Don’t even get me started on “Big Nose” Kate Elder.
There is the dour misanthrope portrayed by Dennis Quaid in the movie “Wyatt Earp” – a characterization based on Bat Masterson’s memoirs of his time as Earp’s deputy in Dodge City, Kansas.
And then there is the fatalistic bon vivant played by Val Kilmer in “Tombstone.” That “Doc” is drawn from the memoirs of Billy Breckenridge, played by Jason Priestly in the film, a Cochise County deputy in the town to tough to die.
Testimony is inherently unreliable. But here is a story about Dr. John Henry “Doc” Holliday that has been told so many times assuredly we can rely on it. It’s such a common yarn that it became a movie trope, prelude to a spit take.
So: Holliday was a terminal gambler, which means he worked at the tail end of whatever rail or stage coach line seemed propitious. All the money in gambling comes from the other guy’s mistakes, so terminal gamblers ran crooked games in places where the miners or drovers would come to town flush and leave broke and hungover 72 hours later. “Doc” worked only in berry-patches – only where the suckers were begging to be fleeced.
But because of this, Holliday had to keep moving – leaving murderous enemies behind him everywhere he went. And yet he was a stranger in each new town, so he worked out a perfect con to get his first drunk on for free, in every burg he went to.
You’ve seen it in a dozen Westerns, at least: A fastidious back-East gentleman, jacket and waistcoat, wanders into a bar and timidly orders a glass of milk. “Milk?!? Milk!?!” Some jackass bellows. “By god, you’ll have a man’s drink!” And then scheming “Doc” Holliday would cough and sputter and protest as jackass after jackass poured free whiskey down his throat.
My point? Hide and watch. If Trump is not suckered, everyone else is. But the right pitch doesn’t push, it pulls.
