<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: GOOD FOR NEWCOMERS/NECESSITY FOR WESTERN LIBRARY
Review: While U. S. writers sat around like geese trying to hatch a porcelain doorknob, and academics made faces over Western heroes, it took an enterprising Englishman to look up Wild Bill's family down in our neck of the woods at Troy Grove. They added the smidgen of new information and the personal touch that Rosa used to make his reputation as the world's foremost Hickok authority, which he incontestably is.
However, readers should be wary of claims of sensational new information uncovered in this sort of book, where the writer has obviously spun off a new version of the same old thing, with perhaps a kernel or two of new stuff, which indeed makes the new book worthwhile if you want a comprehensive Western Library, but hardly justifies kleig lights. We all knew 95% of what Rosa chews and re-chews from the Chicago Tribune Sunday supplements, but he winnowed the chaff of sensationalism out of it, and identified the pure grain, much to his credit.
Hickok comes across as what he was - a good, brave lawman who faced some bad characters that tried to kill him for his peace keeping efforts on behalf of various communities and finally for his reputation. Don't believe anything else. My great grandfather was parish minister for the Church of God at Troy Grove, and I have his 1871 license yet. My family knew Wild Bill as Jim when he came home on visits. He frolicked in the creek with the farm boys, helped get in hay, and generally was an all around good fellow. Naturally people tried to pry blood and thunder tales out of him, but didn't have much luck. If he'd ever told one, it would have come down to us in his home territory. They could always get a pistol shooting display out of him, though, and when I was a kid, we didn't talk about Wyatt Earp, of whom few had heard, but of Wild Bill.
Generally a derned good book to have, and certainly has the first believable verification of the fact from public records that Jim Hickok really was a very very good pistol shot and cool under fire. He was 75 yards away from Dave Tutt when he shot him dead center, and was under fire when he did it. None of us back home doubted the stories of Hickok cutting a card edgewise at 25 yards or so, or hitting dimes thrown in the air, but nobody made a sworn statement about it.
Another thing about what we heard that should be remembered is that we heard it only fifty years after he was gone, from people that remembered how he looked, the sound of his voice and laugh, and what they saw with their own eyes. (Fifty years ago today is 1953 and the world is full of people who were already adults at that time and thus capable of mature judgments.)
Go it, Joe! Another good job.
<< 1 >>
| 
