Shootout at the OK Corral

In order to get to Bisbee on Highway 80, you drive directly through Tombstone, Arizona, which bills itself as "the town too tough to die" and features some pretty weird stuff, like the Comedy Gunfights that happen every day at the historic OK Corral. I always think, "What would that be like? Making your living as a pretend Wyatt Earp or Doc Holliday in a comedy gunfight? What the hell is funny about a gunfight?" Only in America, right? Between the comedy gunfights and the Mad Miner's Mini-Golf, I've pretty much avoided spending much time in Tombstone.

However, guns are part of the culture here. At the tennis club in Sierra Vista where I play my league matches, the sign on the door to the clubhouse bar reads "Absolutely No Weapons Allowed". I always thought my forehand was my weapon, but I think they mean the cold, hard, metal kind with bullets. And, every Sunday morning when we play on our local Bisbee courts, we can hear the guys at the shooting range blasting away up on the mountain, which causes our friend Steve to mutter "fuckin' Mexicans.."

Last Friday night about 10:30, Dick and I were reading in bed (oh, the wild life of the semi-retired...)when we heard gunshots, five or six in rapid succession, coming from the direction of the road to Douglas. After an interval of about five minutes, we heard police sirens and car horns honking and what seemed to be a high speed chase around the town, sirens and horns blaring. This went on for at least 15 horrifying minutes before it faded off into the distance. "Man, somebody must have done something really bad," we said, and had a little trouble getting to sleep.

The next morning our friend Jim, the Bisbee High tennis coach, came out to watch us play. Since he's lived here most of his life, and coached at Bisbee High for 28 years, I figured he might have a clue as to what went on the night before with the guns, sirens, car horns, etc. "Oh, yeah," he said. "That was so cool - our football team beat Douglas last night for the first time in 20 years - we have a 140-year rivalry, the second-longest in American high school football history! What a celebration we had!"

I didn't ask him which rivalry was the first-longest... still a city girl.