Friday, October 24, 2014

Wyatt Earp's Guns -- I know where they are......

Glenn G. Boyer told me many years ago, cloistered in the book-filled basement of this then residence in southern Arizona near Tombstone. My friend Glenn and I had become very close in those years, he tutored me in writing skills, and I spent many weekend overnights in his basement spare room, reading volumes of his collected works, doodling on his computers and venturing out over Wyatt Earp Country.
     He passed away just about a year and a half ago, so revealing his secret about Wyatt Earp Guns, kinda, doesn't seem altogether unfaithful on my part. I know where they are.
     Glenn told me that over the years, many, many attempts were made by charletons to " disclose" there whereabouts or discovery by false claims, all of which were false. One such, he said, was a man from Australia who called and made a bid on a "Wyatt Gun" (emphasis mine) which he never even saw, of over $5 grand, site unseen.
     He always had to prove  to me, how close he was to the Earp family.
     As a bomber pilot in World War II, he and his crew flew in the Pacific on some hairy missions. When he got back his passion had been to track down and write about the " Earp Boys from Tombstone." That's a big club he joined, me, too.
     After the war, Boyer bought a giant reel-to-reel tape recorder and searched out all the Earp descendants he could find and spent his Air Force retirement hot roding around the country interviewing them about the Earp family, and the boys from Tombstone. The results were a ton of his books in that basement I was sleeping in during the weekends. And I wasn't the only one, Glenn was generous with his time and talent with a lot of younger writers.  
     On day, to prove a point, or maybe out of frustration, or maybe one of his books weren't selling well, I'm not sure - he just popped. We were down in his cellar/den he picked up the tape recorder and played one of phone recent phone calls he made to a relative of Josephine Marcus Earp's. Remember, Josie was Wyatt's wife, Jewish, and a member of a very rich clothier family from San Francisco.
     The phone call was with a woman, " Oh, hi Glenn, the woman said. " Very familiar with Glenn, the call went on for 30 minutes about family matters, then Glenn broaches Wyatt Earp, " did you see this recent nonsense about Wyatt's guns in the national press?"
     " Oh yes, " she says, " why do they do that. We know that's a lie, Wyatt's guns are up here in the......" and Glenn cuts off the tape so I don't hear the exact location in San Francisco.
     I KNOW where they are, Glenn intones in that deep vibrato of his. And he never told me where. I can guess, I can make an approximation but when it comes down to it.
     I don't know. Glenn died about two years ago and all his " stuff " s now scattered to the winds. All the history is gone. What a sad tale.
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