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| Photo by Edward Thorpe |
Back in that first year of Tule Flats, we played fast and loose with the age-old gunfights we performed for the semi-masses out, on Main Street. One of these known as "Poker Chip" had the main antagonist gun down the sheriff. Aghast, the Storekeeper cries out:
"You shot the sheriff!"
Someone, I'm not sure who only that it wasn't me, adlibbed, in song:
"But I did not shoot the deputy!"
I don't think Sheriff John Hoffman got that joke. Then again, he was on the ground anyway and probably for the most part, didn't get a lot of what we tried to pass for humor that year. And it didn't mean a damn thing to him anyway.
Such was Sheriff John. As long as you didn't mess with him, try to throw him off or try to give him something to do that would alter his well-worn character, he went along with it.
John was such an iconic figure that it seemed like the whole town was built around him. But as the story goes, Neil Pollard had visited Frontiertown amusement park at the Big Oak ranch in El Cajon, California and stopped dead when he saw John for the very first time. He couldn't get over how much he looked like Richard Boone, starring at the time in Have Gun, Will Travel and couldn't take his eyes off him. According to John, he thought Neil was perhaps into cowboys, but in a different way if'n y'all catch my drift. (Actually, John was more blunt than that.) Neil finally approached him and wanted to hire him away to be the sheriff of his own place up in Stockton and the rest was Ghost Town history.
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| That Town Bum was Neil Pollard |
When I met him, I got the same impression as literally thousands of others that passed through the gates of the town did: Sheriff John scared the crap out of me. I chronicled this in an earlier post:
Once I became a gunfighter and fixture in the town myself, John wouldn't admit it, but he was kind of fond of me in his own inimitable way, calling me "Knucklehead" (pronounced Knuckhaid in his drawl). For awhile, there were only the three gunfighters in the town-Sheriff John, Fast Fester (who ran the saloon) and me. Since we didn't have any set schedule of when to perform, I always wanted to put on a show no matter if what size audience we had, sometimes as low as five people much to the chagrin of the other two. I came up with a gunfight where I did all the talking, pitting the two of them in a showdown for my amusement. In the end, they both gunned me down, stole my money and went into the saloon together for a drink. They loved this show...obviously. It became known as "The Quick Show" and it became to go-to as far as John and Fester were concerned. What did I care? I got to be the star of show. Once the three of us were asked to attend a Girl Scout day camp at Micke Grove. As for what show should we do, the majority-my two pals-ruled. "The Quick Show!" Since I was all of maybe seventeen at the time, skinny as a rail and cute as a button (if you consider clothes fasteners attractive), I somehow became a teenage idol, at least to this gathering pre-adolescents. Once The Quick Show had finished and I lay on the grass shot by the other two, I found myself surrounded by a swarm of Girl Scouts. Suddenly, they became a bit aggressive and I did the only thing I thought I should do-run for my life. They gave chase immediately, screaming at the top of their lungs. I felt like all four Beatles wrapped into one with their rabid female fans in hot pursuit. I called out to John and Fester for help, but they were too amused to lend a hand.
My favorite Sheriff John story was during "Poker Chip" when I played the Storekeep. Neil had just that day given me a new straw hat (made out of styrofoam). At the end of the gunfight, Fester shoots at my feet and runs me into the saloon. As he did, he broke a board in the porch and down he went down hard. Fester being a large man of considerable weight, should not having been doing any sort of stunt work whatsoever. I rushed over to him to see if he was okay when he just laughed at me. I thought he hit his head on the way down and was delirious, but he said, "You better start laughing too because here's your hat" as he pulled my crushed bonnet from under his enormous ass. Shocked I went to the sheriff and bawled like Stan Laurel. "John! Look what he did to my hat!" John snatched it away, stuck it on my head and consoled me. "Oh, it's alright." Then he pulled the brim down on either side over my ears, destroying it once and for all. Neil did not give me a replacement.
When I returned to the town for the Tule Flats resurgence, John seemed relieved that both Ed and I were part of this "new" crew as well as DW since he wasn't one for change. When I took over as Entertainment Director, I felt it best, just like Dennis did, to allow John to be John. Let him do his own thing as well as his same roles without variation. That left it up to the rest of us and try some new things. Doing the same bits over and over, I loosened the tethers probably a bit too much to allow for some variation and experimentation. Grant and Bob Gossett found a couple of paper mache bird heads from the Showboat to become a pair of chicken cowboys in "Saddle Drop". A line of dialogue they added was: "Who's your favorite composer?" "Bach-Bach-Bach!" Another time Grant (once again) and I crammed a bunch of clothing in the back of our pants to give us giant butts, maybe as a homage to my old friend Fester, for the same gunfight. It was purely a visual, but it went over well. Not everyone thought so, particularly Ed. We got into a heated argument over this, he being more of a purist at that time, unwilling to improvise at these curve balls we threw. But John was another matter. After the "Big Butt Saddle Drop", he held up his hand to me and said, "Don't even talk to me." I was momentarily crestfallen as I watched him amble away to sit on the porch of the Assay Office. He then looked up at me, began to chuckle and shook his head as if to say "You fuckin' kids..."
We had many an after hour get-together once the town closed with beer and booze a'flowin', so much so that it became a regular part of the day. At first, John didn't indulge and let us be as long we didn't keep him up at night when he claimed he'd shoot our asses, but as time went by, he joined in. Sometimes maybe a little too much. His health, particularly his ticker, wasn't in the best working order. His chain-smoking of Bull Durham cigarettes, the gnarliest, nastiest tobacco on the planet, sure as hell didn't help. And long as I had known him, John took nitroglycerin pills. Whenever I saw him pop one, I'd wonder if he'd emit a little puff of smoke.
The weekend after the Fourth of July blowout, he wasn't feeling too perky, so he took that Friday and Saturday off from the town. I visited him up in the apartment Neil built in the hotel, just as I had several times before in the off-hours. He'd tell me stories about his time in Missouri where he grew up and the various ghost towns he worked in like Silver Dollar City in Branson and the like. I even asked him some advice about women which became nothing more than really "Quit worryin' so much and just have some goddamn fun." For 24 year old me, that was sage stuff. That was the last time I saw him.
The following Friday morning, John's body was discovered on the floor of his apartment and, yep, it was said that he died with his boots on. That evening was a rough one. Ed was pretty much beside himself, going off on John's ex-wife who claimed was there to pick over his belongings like a hungry vulture. I ventured up those hotel stairs in pretty much of a daze myself, not believing this Rock of Gibraltar had come tumbling down.
We arrived as we always had to open the town the next day, though nobody's heart was in it. The decision was made to stay closed until the next weekend, but nobody left. We sat on the porches in silent mourning. I took a walk out back to collect my thoughts, all the way to what we called the back 40 when I saw what looked like smoke. Upon investigation, the brush out by the KWIN radio tower was indeed aflame and heading our way. I ran back to get help from the pack of sad cowpokes in the town and together, we put that sucker out. The whole time, I kept thinking what John used to say some days in frustration. "I'll burn this goddamn place some day." Was this the day? Turned out, it wasn't.
The decision to bury John in Missouri didn't go over too well with us. We were denied the chance to say goodbye, no funeral, memorial or even a viewing of the body. It left a bitter taste in our mouths which we tried to wash down with too many pitchers of beer. Inebriation always brings out the best laid plans of drunken men, so of course we came up with a solution to satisfy our selfish grieving souls. Much like what happened to the corpse of John Barrymore, we'd steal John's body from the funeral parlor that was used as a way station before he was transported to Hannibal, Mo. and, what? Bury him in the Ghost Town? Where, the graveyard at the edge of Main Street? The Back 40? Backstage at the Showboat? It obviously wasn't very well thought out beyond the body snatching, though it did get as far as Greg Dart and I going on a reconnaissance mission to the funeral parlor to scope out a way in and, hopefully, out. We weren't very lucky in our efforts and abandoned this stupid idea when we returned, a good thing because, as we discovered later, John was long gone. His body had been shipped off that morning. Level heads didn't exactly prevail. Fate took pity on our dumbass selves.
To compensate, we had our own memorial soon after. We dug a an empty grave with a beautiful marker Jim Cusick with the words "Shoot straight and cut the bullshit" emblazoned on the bottom. A few of us spoke, then placed some items to commemorate him. I tossed in some of his nudie mags and the little tin badges he'd hand out to the kids. Two sides of the same coin. The original marker was apparently stolen over time, replaced by another that kept the bull but deleted the shit. At least they named a building after him-Hoffman House-in the town next to the Gazette office, which housed the same teardrop trailer he brought with him from El Cajon, a place mainly of us utilized that became the stuff of legends. 'Nuff said.
Sheriff John was larger than life, ornerier than shit and definitely one of a kind, at least in my lifetime. The memories I have of him roll through like the tumblin' tumbleweed he truly was, the one real cowboy out of all the poseurs we had in Pollardville/Tule Flats Ghost Town and that includes myself. He had big boots to fill when he passed and no one was could quite fill them. Don't know why they ever tried.
On my final visit to the Ghost Town, I sat by myself on the bench outside the saloon. I swore that I could hear his growling drawl spouting dialogue from one of the gunfights. Maybe I wanted to hear him so I did, the remembrance of a true character that reverberates to this very day and undoubtedly always will mainly because I want to and always will.
Don't think I could say the same about the deputy.
Next up: Chapter Five-OH, BLACK WATER
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