Alamo Fast Draw

Alamo Fast Draw movie night excerpt:
A little something from Bob Crismom. Well you said Wednesday usually you discuss movies. Well let me give you some movies and some actors and let's see if you all remember these. First is Coniger with Sam Elliott, then there's Cat Ballou with Jane Fonda, and of course others, The Sackets with Sam Elliott and Tom Selleck, True Grit with John Wayne, How The West Was Won with James Arnes and a whole bunch of other folks, White Buffalo with Charles Bronson, The Cowboys with John Wayne we could go on and on. We're talking about one particular movie studio in the mountains of Colorado its called Buckskin Joe most of you folks don't know about Buckskin Joe, let me tell you about Buckskin Joe. In 1858 some fellow from the east from Massachusetts I think he was from went out and he opened up a trading post and between Fairplay and Leadville which is pretty up high in the mountains of Colorado. For some reason he wore buckskin with the fringe and everything, so people called him Buckskin Joe this was 1858. In 1958 some entrepreneurs in Southern Colorado just below canyon city this is below the mountains kind of in the rolling plains down south. They bought a number of buildings around Colorado and they formed a new Buckskin Joe town in 1958. In 57 they had it pretty much completed it wasn't opened up yet but they were looking for folks to help them entertain. I was in Colorado Springs at the time in a fast draw club called Colorado Fast Draw Gunslingers or something like that I don't recall. Our club agreed to go out to Buckskin Joe every Saturday and we started doing this in 57 before they were opened to the public, people were there that they were not advertising. We got to play cowboy we shot our guns, we had skits and the street, we were kind of half reenacting and half fast draw. We've really like the fast draw but we like to reenacting as well and we would go out on Saturdays and have a lot of fun. Saturday night's they comped us to a nice if it's steak dinner there at the hotel the wifes all like that and it was a heck of a lot of fun. After that year they've been started making these movies and all these movies I just mentioned were made plus a lot more movies were made at Buckskin Joe. Now I don't know if movies are being made there now or not last time I was there five are six years ago it looked pretty much like it did when I was there in 58. Let me tell you one particular event, one weekend we learned that their was going to be a Hollywood talent scout at Buckskin Joe's to take a look at us as we did our skits, as we did our fast draw shooting and things like that. So boy we were really excited about that you know by that time in 58 there were all kinds of westerns and we wanted to be the next Rowdy Yates or somebody like that the. So we got together and we decided we would do things like skits that we had done before, would shoot just the kind of contest we had done before because we want to look as best we could. So the first skit that we did or trick that we did we were going to rob the train we did this quite often. They had a narrow gauge steam railroad it really was a neat railroad with real boxcars on it and so we will hop in a pickup truck because we would have to go out in the desert the Colorado Desert about a mile to get where we were going to hold up, it was a big place. We'll jumped in the pickup truck and we go out there we would hide the truck under a trestle, and then were waiting and here comes the train and we'll jump out we've got our bandannas over our face you know we get our six guns out with our five and one Blanks fire couple shots in the air and we tell the engineer to stop the train. So we go on the train and the first thing we would do is open up the express car and we'd take out the money box of course info would add on the ground, we'd shoot a couple of shots as though we were breaking off a lock, we'd open it up and we grab a whole bunch of sacks of gold and we're gonna run off with the gold. Will I decided I was going to do something a little bit different you know trying to upstage the other guys, so I went up on the train and I grabbed this kid about six years old and I was coming kidnap him. So I grabbed this kid and say come here kid I would take you off ongoing kidnap you. The kids started screaming no no no any screaming and yelling and hanging onto the chairs as I'm dragging him out any screaming and yelling and he said is call the sheriff call the sheriff and so the train drives off and I've got this kid the train goes away. So later on we were up there and that was to hold up the stagecoach what they would do with the stagecoach, really a neat old stagecoach with a six course team they would pull up at the front. You will have to listen to episode 18 to here the rest of the story.

If any of you Gunfighters would like to hear more of this interveiw you can listen to episode 18 on the audio player(red) on the right side of this page. If you would like to join in the show live or listen live to the Alamo Fast Draw show or call 1-724-444-7444 show#16056. Whether you are a gunfighter or not its a fun show.

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