Columns
Lamb on the Run: Sarcophagus, Ariz., the town too tough to spell
By Jim Lamb
Editor’s note: This column by Jim Lamb ran in January 2001, and he thought you might like to look at some of his earlier writing.
This is the story of Shame, the world’s oldest living gunfighter, and the town he ruled. It was just up the road from Tombstone, Ariz., the town too tough to die. (Green Valley’s in there somewhere ... you know, the town to tough to even catch a cold. But I digress.)
After movie director John Ford invented Monument Valley, he wanted to use it in the movie “Stagecoach.” And he was torn between setting the movie in Tombstone or Sarcophagus.
In the Tombstone version, John Wayne played the role of Johnny Ringo, also known as the Ringo Kid.
In Sarcophagus, there was the Bingo Kid. You knew him because he was always hanging around the parish hall on Wednesday night.
I wanted to play the Bingo Kid. I often said “A Lamb’s gotta’ do what a Lamb’s gotta do.”
Not tough enough, said John Ford.
The only sort of tough guy in Sarcophagus was Billy the Kidder. But no one really took him seriously until he shortened his name, bought a gun and moved to New Mexico.
And while the cowboys hung out at Tombstone, only the sowboys hung out at Sarcophagus. They sowboys got their name from their roundups. They kept trying to drive pigs to market up the Santa Croix trail to the railhead.
But the sowboys loved bacon so much that by the time they got to Abilene there were only three or four pigs left in the herd.
As you may have concluded, pig ranching was never very profitable in this part of Arizona.
Real cowboys, of course, were always bragging that they’d been out on the range “punching them doggies.”
“I could have been a contender,” they often said.
They had so much fun being cowboys, they rounded up and branded the livestock so many times that some of the steers were medium rare by the time they got to market.
There were many similarities between Tombstone and Sarcophagus.
The Buttermilk Stage ran from each town to Godsburg, N.M. It was called that until the owners of the GodsburgDotCom computer domain name made them switch. The residents picked Lordsburg.
But the wrangler who hitched up the Buttermilk stage horses in Sarcophagus kept hooking up the short horses on the right, tall ones on the left. The stagecoach went round and round and never made its schedule.
In Tombstone one of Marshal Wyatt Earp’s best friends was Doc Holliday. Holliday’s best girl was Big Nose Kate.
In Shame’s town there was Big Toes Kate, the paramour of Doc Martin.
Although big toes were considered a sign of pulchritude in the West, Martin feared that if Kate continued to wear those tiny, pointy-toed cowboy books, it would ruin her for him.
He couldn’t convince her to give them up, so he moved to London and began making sensible shoes, hoping to lure her there.
But alas, before he could lure her to London, Big Toes Kate and her best friend Clementine drowned. They were wearing “herring boxes without topsies” as sandals when they fell into a stream while driving ducks to water.
Gunfights provided the defining moment of Tombstone. Ditto Sarcophagus.
Earp, his brothers and Holliday met the Clantons and McLaurys at the OK Corral.
There was an OK Chorale in Sarcophagus, but it was a boys’ chorus.
So Shame was supposed to meet his enemies, the Hatfields and McCoys, at the Okey Dokey Corral. But they left early for Kentucky to play bluegrass music, drink Mountain Dew and feud.
They didn’t know Shame actually beat them out of town.
He showed why he was the world’s oldest living gunfighter. He always rode off into the sunrise. Left town before the shooting started.
As a boy Jim and his friends played cowboys and cowgirls and organized the “Bang, Bang You’re Dead Gun Club.” This is how he thought of the old West.
jlamb@gvnews.com | 547-9749
This is the story of Shame, the world’s oldest living gunfighter, and the town he ruled. It was just up the road from Tombstone, Ariz., the town too tough to die. (Green Valley’s in there somewhere ... you know, the town to tough to even catch a cold. But I digress.)
After movie director John Ford invented Monument Valley, he wanted to use it in the movie “Stagecoach.” And he was torn between setting the movie in Tombstone or Sarcophagus.
In the Tombstone version, John Wayne played the role of Johnny Ringo, also known as the Ringo Kid.
In Sarcophagus, there was the Bingo Kid. You knew him because he was always hanging around the parish hall on Wednesday night.
I wanted to play the Bingo Kid. I often said “A Lamb’s gotta’ do what a Lamb’s gotta do.”
Not tough enough, said John Ford.
The only sort of tough guy in Sarcophagus was Billy the Kidder. But no one really took him seriously until he shortened his name, bought a gun and moved to New Mexico.
And while the cowboys hung out at Tombstone, only the sowboys hung out at Sarcophagus. They sowboys got their name from their roundups. They kept trying to drive pigs to market up the Santa Croix trail to the railhead.
But the sowboys loved bacon so much that by the time they got to Abilene there were only three or four pigs left in the herd.
As you may have concluded, pig ranching was never very profitable in this part of Arizona.
Real cowboys, of course, were always bragging that they’d been out on the range “punching them doggies.”
“I could have been a contender,” they often said.
They had so much fun being cowboys, they rounded up and branded the livestock so many times that some of the steers were medium rare by the time they got to market.
There were many similarities between Tombstone and Sarcophagus.
The Buttermilk Stage ran from each town to Godsburg, N.M. It was called that until the owners of the GodsburgDotCom computer domain name made them switch. The residents picked Lordsburg.
But the wrangler who hitched up the Buttermilk stage horses in Sarcophagus kept hooking up the short horses on the right, tall ones on the left. The stagecoach went round and round and never made its schedule.
In Tombstone one of Marshal Wyatt Earp’s best friends was Doc Holliday. Holliday’s best girl was Big Nose Kate.
In Shame’s town there was Big Toes Kate, the paramour of Doc Martin.
Although big toes were considered a sign of pulchritude in the West, Martin feared that if Kate continued to wear those tiny, pointy-toed cowboy books, it would ruin her for him.
He couldn’t convince her to give them up, so he moved to London and began making sensible shoes, hoping to lure her there.
But alas, before he could lure her to London, Big Toes Kate and her best friend Clementine drowned. They were wearing “herring boxes without topsies” as sandals when they fell into a stream while driving ducks to water.
Gunfights provided the defining moment of Tombstone. Ditto Sarcophagus.
Earp, his brothers and Holliday met the Clantons and McLaurys at the OK Corral.
There was an OK Chorale in Sarcophagus, but it was a boys’ chorus.
So Shame was supposed to meet his enemies, the Hatfields and McCoys, at the Okey Dokey Corral. But they left early for Kentucky to play bluegrass music, drink Mountain Dew and feud.
They didn’t know Shame actually beat them out of town.
He showed why he was the world’s oldest living gunfighter. He always rode off into the sunrise. Left town before the shooting started.
As a boy Jim and his friends played cowboys and cowgirls and organized the “Bang, Bang You’re Dead Gun Club.” This is how he thought of the old West.
jlamb@gvnews.com | 547-9749
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