At the end of September my mother came to visit us from New Zealand for 7 weeks. It was fantastic to have her here and for her to spend some time with N in particular (her only grandchild). One fun (long!) weekend trip we did while Mum was here was to visit Tombstone in southern Arizona. From Bagdad it was a 6-hour drive so it's almost as far away as California, and a very long way to go just for the weekend! Our visit coincided with the 117th anniversary of the gunfight at the OK Corral so that was as good an excuse as any to make the drive south and check it out.
We watched a re-enactment of the famous shootout (during which my cell phone, which almost NEVER rings, and which of course I had forgotten to turn off, rang - thanks Wendy!) and checked out some of the old saloons and historic buildings. It must have been a really wild place in the early 1880's. There are some fascinating stories and some very old buildings to explore.
Tombstone gave us our own funny story to take home. We were exploring the Bird Cage Theatre, a very famous Tombstone theatre that had closed exactly as it was in the late 1800's and wasn't opened again for decades. It is commonly held that the Bird Cage Theatre (and many other Tombstone buildings) is haunted by several ghosts. Walking around the ancient theatre and seeing the furnishings, curtains and furniture in its original condition, it's easy to believe that it could be true. Before we went to Tombstone we had told N that Tombstone is a cowboy town and to get the most out of the experience he insisted on wearing his checkered shirt, cowboy hat (from the 4th July parade) and jeans all weekend. So when he walked around he looked like a little cowboy, and fit in very well (especially since it was the anniversary of the shootout at OK Corral, there were lots of people in Tombstone dressed in period costume). So we were walking around in the Bird Cage Theatre, taking it all in. The theatre is split-level, and stairs lead to the lower level which is just behind the stage. While we were there, another group of visitors was walking around in the lower level. From the upper level N noticed a small window covered with mesh that allowed a view of the lower area, so he knelt down to have a look (the window was just above the floor). At the same moment that he put his face to the window, a boy on the lower level looked up, saw what he took to be the ghost of a small cowboy looking back at him from the window, and nearly jumped out of his skin. It was just so funny, N really had this boy scared and thinking that he'd seen a real ghost. Check out this link if you want to find out more about the real ghosts and some more historic information about Tombstone:
One thing that I really wanted to do when we visited Tombstone was to go to the Boothill Cemetary and pay my respects to Lester Moore. His must be one of the most well-known epitaphs in the world (see the photo above) and it really strikes a chord with my sense of humour. The first few years of the 1880's must have been a bumper year for the Tombstone undertaker as it seemed like almost the whole cemetary was filled in 1881 and 1882. Many of the headstones tell how the person buried there had died, and so many of them had been killed in one dispute or another, or had been shot by someone who had not long afterwards been shot by someone else, and there they all were in the cemetary together. That was how they settled arguments in those days: whoever was left standing was the winner.
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