Tales from the Ville: Tule Flats-The Election

The Fourth of July in 1979 fell on a Wednesday, but Tule Flats Ghost Town would be open for
business even though it was normally a weekends only operation. Therefore, we had something extra special planned for this holiday extravaganza.

I haven't a clue who came up with the idea, but it was decided that we would have an election that day to name the Mayor of Tule Flats. The field for candidates was wide open-anybody and everybody could run if they so desired, provided they run for this prestigious office in character. We all had been given free rein to create a town character for ourselves. Bill Humphreys became Humphrey Williams (clever boy), the town banker. Ed Thorpe was Ned Tate who ran on the Law and Order ticket. I had a couple of different characters, one of them being Al Jennings, a real-life western train robber who later became an attorney. (look it up) But in the gunfight known as "Poker Chip", I played the Storekeeper role as a Swede named Sven Bjorn Bjorg Gunther and he is who I chose to throw my hat into the ring with. 

So those became the main three vying for town mayor. We were to run our campaigns throughout the day on the Fourth, culminating in some fancy speechifyin' in the gazebo out before our potential voters. Grant-Lee Phillips wrote Bill's-or Humphey's, rather-campaign song that he sang as they paraded down throughout the town.

Humphrey Williams

He's our man

Best darn throughout the land

Humphrey Williams

Rah Rah Rah

And best of all he wears no bra!

In a nutshell, meaning his amazingly creative head, that was our Grant-Lee.

As we all stood on the gazebo, ready for our campaign speeches, a dark horse candidate entered the picture. Accompanied by a bevy of bombastic beauties all dressed to the nines in hotsy-totsy saloon girl costumes, here came Goldie Pollard, all decked out in full regalia as though starring in a Mae West one-woman show. She took the stage by force of her sheer personality and announced to the crowd that she indeed was running as a write-in candidate for mayor. Her campaign promises included no restrictions on gambling, the sale of alcohol and...wait for it...open prostitution. 

Goldie won by a landslide.

There was no way any of us would attempt to contest the results because I think we all voted for her ourselves. Maybe some of the townsfolk and one of the business partners took issue with the "open prostitution" line, but that's politics.

Later that night, we all celebrated Goldie's win and it was the first time the ghost town and the Palace Showboat merged together as one. It wouldn't be long before some of us would take up residence there, but right then, we were two separate entities that found common ground and that is due to the one person who brought us all together, the one (and only) duly elected Mayor of Tule Flats Ghost Town, the Honorable Goldie Pollard. 

As we partied long into the night in the saloon that night, one person joined us who never had before, our very own Sheriff John. In, all the years I had known him up to that point, he had always kept to himself, the lonesome cowpoke he had always bee. Here he was though, drinking, laughing and celebrating with the rest of us. In fact, at one point, we spouted lines from our gunfights, adding a plethora of swear words to not only spice things up, but to crack ourselves up until the cows came home.

Sheriff! Sheriff! Have you seen the sheriff?

What the fuck do you want, you little asshole?

High comedy indeed and a perfect end to the holiday, or any other day for that matter.

That Fourth of July, we didn't need fireworks. We made our own.

Next up: Chapter Four-I SHOT THE SHERIFF

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Tales from the Ville: Tule Flats-In the Summertime

So the Ghost Town, now rebranded as Tule Flats, was up and running. Well maybe strolling. The boosts in attendance following Easter began to taper off maybe not too dramatically, but significantly. Things were better than they were but in order to sustain this new model there needed to be more attendance. For the first time, admission was charged when admittance to the town had been gratis since Day One. But, in Ghost Town 2.0, if ya didn't cough up the dough, ya didn't get in, at least not through the front gate.

Things were taking shape though with this kinda sorta new crew. The street shows, namely the gunfights were packed with more action with more stunt work by are team of non-professionals. Even I was shot off the roof the hotel, falling off onto the wagon below. The acting itself, as it were, had certainly been elevated, probably the most talented bunch of weekend cowboys that ever roamed the Pollardville range. 

The energy in the place was undeniable. There was something happening there to be sure, actually feeling like a real town since, for the most part, we all stayed in character the entire time. Even though it was for the sake of the paying public, we sometimes gave ourselves over to the illusion of what we conceived to be the Wild West, at least our version of it. 

I was convinced of this one day when Grant Phillips and I went out to rob the train, a little bonus for customers that occurred on every run. For some reason, I thought it was a good idea for the two of us to come running back in town after the robbery to continue the story a little bit more. Once I hit main Street, Dennis Landingham was standing at the hitching post in front of the saloon, noticing I had the gold bag in my hand that I just brought from the train. Instinctively he drew his pistol and I drew mine. We began to exchange gunfire back and forth. Grant did not have a gun and basically ducked and covered as we tried to make our way down the street. Hearing the ruckus we just started, a couple of of other gunfighters joined in the fray. As I recall, we scampered behind the buildings and popped out right by the assay office while the other cowpokes lit out after us. In desperation,  I took a couple of customers, young purty girls of course, as hostages and, along with Grant, hold up in the jail trying to figure out what to do next. Outside, Dennis was hollering for us to give up which I refused to do. Grant didn't really care on way or the other, just along for the ride. Realizing there was no way out of this mess (or bit), I felt until it was time to make a hasty exit, leave Grant and the hostages behind and shoot my way out. Throwing open the jailhouse door, I ran to the middle of the street in desperation, pistol drawn ready to face the two or three cowpokes outside when I was met by a hail of blank gunfire from everywhere and everyone, three times more than what I expected. I fell to the ground in a heap, meeting my maker that fateful afternoon. The silence that followed lasted only a mere second before there was a burst of applause that surprised the holy hell out of me. I rose from the dirt to see we actually had an audience for all of this. Here we were, playing cowboy not much differently as when were kids and the customers loved it. Oh yeah. we were on to something, that was for sure. The question was, how to recreate it? 

Memorial day weekend saw another up-tic in attendance, but the drop off afterward led to some changes that didn't set well with some. DW, for one, grew frustrated when more duties were laid upon us that had nothing to do with being gunfighting such as maintenance. He realized that he didn't want the position of Entertainment Director any longer because he already had a full-time job during the week and this was supposed to be recreation not another job. So he gave it up, still wanting to be part of the town and even agreeing not be paid as long he didn't have to fulfill another other responsibilities. 

The Powers that Be, as I called the partners who now ran the town, offered me Dennis' position instead and I became The Guy. I didn't go along with the additional workload conditions either for the gunfighters, let alone myself. For some reason, they went along with me and dropped that nonsense. Why they didn't do the same for Dennis was beyond me. 

As the new Entertainment Director of Tule Flats, the world began to open for me, both creatively and personally. The black clouds of depression I lived under at the beginning of the year faded away in the sunshine of this moment. Instantly, I rewrote some of the old scripts and penned a few new ones with more of an emphasis on comedy because we started to lose some of our stunt performers. Since we didn't have any training, we were basically making it up as went along and if we continued, we could have broken our fool necks if weren't careful and we rarely were as it was. I could see we as a collective were capable of more, much more and wanted to expand on it.

Naturally, in the words of a certain web slinger, with great power comes great responsibility, not to mention a boost to one's ego. I had gone to from zero to sixty in a short amount of time. The black clouds of depression that nearly laid me out at the beginning of the year faded away in the sunshine of this moment in the sun. For the first time, I had a swagger in my step and confidence that had previously been foreign to me. I felt a bit like a rock star that summer. How could it not get into my head?

The seeds of what was to become at Pollardville in general had been firmly implanted in that summer in the Ghost Town. It wasn't long before we became a closely knit group of people and bonds were forming fast. It became difficult to leave at the end of the day, so we didn't. That's when the partying started. Often we go far into the night, consuming many a bottle of beer, laughing, carousing and whooping it up like there was no tomorrow. Unfortunately, when Monday rolled around again, it was time to rejoin the Real World again. We prayed for time to fly until the next weekend when we could head back in time to a world, a better world of our own making. 

And coming up fast was the next big holiday celebration, the Fourth of July. let the fireworks begin.

PHOTGRAPHS BY EDWARD THORPE

Next up: Chapter Three-THE ELECTION

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