Walker is right. Again. For once. Right, anyway.

I had a vision today. For a moment the veil of the future was swept aside, and I received an impression of things to come.

Bear in mind when I say that that my predictions are pretty much always wrong. If there’s such a thing as Second Sight, I was third in line.

But I had a vision of a possible scenario. Imagine (it isn’t hard to do) that Hillary Clinton doesn’t win the Democratic nomination this year.

I can see her turning on her party. I can see her becoming a Republican, writing nasty books about her years with Bill (whom she will have also dumped by then), and showing up regularly on Rush Limbaugh to comment on Democratic politics from the perspective of a former insider. Kind of the same thing Dick Morris is doing now.

Remember, you read it here first.

Not long ago I made a reference to my interest in Wild Bill Hickok. This led me to glance at my bookshelf, and I noticed that I had a book on Wild Bill there that I hadn’t read yet. More surprisingly, it was a book by Joseph G. Rosa, the foremost Hickok authority today (oddly enough, an Englishman), and a man with whom I once exchanged a couple letters.

So I read Wild Bill Hickok: Gunfighter. It was a good book, as I expected, and Rosa has done his usual yeoman work uncovering obscure sources previously unseen. The copy editing could have been better, but that’s pretty much a universal problem in publishing nowadays.

What particularly interested me was his comments on one of Hickok’s most famous photographs. You can see a small version here. It’s the picture at the top, where he’s standing in a buckskin shirt.

Somewhere, and I think it must have been in his magnum opus, They Called Him Wild Bill (the second edition came out in 1974), Rosa had identified that picture as probably coming from late in Hickok’s life, when he was traveling with the original stage production that Buffalo Bill Cody produced before he went whole hog with his “Wild West” show.

When I wrote a letter of appreciation to Rosa, I said that I thought the picture must be earlier, probably from Hickok’s time as an army scout. I noted, first of all, that Hickok looks quite thin in this picture. Anybody who’s studied the photographs (and Hickok liked getting photographed) knows that he put on weight as he got older.

Secondly, I noted that his mustache looks pretty modest, compared to the flowing affair he sported later on.

And I mentioned that his hair was parted in the middle. In his later pictures, his hair (when he’s bareheaded) is combed straight back.

Rosa replied (I have the letter somewhere, though I can’t put my hand on it right now) that the head-brace Hickok would have worn to hold him still for such a photograph would have stretched out his head and neck, making him look thinner; that the mustache length would probably have varied frequently; and the same would be true with the hair part.

In his comments on this photograph on page 35 of this new book, Rosa now identifies the picture as an early one, and says, “…a close examination of the photograph reveals that he wears his hair parted in the middle, an affectation he had discarded by 1870.”

I don’t claim that it was my argument alone that changed the biographer’s mind. He also notes that identification of the original photographer helps to date the picture. And doubtless I wasn’t the first person to study the picture closely and come to the same conclusion.

But I feel vindicated!

Another comment I made (and Rosa obviously hasn’t yet come around on this) is that I think the pair of Colt pistols Hickok is wearing here are not Navies (.36 caliber) but Armies (.44 caliber). I say that just because I’ve done a lot of shooting with a Navy replica, and they have rather small handles, about right for my hands, which are also pretty small. Hickok was a fairly tall man, and in proportion to his size, those pistol grips just look too large for Navies, to my eyes. The grips on an Army are a little bigger.

The flaw in this theory is that it’s known that Hickok owned at least one matched pair of nickel-plated, ivory-handled Navies. But there’s no record of a similar pair of Armies belonging to him.

But this is my night for bold theories. So make a note that you read this here first, too.

0 thoughts on “Walker is right. Again. For once. Right, anyway.”

  1. There is one, tiny part of me that is sad about Hillary’s diminishing chances.

    Don’t get me wrong. I would HATE to have Hillary in the White House, and it would make me proud to stay in Canada (circumstances willing.)

    But imagine this scenario:

    Hillary is elected.

    Everyone hates Hillary.

    Republicans win the House, Senate and Presidency in 4 years–firmly and conservatively.

    Therefore….we could actually have a shot at overturning Roe v. Wade.

    Otherwise, until we have another political upheaval, I just can’t but see the abortion battle as lost.

    Your scenario is much more pleasant, esp. as it allows me to snicker at the artificiality of both Hillary and Rush Limbaugh.

  2. Probably 3, and 4 isn’t unlikely. Especially if we have a liberal president, so the liberal justices can go gently into that good night, in the confident hope of being philosophically cloned.

  3. Interesting stuff on “Wild Bill”! About his sidearms; it has been widely assumed that his primary armament were 1851 Colt Navy revolvers. I have looked at pictures of Hickock and the revolvers that are shown do not seem to have the same grip angle the 1860 Army revolvers have. Some of the grips’ perceived extra length may have something to do with the angle at which the photographs were taken. Of course, I confess that I could be wrong. It is however, widely held that, just before Hickock left for Deadwood, he purchased a .38 caliber “open topped” Colt that had the same grip frame as the 1851 and 1861 Navy models.

    It may be just me but I have never been all that fond of the “Navy” grip frame that is also featured on the Model 1873 Single Action Army revolver. Curling my little finger under a grip is a practice that I really do not care to engage in. If I had to shoot a single-action Colt I would much prefer one with an 1860 Army grip frame. At least I can wrap all of my fingers around that grip!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.