. Born Harry Woods, imagine that, in the Old West town of Cleveland, Ohio, he began his working life as a millinery salesman. That’s funny when you consider that a lady’s garment peddler became, for many years, 1 of the most recognizable cowboy villain faces in the movies.
Harry Woods
Around1920, Harry and his clan moved to Hollywood, CA, and Harry found himself a non-acting job working for a movie company. Somewhere along the way, he got a movie part portraying a villain. He played that part convincingly. He was a natural. Shucks, if you remember Harry, and folks like Owlhoot and Big might, he looked every bit the menacing bad-guy. His movie career trotted off down the trail and lasted for 35 years. Harry later said that he appeared in about 500 movies, mostly Westerns, and bit the dust in about 300 of them. Joel McCrea disposed of Harry in Cecil B. Demille’s UNION PACIFIC. Harry played a low-down-polecat in that movie. (No offense intended, Polecat Carl.) But that movie’s not shown much. The next time you watch John Wayne in TALL IN THE SADDLE, look for Harry. He’s a villain in that one. Ol’ Duke beats the tar out of Harry in the middle of the street, when Harry’s trying to make Duke go for his pistol. Harry also appeared with John Wayne in John Ford’s SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON. The Indians shot him full of arrows in that flick.
When I was growing up, I always thought Walt Disney’s cartoon villain Black Pete/Peg Pete was patterned after Harry Woods. Pete had the same gruff manner and dark, mean, sneering look. Not long ago, I saw Morgan Woodward, another frequent Western movie villain, in an interview on the Western Channel. Ol’ Morgan said that a really good villain made movies more interesting and made the hero look really good. Harry was excellent in his portrayals. He joined the Posse In The Sky in 1968. And here’s a question for Big and Owlhoot: if Harry always played a villain in his movies, is he riding with the Posse, or are they chasing him?
THE WEST OF OUR IMAGINATION – Big
100 years ago when I was a young feller in Knoxville, the most well-known and popular disc jockey on the radio was “Big” Johnny Pirkle. He went on to become a concert promoter and radio station owner. And he’s still Big and he’s still a celebrity of sorts; he’s a cowboy shooter – and a classy one at that. And did you know that Big shares a common background with Chris, the character that Yul Brenner played in THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN? No, he doesn’t wear all black. And he has hair, something Chris was missing. The answer, according to Lightning McCoy: Big, as a young feller, drove a hearse for a local funeral home. Chris drove 1 in the beginning of THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. How about that?
Big
When Cowboy Action Shooting came to Knoxville, Big was 1of the early members of the Smoky Mountain Shootists Society, the Knoxville Cowboys. How’d he get his alias? Here’s how Lightning McCoy explains it. “ If you ask him where the alias “BIG” came from, he’ll tell you ‘cause when he asked SASS for the name “Slim”, they said that it was already taken. (It really came from a real old west character, “Big Foot Wallace”.) That’s how his humor works, at 6’3″ and weighing in near the high end of the 200 lb. range. It’s really funny to hear him explain it.”
If you’ve shot with Big, you’ve probably discovered the following: (1) he knows guns (2) he enjoys shooting and (3) he doesn’t shoot butterfly loads. Nope. The sound of his guns is louder than the clang when his bullets hit the targets, and the hit-sound is “clang”, not “dink”. Ol’ Big is a fine feller to shoot with.
THE REAL WEST – Henry Newton Brown 1857 – 1884
Henry Brown was born in Rolla, Missouri in 1857. Orphaned early in life, he was raised by relatives. Then when he was 17, he headed west. Henry became a cowboy in several places. And along the way, he became a pistolero. Eventually, he drifted to Lincoln, New Mexico and became 1 of Billy the Kid’s compadres in the Lincoln County War.
Henry Brown
It’s said that Henry was 1 of Billy’s pals who helped him shoot Sheriff William Brady, after Brady participated in or allowed the murder of John Tunstall. And Henry was among the group of Regulators when Billy and his pals shot and killed Buckshot Roberts. When Billy and the Tunstall-McSween supporters were cornered in the McSween home, surrounded by shooting opponents and the house was set fire, Henry covered Billy and his friends from the coal shed and escaped with them. With McSween’s death in that shootout, the Lincoln Co. war effectively ended. But Henry and Billy continued to ride together, rustling horses and cows for a living.
Eventually, Henry left Billy and went to Texas, became a cowboy and later a deputy lawman. But that didn’t last long. He drifted north, working a number of jobs, and in 1882, the town council in Caldwell, KS appointed him Assistant Marshal. Caldwell had experienced several killings, and Henry was hired to enforce the law, with his gun if necessary. And he did. 6 months later, Henry was promoted to Marshal. He hired 1 of his gunslick buddies as his deputy, and together they cleaned up Caldwell. He married a local gal, bought a house and became respectable. In appreciation, the town council gave him a fancy, elaborately engraved Winchester rifle. But Henry spent more money than he made. So, he planned a solution to the hole in his pocketbook: he, his deputy, and 2 other fellers went to Medicine Lodge, KS, a neighboring town, and tried to rob the bank. Henry shot and killed the banker. His deputy shot and mortally wounded a cashier, and they hit the trail without any money. Soon captured, they were returned to jail. That night, vigilantes came calling and invited Henry and his friends to come out and play a game of stretch the rope. Henry declined and tried to run away to play hide and go seek, but several disappointed playmates shot him full of holes. Henry’s 3 pals accompanied their new friends to the edge of town, where they were strung up to an elm tree. So ended the colorful career of Henry Brown.
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