Cold Open: “I’m your huckleberry.” If you haven’t seen Tombstone you should. Best Western ever. My favorite movie. And my favorite character from that movie is Doc Holliday. And I also thought that Holliday, portrayed by Kilmer, was heavily fictionalized by Hollywood. Turns out, maybe not nearly as much as I thought. John Henry Holiday, better known as Doc Holliday, was a Wild Western anomaly. He was a gambler, drunk, gunslinger, and quite possible a thief - BUT - he also an educated Southern dentist raised by well-to-do plantation owners. He was a complicated and fascinating man who we only know through the descriptions of those who knew him, some of whom liked him and admired him and others who despised and reviled him.

This was a really fun story to suck into, so let’s head back to the Wild West - been awhile since we visited - today, on Timesuck.

PAUSE TIMESUCK INTRO

I. Welcome A. Happy Friday Bonus Suckers! Hail Nimrod!

I’m Dan Cummins and this is Timesuck. Bonus episode 16. The 1600 review episode. Thanks for continuing to pour those reviews in, it means a ton. It helps this show so much. And thanks for voting for Doc Holiday last week on @timesuckpodcast on Instagram.

Recording from the Suck Dungeon and lots going on. Sipping on some water and some coffee supplied by Timesucker Trent Tvrdy - thanks for hooking the suck dungeon up with a crazy coffee and water dispenser machine. FAN-CY. Love it Trent. .

My new album, Maybe I’m the Problem, is here and you can hear it only on Pandora for the next three months - and you can hear it for FREE! And you get to listen to the entire album straight through by using the link in the episode description. It’s on Pandora Premium which only works on mobile devices. And you don’t have to be a Premium listener to enjoy it.

The link gives you a free 30 mins free trial of Pandora Premium so when that time is up, just come back and click the link and you’ll have enough time to finish the new album.

If you have any trouble just to make sure to update your Pandora app to the latest version. So check that out!

AND - less than a week away from the age of the Space Lizards.

The Patreon account is LIVE for those of you who want to sign up early to become Space Lizard’s next month! You won’t be charged $5 until Feb. 1st and that’s when some new Space Lizard features on the app and the website arrive, that’s when ANOTHER new album, Feel the Heat, will be available for Space Lizards and Space Lizards only - you get the download link to listen to that bad boy, that’s when the first piece of Space Lizard merch comes out, and February is when the Secret Suck podcast comes out! So much stuff. HUGE thanks to over 500 Timesuckers who have already signed up. So join them Space Lizard!

The age of the Space Lizard is almost here!

Link to the Patreon profile that is your ticket into the exclusive world of the Space lizard in the episode description. And, Patreon is just being used to collect the $5 a month. You won’t have to go to Patreon to listen to the new podcast - it’ll be right there in the app and on the website for all you Space Lizards and ONLY you Space Lizards to enjoy.

Preview clip from the new stand up album at the end of the show, Feel the Heat you get when you sign up - pay $5 and you get a new album. Don’t like the Srect Suck, cancel and keep the album.

Thanks to the Timesuckers who came out last night in Philly. I’ll be here tonight and tomorrow at the Punchline and then Baltimore Sunday at Magoobys.

And then it’s Chicago January 31st through Feb. 3rd

New York City Feb. 11th.

And more in the episode description.

But now, it’s Doc Holliday.

PAUSE INTERLUDE

II. Opening: A. Who Was Doc Holliday? So, who really was Doc Holliday? It’s hard to say for sure because the man didn’t keep a journal and accounts written about him by contemporaries vary. We may never know all the details, but we do know the gist. He was a “lunger” - he did suffer from, a die of, consumption. He was a doctor - he graduated from a dental school in Philadelphia. He was a drunk and a gambler - he was arrested and fined many, many times for crimes involving being drunk in public and for gambling. He was a gun slinger - he’s rumored to have killed several men, there are newspaper accounts of him getting in gun fights, and a lot of contemporary accounts of him not only being ready to draw down on anyone, but also a really, really good gunslinger.

But again, who he really was, how good, how bad, eludes us.

Historian Gary L Roberts writes the following an excellent Doc Holliday book I leaned on heavily for today’s episode: Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend.

“Not a single sample of his writing that would provide insight into how he felt or what he believed appears to have survived. Without a body of letters or even reminiscences written by him that would serve as a corrective to the half-known life presented in the opinion- gripped contemporary press and the memories of men and women who saw him through the lenses of their own agendas and emotion- packed prejudices, John Henry Holliday tantalizes the biographer with unanswered questions. He did not have a frontierwide reputation until after his experiences at Tombstone in 1881 and 1882. Before then, his life did not always leave a clear trail. As a

result, much of his life—even many of its most critical moments—are left to informed speculation and possibilities.”

B. Here’s what other’s had to say:

Opinions always varied. Wyatt Earp (through his ghostwriter in 1896) described him as a “mad, merry scamp with heart of gold and nerves of steel; who…stood at my elbow in many a battle to the death.

“He was a dentist, but he preferred to be a gambler. He was a Virginian [actually a Georgian], but he preferred to be a frontiersman and a vagabond. He was a philosopher, but he preferred to be a wag. He was long, lean, an ash-blond and the quickest man with a six-shooter I ever knew.”

Bat Masterson was less kind, saying that Doc “had a mean disposition and an ungovernable temper, and under the influence of liquor was a dangerous man.” Describing him as “a weakling who could not have whipped a healthy fifteen-year-old boy in a go-as- you-please fight,” Masterson saw him as “hot headed and impetuous and very much given to both drinking and quarreling, and among men who did not fear him, [he] was very much disliked.”

The editor of the Las Vegas (New Mexico) Daily Optic—who was safely distant from Doc at the time—described him as a “shiftless bagged-legged character—a killer and a professional cut-throat and not a whit too refined to rob stages or even steal sheep.”

A fellow Georgian who knew him as a young man and later dabbled in silver mining in Colorado said of him following his death, “He was a warm friend, and would fight as quick for one as he would for himself. He did not have a quarrelsome disposition, but managed to get into more difficulties than almost any man I ever saw.”

An unidentified newspaperman remarked about Doc in 1882, “Here is a man who, once a friend, is always a friend; once an enemy is always an enemy.”

Ridgely Tilden, a correspondent for the San Francisco Examiner in

1882, wrote of him: Now comes Doc Holliday, as quarrelsome a man as God ever allowed to live on earth. A Georgian, well bred and educated, he happened in Kansas some years ago. Saving Wyatt Earp’s life in Dodge City, Kansas, he earned his gratitude, and notwithstanding his many bad breaks since, has always found a friend in Wyatt. Doc Holliday is responsible for all the killing, etc, in connection with what is known as the Earp-Clanton imbroglio in Arizona. He kicked up the fight, and Wyatt Earp and his brothers “stood in” with him on the score of gratitude.

So, let’s suck in to a lot of the details of his life so you can form your own opinion of wild west legend Doc Holliday.

III. Timesuck Timeline

A. January 8, 1849: On January 8, 1849, 29 year old Henry Holliday wed 19 year old Alice Jane McKey, daughter of wealthy Southern plantation owners, in Griffin, Georgia. The couple moved into a house on Tinsley Street north of the railroad tracks in Griffin.

Georgia entered the nineteenth century still largely the homeland of the Creeks and the Cherokees. John Henry’s father, Henry Burroughs Holliday, was a self-made man—Andrew Jackson’s “common man”—the kind of man nineteenth-century Americans celebrated. His people were plain folk in the Old South.

Henry’s paternal great-grandfather, William Holliday, was one of three Scotch-Irish brothers who immigrated to America from Ireland sometime after 1750. He settled in the Laurens District of South Carolina, while his brothers, “objecting to settle in slave states,” moved north, as Henry later recalled. William and his sons fought in the American Revolution with the “hero of Hornet’s Nest,” Elijah Clarke, and took their first lands in Wilkes County, Georgia, from bounties for that service.

Henry, Doc’s father, was the son of plantation owning slave owners and was destined for the same life himself. He was, like many of his ancestors, also a war veteran, having recently fought in the Mexican War, starting in 1846.

Holliday was commissioned a second lieutenant in Company I, and his company served in the regiment of Colonel Henry R. Jackson of Savannah. They were soon bound for Mexico, where Jackson’s regiment was in the thick of the fight with General Zachary Taylor at Monterrey and served with distinction at Veracruz and Jalapa under General Scott.

When Holliday returned to Griffin, he brought with him a Mexican boy named Francisco Hidalgo, who had been orphaned by the war, and took him into his household, though at the time Henry was still a bachelor.

Doc’s mother’s family were well respected in Griffin and Henry County. Her grandfather, Joseph Cloud, was a member of one of the wealthiest slaveholding and landholding families in the region, owning property for a distance of more than fifty miles from Stone Mountain to Griffin.

After marriage, Henry settled into married life at Griffin as a druggist and began to build a reasonably good life for his aristocratic wife and himself. He was soon a prominent citizen, noted as a hard- nosed businessman and a quick-tempered adversary. Griffin prospered, benefiting from a railroad line that ran from Atlanta to Macon and from the slaves who worked the surrounding cotton fields. It soon became a central point for shipping cotton.

Henry grew with the town, speculating in land and eventually acquiring forty-six plots within the town limits and hundreds of acres in the county as well as potential railroad properties in other parts of the state. By all accounts, Alice Jane was a refined, genteel, and pious woman, as befitted her background, a wife devoted to her husband and committed to charity and church. Reared a Methodist, she joined the Presbyterian church in Griffin to bring the family together in matters of faith.

B. December 3, 1849: Doc’s parents wasted no time trying to start a family. On December 3, 1849, Alice Jane gave birth to their first child, Martha Eleanora. And then, sadly, On June 12, 1850, she died and was buried at the small cemetery in Griffin. Childhood death was a fact of life in those days. Doc would be the only child born to

the couple to make it out of early childhood.

C. Don’s birth - August 14, 1851: On August 14, 1851, when a second child, a son, was born to Henry and Alice Jane. He was named him John Henry Holliday, after his uncle and father, and he became the center of their world. As the eldest son of the eldest son, young John Henry was destined to play a large role in family life.

D. March 21, 1852: John Henry was baptized on March 21, 1852, at the Griffin Presbyterian Church.

E. 1853: In 1853, Little John Henry was not yet two years old when his adopted much older broth Francisco moved out to start his own family. He married Martha Freeman in Butts County on June 12, 1854, and settled down there.

F. November 9, 1856: On November 9, 1856, William Land McKey, Alice Jane’s father, also died, and Henry became the guardian of his wife’s minor siblings, Thomas Sylvester, Melissa Ella, Eunice Helena, and Margaret Ann, as well as guardian of their inheritance and his wife’s.

Young Doc’s education of a gentleman begins around this time, both in the manners of the wellborn taught by his mother and in the stern demands of Southern manhood imposed by his father.

Southern boys of all classes were given a surprising amount of freedom as children so as not to limit their aggressiveness or to feminize them with a strict discipline that would break their spirits. Reading about Doc it does seem like kids got away with murder down in Georgia at this time. At least rich white kids. As you’ll see as the Suck goes on, white dudes got away with all sorts of shit. Get charged with murder in broad daylight and just pay a fine and be back in the saloon that night kind of shit.

(Southern father) “Let the boys be boys!”

(Concerned sister) “But Daddy! He’s tearing the legs off of the family cat!”

“And do not stop him! It’ll ready him for later battle! That cat is making a man out of him!”

“Daddy! He just squeezed the neighbor girls breast and pinched her bottom.”

“Good on him! Boy’s got gumption! Preparing himself for fatherhood and creating a family.”

“Daddy. He just killed a neighbor boy!”

“Alright. I reckon I’ll speak with him about it. The neighbor’s are poor folk, not even rich or decent enough to have slaves so it’s not like the boy’s life had tremendous value but he was white and I can’t have my son killing white boys and not be given a stern warning to stop. ”

At an early age, Southern boys learned independence, took to the fields and woods, and began their tutelage in hunting, the handling of firearms, and horseback riding. They were also taught deference to their elders and learned the “Sir” and “Ma’am” required of them in speaking to adults whether highborn or low. Courtesy, spirit, and firmness were all part of the curriculum of individualism that Southern sons learned, but care was taken not to undermine their self-confidence or pride.

From Doc’s father came a sense of personal honor and discipline; from his mother came a proper sense of manners and the principles of faith. Cousins, uncles, aunts, and neighbors filled out the life of a growing child.

Southern individualism, independence, and codes of honor meant that every Southerner regardless of station was prepared to “knock hell out of whoever dared to cross him.” Brawling, dueling, and lynching that existed in the Old South to a greater degree than elsewhere.

Strange time and a strange place. And this is where Doc grows up.

G. 1859: In 1859, Doc’s father Henry agreed to assume the guardianship of a young orphan named Elisha Prichard, who moved in with the family and the family prospered. Land holdings mounted. The town of Griffin grew—its population approaching three thousand by the end of the decade, making it the largest city between Atlanta and Macon—and offered amenities and opportunities found in few Georgia towns, including three colleges and a public library.

H. April 12, 1861: And then, on April 12, 1861, the Civil War breaks out and the war comes to Griffin. Camp Wilder becomes a training center for Georgia soldiers at Griffin, and the need was great enough that Henry Holliday sold 136 acres of his 147-acre farm for the establishment of another training facility. The war fever had come to Doc’s doorstep. He saw his hero, Uncle Thomas Sylvester McKey, who was now twenty-one, don the uniform of the Fifth Georgia Volunteers. on September 2, 1861, Henry Holliday was commissioned a major in the Twenty-seventh Georgia Infantry.

Doc aka John Henry found himself alone in a house full of women at precisely the age at which Southern boys began their apprenticeship as men. John Henry grew close to and protective of his mother, and she strove to make him a gentleman.

And then, an unexpected tragedy struck. Rather than lose his father to the war, he began to lose his mother to the number one killer of the day - Consumption. T

uberculosis aka consumption in the mid-nineteenth century. It was the leading cause of death at the time, accounting for 20 percent of all deaths in the United States. And doctors knew little about it because compared to today’s doctors, old-times doctors were horrific. “Whiskey! Laudnum! Saw!” Doctors considered consumption to be noncontagious and believed that it ran in families because unlike the best doctor’s of today who can run comprehensive blood tests, cat scans, MRIs, etc. 19th century doctors were really just better than average guessers. They would be right about diagnosing shit slightly more than your pig farming

neighbor.

Women with consumption were encouraged to remain within the home and pursue domestic responsibilities as much as possible which is the BEST way to spread it around the family. Good job doctors!

(old timey doctor voice) “Whoo boy you are sure coughing up a terrible storm! How about you shut all the windows and stay inside with the children all day. Make sure you’re all breathing the same air. Sharing their air is good for your lungs. And if that doesn’t work, try cutting open a vein or two and bleeding things out. Maybe your blood is just rotten. It’s hard to say, I actually know very little about how the body works.”

Young John Henry’s responsibilities increased as well. He was now “the man of the house” in more than just name. His father, Major Holliday, came home to a different situation from the one he had left. The war had already taken a heavy toll on commerce. Goods were scarce, crops were thin, and food was in short supply. His wife, Alice Jane, was virtually bedridden. Not the best of times.

I. 1863: Between August 1863 and April 1864, Henry raised $23,700 in Confederate currency from the sale of real estate in Griffin and in Spalding County and moved his family to the little town of Valdosta in southern Georgia, a place he thought would be safe from Northern Aggression.

J. 1864: In April 1864 young John Henry found himself in a place completely unlike the red-clay country of his childhood. It must have seemed like a wilderness to him. The pine and oak forests stretched over the rolling countryside for miles with little besides wire grass under the canopy of trees. And for a time, his father’s relocation plan worked.

Sherman’s forces destroyed the Atlantic & Gulf Railroad tracks near Savannah and further isolated Valdosta. Then Sherman turned north into South Carolina, and southern Georgia was seemingly forgotten.

In Valdosta, Doc would continue to receive the type of education afforded to only the select few in the mid-19th century at the renovated Valdosta Institute. John Henry fit in well. Already well mannered and charming as the result of his mother’s instruction and the experience of a large, well-educated family, he learned quickly both in the classroom and in the social arena. He was popular with the girls at dances and was considered a strong-minded, even cocky, young man by his neighbors.

And it was here, down in South Georgia, where John “Doc” Henry pulled an Einstein - Pass it On! - and fell in love with his first cousin.

John Henry was nineteen months younger than his sixteen-year-old cousin Mattie when she and her sister arrived in Valdosta, but he grew closer to her in the months that followed. He was discovering the mysteries of puberty, and Mattie was charming in the tradition of Southern womanhood.

She was a bewitching distraction during a tough period of Doc’s youth. There’s no proof that they ever had a romantic encounter, and probably did, but, there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence that suggests that Doc did feel romantic love for Mattie, and possibly would feel it, for the rest of his life - just like in that badass movie Tombstone!

The marriage of first cousins was not uncommon in the nineteenth century. Some families even encouraged it as a means of controlling family property. Yup. “C’mon Reginald, why find a lady in town when you can find sexual satisfaction in your cousin who’s been like a sister to you your entire life. You’ve grown up together, you’ve seen each other naked as children. You know what you’re getting! Keep it in the fam Reginald!! Do it for your Daddy-Uncle-Grandpa! Our eyes aren’t gonna keep getting closer together by spreading our genes out! Don’t you want a shot at a baby with two heads? Think how great that would be for the family. That baby could marry itself!”

In fact, other first cousins in the Holliday family had married in the

past. What made the difference in the case of John Henry and Mattie was that Mattie was Catholic. Not even John Henry’s conversion to Catholicism would have made a difference, because canon law forbade the marriage of first cousins.

I gotta say, when it comes to historical accuracy regarding Doc Holliday, Tombstone holds up WAY better than I expected it to, which makes me very happy. If you recall, when talking to Wyatt Earp about romantic love, Doc Holliday aka Val Best Role of His Life Kilmer talks about loving a cousin when he was young.

Doc Holliday would be unlucky in love but lucky with the war - despite many relatives including his father - he lost no relatives, at least no immediate ones or relatives he knew - in the war.

But, he would feel the effects of the war.

K. September 27, 1865: On September 27, 1865, Captain C.C. Richardson the 103rd Regiment of U.S. Colored Infantry was headquartered at Thomasville, and units were distributed in towns like Quitman, Doctortown, Homerville, and Valdosta. Company G of the 103rd replaced the white troops in Valdosta and set up their more substantial encampment between Patterson and Toombs streets.

Troops arrived to protect the interests of the former slaves and provide them with services. Black soldiers are actually put in charge of a Southern town that had black slaves when they showed up. There was enormous local resentment. Black soldiers were arresting white plantation owners. Their world was turned upside down. Young John Henry is on the Southern side of all of this.

And his world specifically is turned upside down by the death of his mother.

L. September 16, 1866: On September 16, 1866, Alice Jane McKey dies. Doc mows her down in a duel which he had a huge advantage in due to her battle with consumption and lack of training with a firearm. Doc’s mother had insulted young Doc’s manhood, asking him to wash some dishes she was too ill to clean herself.

Doc “Wash some dishes? Do you reckon you now have a daughter, mother? Is that who you see stand before you? Ready yourself under the Willow tree out front. We play for blood!”

Mother (coughing) “Doc! (Cough) Please! (cough) Enough of this fooling!”

Doc “Were you fooling, mother? I wasn’t. I’m your huckleberry.”

And then, when Alice was too sick to get out of bed- too chick - too YELLOW! - Doc mowed her down where she lay. “You’re no daisy, mother! You’re no daisy!!”

No.

Young Doc struggled with the loss of his mother. By custom, the period of mourning was one year. Husbands and sons were to wear black for nine months and gray for three more. And that’s just what Doc did.

However. His dad didn’t, and he never forgave his father.

M. December 1866: Three months later, in December of 1866, Doc’s father marries his neighbor’s daughter, twenty-three-year-old Rachel Martin. Doc immediately challenged both of them to duels.

Of course he didn’t.

There had been no time for a proper Southern courtship, which raised questions about when the relationship between Henry and Rachel began and suggested a greater impropriety. John Henry was now an angry young man, as shown in this next example of what may have been his first attempt at a duel:

During class one day, John Henry got into a heated argument with a classmate over some matter lost to history.

John’s opponent challenged him to a pistol duel with pistols and John, no more than 15 at the time, accepted immediately.

This duel really did just about happen.

The two kids met at the edge of town with a crowd of onlookers and two pistols set out before them. When he was offered his choice of the pistols, John replied that he had his own, loaded pistol which freaked everyone out.

It was supposed to have been a “mock” duel with pistols containing powder charges that wouldn’t inflict actual injury, and Doc was like, “I play for blood. I’m your huckleberry.”

The kid he was ready to literally duel to the death with apologized and explained that the whole thing was a big misunderstanding and when Doc was satisfied he agreed not to draw down on his classmate.

Dude didn’t play. You challenge Doc Holliday to a duel you better not be bluffing because he won’t be!

N. 1868: Cut to the summer of 1868, and young Doc leaves Valdosta and is reunited with his cousin Mattie, spending the summer with the 18 year old beauty, and they GET IT ON. So much so, that for the rest of his life, Doc would refer to summer in general as the CFT - Cousin Fuckin’ Time.

“I do love the warm air of CFT. Spring is grand, the Fall can be breathtaking, but nothing makes me happier than the glory of CFT. The wet, humid, moist deliciousness that is CFT in the South. CFT in the North just isn’t the same. It’s not wet enough. No moisture in the air for that good ol’ CFT.”

Of course they did not get it on. No, they dueled and Doc killed her when she insulted his manhood.

Of course not.

Doc did seem to have designs on Mattie that others noticed. Some

members of the family picked up on the budding romance between the two and Mattie’s family in particular did not care of it.

Also that summer, Georgia is readmitted to the Union and federal troops withdrew. But the friction of Reconstruction was not entirely over.

1868 was also the year that young John Henry decided to become a dentist. Dr. Lucian F. Frink was a ex-Confederate soldier who had served with an artillery unit during the war and recently arrived in Valdosta to become a dentist.

Frink was only five years older than John Henry and probably knew him on a social level as well as a professional one. In September 1870, John Henry Holliday, with Dr. Frink’s endorsement, arrived in Philadelphia to begin his education as a dentist. The Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery was one of the best dental schools in the country.

Students faced a rigorous curriculum in chemistry, mechanical dentistry, metallurgy, dental pathology and therapeutics, dental histology, operative dentistry, physiology, anatomy and microscopic anatomy, and surgery, as well as clinical instruction in operative and mechanical dentistry.

Again - Tombstone’s portrayal of Doc pretty damn accurate. He was a Southern lunger and an educated man! Rare for a gunslinger and a gambler.

O. 1872: Let’s talk about 1872. Big year for Doc. He graduated on March 1, 1872 and took off to St. Louis to open a practice with a classmate. And it was here he would meet the woman who would be the major, actually consummated, romantic adventure of Doc’s life. “Big Nose Kate” aka Kate Fisher

1. “Big Nose Kate” aka Kate Fisher: Kate was born Mary Katharine Harony in Pest, Hungary, on November 7, 1850

DOC MEETS BIG NOSE KATE: Near Fuches’s office was a theater and saloon. One of the employees there was a young woman named Kate Fisher, but that was not her real name. She was born Mary Katharine Harony in Pest, Hungary, on November 7, 1850, almost a year before Doc. Her parents immigrated to the United States in about 1860 and settled in Davenport, Iowa, with a bunch of other Hungarians.

A “Kate Fischer” was listed in the 1870 census living with eight other women. Seven, including Kate, were listed as “whores.” And by, 1872, she was working at the saloon near Dr. Fuches’s new office where she’d meet the 21 year old Doc. They’d date that Spring and Summer.

Again - Tombstone seems to accurate with it’s portrayal of Doc’s lady.

And her nickname really was “Bog Nose Kate”. Guessing, or at least hoping, no one called her that to her face. That couldn’t of felt good. Really hoping Doc didn’t refer to her that way.

“Pleasure to meet you all. Now I’d like to introduce you to my girlfriend, Big Nose Kate. Sometimes I call her Honker. Sometimes Lady Toucan. Sometimes Katie Woodpecker or sometimes I like to say, this is my lady Kate and no that is not some kind of little baby arm pushing out of the middle of her face. It’s actually a nose. And yes she is a lady, not some sort of monster. And yes, she is crying again right now, which, sadly, just makes her already huge nose shiny and more noticeable.”

That July, Doc and Kate would break up and Doc would return to Georgia to claim a family inheritance from his mother. Yeah buddy! Get that inheritance!!

Having your parent die must always be hard, BUT, it has to sting a little less when you get a huge inheritance out of the deal instead of losing a poor parent and having to go into to debt to pay for their funeral.

Doc moved in with John Stiles Holliday that summer and spent

another summer with his first cousin, John’s daughter Mattie, enjoying time with Mattie during the day and then masturbating furiously at night.

That Fall Doc would go on to practice dentistry in Atlanta after meeting a prominent dentist there through family connections., practicing at the office of Arthur C. Ford, D.D.S. at 26, Whitehall Street. He was now an upcoming Southern gentleman, well bred, educated, and prepared for a successful professional life as a dentist. Life was looking good in 1872!!

And then 1873 would be a shit show.

P. January 13, 1873: 1873 doesn’t start off on the best note. On January 13, his adopted older brother Francisco dies of consumption, leaving a young family behind.

And while he may have not wanted to believe it, by this time Doc has also contracted the fatal disease.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when Doc knew he had it. Diagnosis was tricky. At its outset the disease left its victim with the desperate hope that it was not consumption at all. Even though the symptoms were dramatic enough, accurate diagnosis was difficult. The dry cough, the sore throat, the chest pains, the elevated pulse rate, and the difficult breathing were also symptoms of other, less serious or more treatable ailments.

In John Henry’s time, diagnosis was not based on identification of the tubercle bacillus through medical testing. The microscope and even the stethoscope played little role. Diagnosis amounted to a suspicion. “Whiskey! Laudnum! Saw”

Indian Springs, just a few miles from Griffin, was known as “the Saratoga of the South,” which might explain why John Henry chose to move back to Griffin, if he did, as local tradition there insists. The clean air of various little towns in the South and the arid climate of the Southwest were thought to have curative powers over the disease.

We touched a little upon that in that old Billy the Kid, Suck episode 25.

1873 isn’t all bad though. Doc also gets into some gambling in Atlanta in 1873, learning the game of Faro.

FARO: Faro was a popular game at the time, described by one authority on nineteenth-century gambling as “the backbone of the professional gambler’s repertoire and the prime vehicle for the seduction of moneyed innocents.”

It was a simple game with relatively close odds; Hoyle’s Rules of Games claimed that odds in favor of the house were no more than 3 percent in an honest game.

In the post—Civil War period, it was still one of the most popular card games, and John Henry Holliday would spend a considerable portion of his life dealing and playing it.

Also in 1873, Doc headed West. Some people think it was because of consumption - to reach those arid Southwestern climates. Probably not though, since he spent a considerable amount of time in Texas and Kansas - just as humid as Georgia.

Q. Heartache? Maybe it was heartache. Forbidden love. Definitive answers to the mystery of the relationship between Doc and Mattie will never be known. Mattie destroyed some of the letters they wrote each other herself before her death, and after her death, a family member chose to burn the rest of the correspondence that Mattie had kept through all her years as a teacher and nun. It all paints an odd picture. Why destroy the letters if there was nothing that could be misconstrued as inappropriate? And why would a perfect attractive Southern Belle not get married? Especially one who didn’t seem to be a lesbian before that was acceptable, considering her younger flirtations with Doc. Why write him his whole life?

Random trivia - Mattie would also be the inspiration for the character Melanie Hamilton in Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone with the Wind.

However, there may have also been another, sinister reason for Doc’s departure that had to do with the New South Doc found himself living in.

Damn it Old South - why does slavery and hardcore racism have to flow through all of our stories!?!

Dodge City lawman Bat Masterson, who Doc would later meet and know for years, who Doc would work for on several occasions, would had ample opportunity through the years to hear Holliday discuss his youth, later explained that the “indiscriminate killing of some negroes” was the cause of John Henry’s abrupt departure for the West.

According to him, the young whites and blacks of Valdosta shared a swimming hole on the river until the whites decided that they would no longer share. He wrote, “The negro boys were informed that in the future they would have to go further down the stream to do their swimming, which they promptly refused to do and told the whites that if they didn’t like existing conditions, that they themselves would have to hunt up a new swimming hole.”

“One beautiful Sunday afternoon, while an unusually large number of negroes were in swimming at the point of dispute, Holliday appeared on the river bank with a double-barreled shotgun in his hands, and, pointing it in the direction of the swimmers, ordered them from the river.” The blacks “stampeded for the opposite shore,” and “Holliday waited until he got a bunch of them together, and then turned loose with both barrels, killing two outright, and wounding several others.” Masterson said that Holliday later justified what he did by saying that they “had to be disciplined.”

So- that is super shitty and a tough pill to swallow when hoping to talk about a wild west hero.

However, before you hate Doc too much, there are also other variations on this tale which make Doc look like less of a monster, such as one in which involves Doc getting into a disagreement with some African Americans, then getting in a fight with one who left and brought back a shotgun and shot at Doc who then took out a

pistol and killed the man in self-defense.

And there are other versions.

And, there are no actual newspaper accounts of any variation of this tale. No first hand accounts from any eyewitnesses. Just old stories. So who knows. Sadly, considering when and where Doc was raised and the temper he had - it’s very possible some variation is true and would explain a sudden move West to Galveston.

Shiiiiit.

Doc Moves to Dallas:

Heading West, racist product of his time Doc briefly stopped in Galveston and then went on to Dallas in late 1873. Took a job as a dentist there through another family connection. The railroad had arrived on July 16, 1872, and in the year that followed, the town grew from a quiet Trinity River farm town of twelve hundred to a burgeoning trade center of more than seven thousand.

Initially, Doc’s partnership seemed to prosper. In October, Holliday won prizes at the state fair for the best set of teeth in gold, the best set of teeth in vulcanized rubber, and the best display of artificial teeth and dental ware.

I looked up “vulcanized rubber teeth” with a Google Image search and - not bad. You hear “rubber teeth” and can think some pretty silly shit, like super bendy soft rubber teeth, but no, they look pretty legit. Weird to think about the man who would become one of the most feared gunslingers of Tombstone, Arizona as a guy making really pretty rubber teeth.

R. March 2, 1874: And then on March 2, 1874, Holliday, for reasons unknown, left his partnership and opened his own office above the Dallas County Bank at the corner of Main and Lamar.

Young Dr. Holliday, in the parlance of the times, had “slipped from the path of rectitude.” He cared less about teeth and more getting his drink on. Which could have had something to do with his

tuberculosis.

The liquor could’ve helped him to cope with his pain and the gambling a nice distraction from his own mortality.

April 1874: In April 1874, Doc was arrested for operating a keno game, and on May 12 he was indicted for gambling. And then on June 21, he told Dallas to go fuck itself and left for Denison. Denison was another end-of-track town just south of the Red River, was a wide-open gambling and drinking town suited to John Henry’s new incivilities.

Dennison had a rougher edge than Dallas. It was on the fringe of the Indian Territory in a spot that had been the home of desperadoes and ne’er-do-wells for years.

Holliday’s activities in Dennison are unknown. No arrest records and no records of opening a dentist office either.

S. NYE - 1873, Shootout: On New Year’s Ever, 1873, Doc found enough time to stop back in Dallas for a shootout. The Dallas Weekly Herald provided the details: “Dr. Holliday and Mr. Austin, a saloon keeper, relieved the monotony of the noise of firecrackers by taking a couple of shots at each other yesterday afternoon. The cheerful note of the peaceful six shooter is heard once more among us. Both shooters were arrested.”

On January 18, 1974 John Henry “Doc” Holliday was charged with assault with intent to murder, but a week later, on January 25, he was tried and acquitted because this was the Wild West and two gunslingers drawing down on each other wasn’t uncommon or too big of a deal.

Boys will be boys!!

T. 1874 - Ft. Griffin Flat: John left for an even rougher Texas town in 1874. Fort Griffin Flat. Doc had been told that in the little towns that had grown up near military posts, men who were willing to take chances had the opportunity to make money on the gambling circuit. That winter, one of the more promising spots seemed to be

Fort Griffin Flat, a sprawling little village that stood just below Fort Griffin, one of the army’s outposts in a cluster of forts on the central plains of Texas.

Doc Holliday, with his respectable reputation wasted in Dallas saloons and gambling houses, took the stage West along the military roads.

The post was crude but neat and, when Doc reached it, was home to troops from the Tenth Cavalry and the Eleventh Infantry. One old- timer described the town this way: “Fort Griffin, when I arrived there, was the toughest place I’d ever seen. I believe there were eight or ten saloons there then, and, in addition, there were several dance halls. The Bee Hive Saloon and Dance Hall was the main one. Lewd women infested these places, and all of them had their little huts or shanties, which sprawled along the bank of the Clear Fork of the Brazos River.”

Classic wild west town! I love it. Ladies of ill repute! Guns firing off in the middle of town. Shitty warm whisky being pounded by the gallon. Money flowing around poker tables. Build West World already somebody. I’m ready to go!!

There were buffalo-hunters, bullwhackers, soldiers, cowpunchers, Indians, gamblers, toughs, refined business men and fallen women mingling in one common herd on the streets and in the business houses.

U. 1875-1876: Doc stayed in Fr. Griffin into 1875 and that year was arrested in Ft. Griffin for playing “at a game of cards at a house used for retailing spiritous liquor.” Doc would later claim that some of the outlaws in Tombstone were “part of the old Fort Griffin gang,” such as Curly Bill Brocius.

Curly Bill - head of the cowboys in the movie Tombstone - the man who killed Sheriff Fred White. Again - love how much accuracy there was in Tombstone. When he Curly Bill meets Doc in Tombstone the movie, he clearly knows him.

After stopping at another few forts, Doc recalled spending part of 1875 in Denver. According to this scenario, Doc dealt cards for John A. Babb in Denver through the rest of 1875 and then he joined “a fresh invoice of Denver gamblers” who arrived in Cheyenne, Wyoming, on February 5, 1876.

John Charles Thompson claimed that Doc was there as well, writing in his history of Cheyenne: “Run out of Texas because of his lethal propensities, this platinum blond desperado tried Colorado, extinguished several gunmen there, came to Cheyenne and did right well at gambling. The reputation of this dour misanthrope with death gnawing on his lungs caused him to be unchallenged here. Jeff Carr, the town marshal, regarded him dourly, but courageous though the big officer was, he didn’t choose to take on a killer of Holliday’s ruthless character.”

By 1876, Doc is clearly earning the reputation the man not to be trifled with, a reputation that led to him winning the bonus vote to become today’s Suck.

After Wyoming, some biographers believe Doc joined the Black Hills gold rush and moved to Deadwood for a time. One view claimed that he remained in Deadwood until the spring of 1877, when he returned to Cheyenne and Denver en route back to Texas, while another returned Doc to Denver with Colorado statehood in August 1876, where he remained until early 1877 gambling under the name “Tom McKey.”

Another view claims he made it to Billings, MT and opened a candy shop where the candy would have traces of acid that would erode the enamel of the customers teeth and then, with a mouthful of cavities, they’d need some dentures and POW! Holliday is right there to double dip. Creating cavities and pulling teeth. Making all that tooth scratch! I’m the only one who has this view of Doc’s whereabouts.

Big Nose Kate: Big Nose Kate shows back up in Doc’s life in 1876, Kate now going by the name of “Kate Elder.” She was fined for prostitution using that name in the summer of 1874 in Wichita, Kansas. Bessie Earp, the wife of James Earp, and Sallie Earp, who the consort of Wyatt Earp from Peoria, Illinois, were also arrested at that time.

In 1875, however, Kate had left Wichita for Dodge City, where she went to work at a dance hall and brothel. And then she made it back to St. Louis where she would claim to run into Doc. While no marriage certificate exists, she would later claim that she married Doc on May 25, 1876.

For reasons that aren’t clear though, Doc and Kate travel separately for roughly the next year. They’d always have a tumultuous relationship.

Pinkertons come looking for Doc: While the details of exactly what crimes he committed around this time are hard to verify, Doc was earning enough of a reputation as an outlaw around this time that the Pinkerton Agency came looking or him. Members of the Holliday family later claimed that that summer Pinkerton agents called on the John Stiles Holliday household asking for photographs of John Henry and that one of the girls quickly removed his picture from the family album and hid it under her dress before handing the album to the agents. If this incident did occur, the reason was never revealed.

Maybe the Pinkertons were after Doc because he cut some dude’s face up and almost killed him that year in Denver. That happened.

Knife Fight: At the time of Doc Holliday’s death in 1887, one of the newspaper obituaries mentioned an 1876 fight between Doc and another gambler named Bud Ryan in which Doc slashed Ryan with a knife. According to the report, Doc “was a quiet, modest man, with a smile that was child-like and bland.” The reporter added, “But one night he electrified the town by nearly cutting off the head of Budd Ryan, a well-known Denver gambler.”

Damn! That is a serious bar fight. When you almost cut some dude’s head off. Didn’t even make the local news when it happened. I think it’s make national news today.

1877 - Doc returns to Dallas: By January 1877 Doc was back in

Dallas and there were two gunfights in Dallas within a matter of days after he returned. Possibly coincidence but also possible he was involved in one or both.

The former dentist was now a hardened professional gambler. John C. Jacobs, who met him later that year at Fort Griffin, remembered him as follows: “This fellow Holliday was a consumptive and a hard drinker, but neither liquor nor the bugs seemed to faze him. He could at times be the most genteel, affable chap you ever saw, and at other times he was sour and surly, and would just as soon cut your throat with a villainous looking knife he always carried, or shoot you with a .41-calibre double-barreled derringer he always kept in his vest pocket.”

Doc may have also visited Fort Worth, San Antonio, or other points south and west of Dallas in 1877.

Doc “Canes” a Man Who Then Shoots HIm: On July 4, 1877 Holliday had an altercation with another gambler named Henry Kahn, a relative of Dallas’s prominent clothiers, and canes the son of a bitch. You heard me. Reviving a Southern tradition, Doc severely caned Kahn. The police intervened and hauled both men into court, where they were fined. Later that same day, the two met again, and Kahn shot Holliday, seriously wounding him.

Of course he came back and shot him - dude beat his ass with a cane! Getting caned - how painful and embarrassing.

The cause of the dispute escaped documentation. But a form of the story did make the papers.

On July 7, the Dallas Daily Herald reported, “Our reporter was told in Fort Worth yesterday that a young man named Doc Holliday, well known in this city, was shot and killed at Breckenridge last Wednesday by a young man named Kahn.”

Reports of Doc’s demise had been greatly exaggerated. Doc recovered and was arrested again for gambling in Dallas in September, and headed back to Fort Griffin.

Fort Griffin: Doc opened an account at Smith’s bar in Fr. Griffin on September 14, 1877 and within a week he amassed a liquor bill of $120, while spending just over $20 for room and meals. This is definitely the Doc Holliday from Tombstone.

(Drunken Doc) “Why I have not yet begun to defile myself.”

He and Kate Elder are also reunited in Ft. Griffin and live the type of crazy life depicted, once again, in Tombstone. Here’s a story about one of their nights in Ft. Griffin told by someone who watched a few nights of Doc’s gambling endeavors: “ I remember well one instance where a lot of money changed hands, and Lottie Deno coming about three thousand dollars ahead, winning it all from Doc Holliday at the Bee Hive. It seems that Holliday had won over three thousand dollars and the layout from Mike Forgarty, who operated the gambling resort, when Lottie Deno, who was lookout for Fogarty, proposed to Holliday that she be given a chance to recoup Fogarty’s losses.

Holliday agreed to this, and the game was resumed with a fifty dollar limit. The game did not last very long, for Lottie Deno copped every bet, and left Doc Holliday completely strapped for the time being at least, for he was not one who let poor luck get him down and keep him there. He got into a poker game the next night and won $500 and a diamond ring from an army officer stationed at the fort.”

Another story of Ft Griffin Holliday drama claimed that Kate grew jealous of local gambling hall owner and former Prostitute Lottie, and one night Kate accused her of trying to steal her man. Supposedly, Lottie sprang to her feet, shouting, “Why you low-down slinkin’ slut! If I should step in soft cow manure, I would not even clean my boot on that bastard. I’ll show you a thing or two!” Both Lottie and Kate drew weapons, and bloodshed was avoided by Doc Holliday stepping between them and defusing the episode—or at least that is the way the story was told.

Again - just like some of those movies. Wild, wild times.

Doc and Kate take a brief break from Ft. Griffin at some point in 1877, heading to Laredo, across the Rio Grande to Piedras Negras, gambling and working a bit as a dentist in Mexico and then back to Ft. Griffin to accumulate some more good stories like this one:

Crazy Footrace story: Doc decided to put some money on a foot race between two men in Ft. Griffin in 1877 and then a little drama kicked off when he caught wind that the man he needed to win a foot race started to have second thoughts.

A local named Sam Diedrich, a one-armed freighter, fancied himself a racer, so the gamblers brought in a character called Sugar Foot to go up against him. Sugar Foot was also known as BOJANGLES!! One armed man versus three legged, one-eyed dog. Classic Wild West man and dog race! Actually, the sport of greyhound racing came out of the wild west boom town sport of men racing dogs. It used to be 2-3 dogs going up against 2-3 cowboys. And the cowboys were allowed, as long as it was on the run, to shoot the dogs they raced against to make it more fair. And the dogs were known to be especially vicious and known to attack the cowboys before they could draw down on ‘em. It was crazy - too crazy to have ever actually happened but really fun to make up just now.

So, that never happened.

BUT - a one-armed man named Diedrich really did race against a man named Sugar Foot and men really did bet on the race. And the gamblers bet heavily on Diedrich against their own man. Even Sugar Foot quietly placed bets on Diedrich.

And then Doc Holliday drove up in a wagon and a witness named Baldwin recalled he stepped over and said, “Boys, what kind of race is this? I have got a lot of money to bet on this!” They said, “It is up and going.” He said, “My idea is … Sugar Foot could win this race.”

And then he said, “Sugar Foot, you know you could.” Sugar Foot, who was planning to throw the race and had actually bet on the other man losing, said, “I don’t know.” And then Doc stepped over to his wagon, picked up a double barrel shotgun, and said, “Boys, you know that Sugar Foot can beat Diedrich and can win it. There

are sixteen buckshot in each barrel and I am going to empty it into Sugar Foot if he don’t win it!” And then Sugar Foot ran, I’m guessing, the fastest he’d ever ran in his life and destroyed Dietrich.

And then Doc walked over to collect his money and said, “I knowed he could beat him.”

V. 1878: In 1878, Doc would meet Wyatt Earp in Ft. Griffin, the man he’d help out numerous times in gun fights, including the infamous showdown at the OK Corral, the man he’d become lifelong friends with.

Doc also found time to stab another poker player in Ft. Griffin. Remember that scene from Tombstone when he stabs that guy?

“Why Ed Baily you look like you’re about ready to burst.” And then Doc calls Bailey, beats him again and says “Isn’t that a daisy?”

And then, a little later, after Holliday reveals his gun, Bailey says, “Guns don’t scare me. Why, without those guns you ain’t nothing but a skinny lunger.” And then Doc sets his guns on the table. “Ed, what an ugly thing to say. I deplore ugliness. Why Ed, if I thought you weren’t my friend, I just don’t think I could bear it.” And then he puts his guns on the table, “There. Now we can be friends again.” And then Ed comes at Holliday and Holliday stabs him right in the ribs.”

Turns out, maybe that wasn’t as Hollywood as I once thought. Doc really did stab a man named Ed Bailey over a poker disagreement, stabbing him right where the film depicted it.

And then, again like the movie, he and Kate had to flee town to avoid legal trouble. They made it to Dodge city.

1. DOC HEADS TO DODGE CITY: That Spring Doc and Kate headed north to Sweetwater and, from there, took the wagon road to Dodge City, Kansas where they met up with Wyatt Earp, who would end up killing a man as deputy Marshall in Dodge City.

Dodge City in 1878 had a reputation for wildness and violence, so Doc of course felt right at home.

Doc arrived as the town was preening itself for the cattle season. With sixteen saloons, ranging from upscale operations such as the Long Branch and the Alamo to Southside dives, Dodge seemed primed for profit for a man like Doc Holliday and he decided he’d stay awhile, so he sent for his old dentist supplies which were still down in Texas.

When his dentist chair arrived in June, Doc posted the following notice in the Dodge City Times: “John H. Holliday, Dentist, very respectfully offers his professional services to the citizens of Dodge City and surrounding county during the summer.”

Holliday apparently initially behaved himself in Dodge City, because his name did not show up either in the press or in the police court records.

Bat Masterson, who first met Doc in Dodge, provided perhaps the most familiar portrait of Doc in his 1907 Human Life series: “He was slim of build and sallow of complexion, standing almost five feet ten inches, and weighing no more than 130 pounds. His eyes were of a pale blue and his mustache was thin and of a sandy hue.”

Doc does end up saving Wyatt’s life in Dodge City, cementing a lifelong friendship.

DOC SAVES WYATT’S LIFE: Wyatt Earp would later say - “I am a friend of Doc Holliday because when I was city marshal of Dodge City, Kansas, he came to my rescue and saved my life when I was surrounded by desperadoes.”

In a more dramatic statement ghostwritten for him, Earp said that Doc “saw a man draw on me behind my back. ‘Look out, Wyatt!’ he shouted, but while the words were coming out his mouth he had jerked his pistol out of his pocket and shot the other fellow before the latter could fire.”

DOC AND KATE LEAVE TOWN: Despite opening a Denist office and seemingly enjoying his stay in Dodge City, Doc and Kate would head out yet again at the end of 1878.

The decision to move may have been based on a August 6, 1878 decision by the town council outlawing gambling. Also, gambling opportunities had declined once the cattle season was over. Doc himself would later claim that he left because he was falsely accused of burglary.

But the real reason was probably Doc’s consumption.

DOC’S HEALTH STARTS TO FAIL: Kate later claimed that she and Doc left Dodge for Las Vegas, New Mexico, to take advantage of the famous Montezuma Hot Springs near the town that was already becoming a mecca for consumptives. He was not a healthy man. He looked sickly and incessantly coughed.

Doc was moving into the “second phase” of consumption in Kansas. His voice began to develop a deep hoarseness as the result of throat ulcers that would periodically make it difficult for him to speak above a whisper or to eat. His cough became more severe, constant, and debilitating, producing a thick dark mucus of greenish hue with yellow streaks and laced with pus. The cough was attended by “hectic fever” that rose and fell with an accelerating pulse rate. The fever contributed to a ruddy complexion that seemed deceptively healthy yet alternated with a “deathlike paleness.”

He and Kate initially took the train as far as Trinidad, Colorado, and, according to Bat Masterson, within a week from the time Doc reached Trinidad, Doc had shot and seriously wounded a young sport by the name of Kid Colton or Kid Dalton over a very trivial matter.” Masterson claimed that it was this incident that forced Doc to move on again. Rumors of incidents like this one would be attributed to Doc more and more frequently until he got too suck with TB to draw down on anyone anymore.

Doc and Kate then settled in at Montezuma Hot Springs in Gallinas Canyon, a few miles northwest of the town’s plaza,

where there was a spa.

Once Doc’s tuberculosis seemed under control again and weather permitted, Doc and Kate moved into quarters on the plaza in Las Vegas, New Mexico.

Las Vegas was a stable and well-established community. Doc and Kate wintered there in what was perhaps the quietest environment they had known in years. Later, when his health got a little better, Doc opened an office near the plaza in a building that also housed a tubercular young jeweler named William Leonard.

Unfortunately, the territorial legislature passed a law against gambling that winter, and on March 8, 1879, about the time that Leonard took off, Doc was fined $25 because he “did keep a gaming table called monte.” And he and Kate were out. No gambling, no Doc Holliday.

He headed north toward the end-of-track for the railroad being built into New Mexico, where he caught the train to Dodge City without Kate who chose to remain in New Mexico for reasons unknown.

W. 1879: RETURNS TO DODGE TO ORGANIZE RAILROAD GANGS: Once back in Dodge in 1879, Doc assisted Bat Masterson in the organization of a group of fighters for the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. Sheriff Masterson had received a telegram from officers of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe road at Canon City, asking if he would bring a posse of men to assist in defending the workmen on that road from the attacks of the Denver and Rio Grande men, who were again endeavoring to capture the long contested pass through the canyon.

Railroad fight!! How crazy is that shit? Reminds me of a western TV show I got pretty into for awhile - Hell on Wheels - about all the crazy shit that went on with the late 19th century building of the railroads across the west. They were building railroads across virtually lawless territory - lawless in the sense that there just weren’t enough Cavalry and sheriffs and deputies to defend all the little outposts Springing up as railroad tycoons competed to become the first to connect the East and West coasts and make piles and piles of money taking people out West and bringing gold and other goods back East.

Well, after working in private security, or in a posse or a gang or whatever you call it, Holliday headed back to New Mexico and settled in the little railroad town of Otero, north of Las Vegas. The town had a boomtown flavor, and Doc settled into a dental practice. That spring, Otero got bypassed by the railroad and it was almost literally boxed up with the terminal and shipped via the Santa Fe to be reassembled at Las Vegas. The Santa Fe had advanced to Las Vegas by then, and Doc followed.

Doc saw opportunity in Las Vegas and opened a saloon. Las Vegas had more than its share of gamblers, con men, whores, thugs, and vagrants, all the usual flotsam that followed boom camps. Among them was a former army scout from the Fifth Cavalry named Mike Gordon, who had a weakness for women.

And one night, on July 19, this Gordon character got drunk and was rejected by a woman, flew into rage and started shooting his pistol around and apparently one of the bullets, according a later account by Bat Masterson, “whizzed a couple of inches from Holliday’s head and went crashing through a window at the rear of the room. ‘Doc’ drew his gun and rushed to the front door and saw Gordon standing on the sidewalk with a revolver in his hand. Gordon raised his revolver to fire a second time, but before he could pull the trigger, ‘Doc’ had shot him dead.”

Doc was never charged in this incident but was charged over the next few months with a few gambling crimes. Also worth noting, during that summer, Holliday may have played cards with Jesse James and Billy the Kid, as they both were reportedly in town between July 26 and 29, even having dinner together with other locals at the new Las Vegas Hotel at Montezuma Hot Springs.

Coolest Wild West dinner ever.

And then Wyatt Earp also took off for Vegas in 1879, leaving his

position in Dodge City.

Earp headed west with a young woman named Mattie Blaylock, his brother Jim, and Jim’s family. Jim Earp was NOT in the movie Tombstone, as he was not a lawman or gun fighter. He was a saloon keeper and a lesser known Earp brother. Mattie WAS in the film, and her character, a serious opiate addict hooked on laudanum, is who I got the inspiration to add laudanum to a bit I did on my Don’t Wake the Bear special, “Whiskey! Laudanum! Saw!”

X. DOC MOVES TO PRESCOTT, DONE BEING A DENTIST:

After Wyatt arrives in Las Vegas, he and his crew and Doc and Kate move to Prescott, a town that proved to be interesting to both John Henry and Kate. They moved into a hotel, while the Earp party looked for their brother Virgil. But when the Earp clan pulled out for Tombstone in mid-November, Doc and Kate initially stayed behind.

Doc was now completely done with being a dentist, his consumption most likely made that impossible, and he made no effort to establish a dental office there or anywhere else the rest of his days. He was a professional gambler now, and he found his place on Whiskey Row, Prescott’s gambling district, passing the winter there with Kate.

And then Doc received a letter from Wyatt Earp urging him to come to Tombstone. Doc and Kate quarreled over the letter, and she told him that she would not go to Tombstone, Arizona: “If you are going to tie yourself to the Earp Brothers, go to it. I am going to Globe.” She’s referring to Globe, Arizona, another little mining camp founded in 1875. She said that Doc replied, “All right. I will be in Globe in a few days too. I don’t think I will like it in Tombstone anyway.”

They traveled as far as the little stagecoach stop of Gillette together, and then parted company, Doc going to Tombstone and Kate to Globe. She later added, “I didn’t hear from Doc for some time.”

Y. VEGAS GUN FIGHT WITH CHARLIE WHITE:

Doc didn’t stay long in Vegas for his initial trip, and ended up back in Las Vegas long enough to get in another gun fight with a man named “Charlie White”.

Everywhere he goes there’s talk of him in another gun fight.

While in town, Doc learned that White was working as a bartender in an Old Town saloon. He’d had previous run ins with him going back to Dodge City and they didn’t care for one another. A witness to the shootout described what happened. “Doc entered the saloon with a cocked revolver in his hand and began hostilities at once, without previously making his presence known. White was in the act of serving some thirsty customers, but recognizing his old enemy from Dodge City, he ducked behind the bar just in time, while the customers ducked to the floor. White quickly emerged with a six- shooter, and [a] duel began in dead earnest, many shots being exchanged at short distance without effect.”

The meeting was so sudden that both participants were evidently somewhat off their accustomed good marksmanship, but finally White dropped to the floor. Holliday feeling that he had fulfilled his mission in Las Vegas, departed. A doctor was called at once for White, and it was found that while the bullet only grazed the skin, it had been so near the spine as to stun him temporarily. He was up and around in a couple of hours as good as ever.

I’ve read about a lot of old wild west gun fights and it is amazing how often something like this happens. Two dudes get in a shootout, one dude assumes he killed the other and then takes off and the other guy lives. I remember one story about the same two dudes who got into three separate show downs. One of the guys thought he killed the other guy the first two times but he lived each. And then the third time, the guy that lost killed the guy who had twice thought he was dead. Moral of the story - if you ever get into a shoot out and the other guy goes down, take a moment to walk over and make sure he’s dead before you leave or he could come back to kill you.

Z. BACK TO PRESCOTT: Doc left Las Vegas and most likely returned to Prescott, moving into a boardinghouse on Montezuma Street, still without Kate. Still writing letters, probably romantic ones, to his cousin back in Georgia. Guessing his cousin love may have had something to do with he and Kate’s on-again, off-again relationship. Or, maybe he just couldn’t handle her giant nose sometimes and he needed a break so he could sleep through the night without ol’ Katie Chainsaw shnauzz snoring him awake.

Back in Prescott, Doc shared quarters with Richard E. Elliott, a miner and temperance advocate, and John J. Gosper, the secretary of Arizona Territory. He gambled and also met John H. Behan, a politician who you can also see portrayed in Tombstone the movie, the greatest movie of all time. And, in Prescott, Doc heard constant talk of all the money to be made in the mining boomtown of Tombstone, a town that just had the richest silver strike Arizona had ever seen.

Late that summer of 1880, Doc left Prescott, most likely in August, pausing in Tucson before moving on to Tombstone in September and reuniting with Wyatt. Once in Tombstone, “the liquor and gambling houses” became Holliday’s home.

Though it still had the look and feel of a newly born mining camp, Tombstone boasted a more urbane and stable business community than most boomtowns. There were not only plush saloons but also fine hotels, a public library at J. Goldtree & Company’s cigar store, complete with a carpeted and well-decorated reading room, and a school under construction.

There were also FreeMasons - the Illuminati!! - Space Lizards had already invaded the town. Of course they did the silver mining broke through into one of their underground lairs - there was a brass band, a miner’s union, a miner’s hospital, the Home Dramatic Association, the Tombstone Social Club, a fire department, two daily newspapers, and a variety of other social and political clubs.

Not long after Holliday settled in, the San Francisco Exchange predicted that Tombstone was “destined within a year or two to be as important a place as Leadville or Virginia City.” It was also a culturally diverse population that included Hispanics, Chinese, Irish, and other immigrants. It was a volatile mix, with real potential for trouble. Fred White, the thirty-two-year-old town marshal, had his hands full. Fights, shootings, and killings gave the town, what George W. Parsons called “a hard reputation.”

I will say the movie Tombstone took a big liberty here the character of Fred White. In real life - he’s just 32 year olds when Doc arrives. In the movie he’s about 65. Makes it more dramatic when Curly Bill shoots him down.

By the time Doc arrives Wyatt and Virgil Earp are lawmen and they’ve already had run ins with some of the Cowboys - a wild west gang of sorts that robbed cattle, stagecoaches, and raised Hell in town. The gang that would come back at them for serous vengeance later. They’d arrested a few Cowboys for some cattle thieven’.

Doc settled into town initially as a faro dealer. He also got into a gun and fist fight with a local bartender Milton E Joyce shortly after arriving. Of course he did. They two men got into a fight in the street where, at close range, Doc shot him in the hand and Joyce smashed Doc in the head with a pistol hard enough for some witnesses to think he wouldn’t survive the night. Doc did survive and was charged with “assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill.” He ended up paying a $20 fine and $11.25 in court costs. Ha!!

Later, in Tombstone, the scene where Curly Bill got drunk and started firing his gun around and then Sheriff White tried to disarm him only to be shot really did happen. And Wyatt, Morgan, and Virgil Earp really were there to throw Curly Bill in jail.

In the movie, Curly Bill gets let out of jail a few days later, in the movie he spent more time behind bars, but did get release due to the shooting being attributed to an accident rather than murder. Also, like the movie, there really were all those cowboy gang members - Johnny Ringo, Ike Clanton and the lot. “Law dogs don’t go roun’ here! Law dogs don’t go round here!” Even John E. Tyler - played by Billy Bob Thorton was a real dude. And Wyatt Earp really did physically drag John E. Tyler out of a saloon.

Doc and the Earps worked all sorts of jobs, mining claims, gambling, security, all sorts of Tombstone jobs. Unlike the movie, Doc got into a fair amount of legal trouble in Tombstone, charged with various crimes related to firing his gun drunkenly in town, participating in “Shooting frays” (shootouts). He was even charged with attempting to rob the US Mail and Murder. These charges were dismissed for lack of evidence.

Wyatt Earp wasn’t quite the law abiding citizen in real life, either. It wasn’t quite as simple as the Earp brothers and Doc are the good guys and the Cowboys are the bad guys. Wyatt was even arrested once by his own brother Virgil for “disturbing the peace and fighting in violation of city ordinance.” These guys were all fucking nuts. One day they’re a lawman then next day their pulling a gun on someone for insulting them at a poker game. It was anarchy in these towns at this time.

Doc’s lady Big Nose Kate eventually made it to Tombstone, and got arrested several times herself for altercations with other women and basically being a drunken mess in public. She was arrested once for turning her head to fast and knocking out an elderly woman with her baby arm nose.

Alright - maybe not that last thing.

Interesting to me was finding out that part of Kate and Doc’s relationship troubles at the time revolved around Kate hating the Earps. This is very unlike the movie. She hated that Doc was friendly with men she considered to be legal gangsters. Kate would even go on to accuse the Earps of hiring someone to kill her. She’d later accuse them or robbing a stagecoach and being involved in murders.

After a year or so in Tombstone, thanks to a variety of charges against him, possible murders that have never been confirmed, and several altercations that were witnessed Doc is now recognized as one of the more dangerous men in a dangerous town. He really was the bad motherfucker you see in the movie Tombstone.

He was also healthier than he’d been in years, the arid climate of Tombstone aiding in keeping his Tuberculosis at bay.

AA.October 26th, 1881 - Shootout at the OK Corral:

And then there is the most famous Doc Holliday Tombstone story. His involvement in the shootout at the OK Corral on October 26th, 1881.

On the morning of October 25, Ike Clanton and Tom McLaury came into Tombstone for supplies. Over the next 24 hours, the two men had several violent run-ins with the Earps and their friend Doc Holliday.

Around 1:30 p.m. on October 26, Ike’s brother Billy rode into town to join them, along with Frank McLaury and Billy Claiborne. The first person they met in the local saloon was Holliday, who was delighted to inform them that their brothers had both been pistol-whipped by the Earps. Frank and Billy immediately left the saloon, vowing revenge.

Around 3 p.m., the Earps and Holliday spotted the five members of the Clanton-McLaury gang in a vacant lot behind the OK Corral, at the end of Fremont Street.

They approached the men with Doc Holliday and it didn’t take long before shots were fired. The famous gunfight that ensued lasted all of 30 seconds, and around 30 shots were fired.

Though it’s still debated who fired the first shot, most reports say that the shootout began when Virgil Earp pulled out his revolver and shot Billy Clanton point-blank in the chest, while Doc Holliday fired a shotgun blast at Tom McLaury’s chest. Though Wyatt Earp wounded Frank McLaury with a shot in the stomach, Frank managed to get off a few shots before collapsing, as did Billy Clanton. When the dust cleared, Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers were dead, and Virgil and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday were wounded. Ike Clanton and Claiborne had run for the hills.

Sheriff John Behan of Cochise County, who witnessed the shootout, charged the Earps and Holliday with murder. A month later, however, a Tombstone judge, Wells Spicer, found the men not guilty, ruling that they were “fully justified in committing these homicides.”

Boys will be boys! No big whoop. Just a big shootout in the middle of town. No need for anyone to go to jail or nothing.

BB. December 1881: In December 1881, Virgil Earp is ambushed, shot, and his arm permanently injured. Several Cowboys are suspected of the shooting. Wyatt then becomes deputy Marshall.

CC. January 1882: In January of 1882, the famous, “I’m your Huckleberry” scene from Tombstone actually takes place.

Cowboy badass gunslinger Johhny Ringo really does challenge Wyatt Earp to a shootout and Doc Holliday really does step in for his friend. And in one witness account of the incident, he says, “I’m your Huckleberry. That’s just my game,” in response to Ringo asking for a duel.

Holliday is also rumored to say, after the gun fight is broken up, “All I want of you is ten paces in the street!”

The dude was fearless.

DD. March 1882: In March of 1882, Morgan Earp is shot and killed while playing pool and again the Cowboys are blamed.

EE. March 20, 1882: Then, a week of so later, Virgil and his wife Allie attempt to leave town on a train and two Cowboys, Frank Stillwell and Ike Clanton try to ambush them. Wyatt is there and kills Stillwell with a shotgun blast. Following this a judge in Tucson issues arrest warrants for Wyatt and Doc Holliday for the murder of Stillwell and Doc takes off with Wyatt and a few other men to track down and kill other members of the Cowboy gang who shot Virigil and killed Morgan. Just like in the movie Tombstone. They allegedly kill Florentino Cruz and then a few days later ambushed several Cowboys camped out at Iron Springs and a huge shootout ensues, with Wyatt shooting down Curley Bill, again just like the movie.

And, sadly, just like the movie, neither Doc nor Wyatt are able to locate and kill Ike Clanton, the man who probably killed Morgan Earp. However, Ike was shot and killed in a separate incident a few years later.

FF. May 15, 1882: On May 15, 1882, Holliday was arrested in Denver on the Tucson warrant for murdering Frank Stilwell.

When Wyatt Earp learned of the charges, he feared his friend Holliday would not receive a fair trial in Arizona. Earp asked his friend Bat Masterson, then chief of police of Trinidad, Colorado, to help get Holliday released. Masterson drew up bullshit charges against Holliday and then took Holliday to Pueblo, where he was released on bond two weeks after his arrest.

GG.July 14, 1882: On July 14, 1882, Holliday's long-time enemy Johnny Ringo was found dead under a low fork of a large tree in West Turkey Creek Valley in the Arizona Territory. He had a bullet hole in his right temple and a revolver was found hanging from a finger of his hand. His death was ruled a suicide.

BUT - according to the book I Married Wyatt Earp, which author and collector Glen Boyer claimed to have assembled from manuscripts written by Earp's third wife, Josephine Marcus Earp, - the woman was also portrayed in the movie Tombstone by ageless beauty Dana Delaney, Earp and Holliday traveled to Arizona with some friends in early July, found Ringo in the valley, and killed him.

Historians don’t generally believe this account. But, who knows! Maybe Doc really did draw down on him. “C’mon. C’mon!! You’re no daisy. You’re no daisy at all! Poor soul. You were just too high strung.”

HH. So, maybe that happened. What definitely happened is that Holiday’s consumption worsened greatly and he went to a Colorado and his life deteriorated.

Wyatt went on to live with Josephine. Kate may or may not of spent

time with him in Colorado, and Doc went on to continue to gamble, and possible get in a few more gun fights in various Colorado towns, spending a great deal of time in Denver.

II. 1886: Holliday was able to see his old friend Wyatt one last time in the late winter of 1886, where they met in the lobby of the Windsor Hotel in Denver.

JJ. 1887: And then in 1887, prematurely gray and badly ailing, Holliday made his way to the Hotel Glenwood, near the hot springs of Glenwood Springs, Colorado. And it is here he’d die at 10am on November 8, 1887. He was 36. A nurse was there for his last words. He looked at his bare feet and said, “This is funny.” And then he passed on. Apparently, he always thought he’d die with his boots on in a gun fight of some sort. At the end, no family was with him and he died alone.

And the lonely death of this Western legend takes us out of this Timesuck Timeline.

PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE OUTRO

IV. Conclusions

A. So, Doc Holliday - what a life, huh? The slavery part and the swimming hole altercation was a bummer but I don’t know what I expected it. He was a white plantation owner’s son in the pre-civil war South. You can’t not be somewhat of a product of your time I guess. Not that that makes it okay. But, it’s also not like he was doing that shit in 1985.

Overall, I was really shocked that his life seemed to actually match up pretty well with Val Kilmer’s character in Tombstone which was pretty damn cool. And speaking of Tombstone, let’s see if we can find, luriking in the comment section under a clip from the movie, some idiots of the internet.

PAUSE

IDIOTS OF THE INTERNET

V. Idiots of the Internet A. Under a clip of Doc Holliday meeting Johnny Ringo, the famous scene where a drunk Holliday twirls his cup mocking Johnny Ringo twirling his gun, almost every comment is someone praising the movie. I love it. And then Mario Sevilla posts, “Hispanics for Trump.”

What? Why? You love Trump? Good for you! That’s great. But what do politics have to do with this movie. Why do people do that? To start arguments. Stop being a party crasher Mario and take your politics the Hell out of Tombstone. We’re here for Doc Holliday - not to talk even more about the only thing the media seems interested in - the White House.

B. Well, after this comment is like a hundred more love fest comments talking about stuff like how Kilmer should’ve won 10 oscars for his performance. Agreed!! And then someone else takes a shit on the parade. User Don Stone posts:

“Dumbest scene ever in the history of westerns, no one signed autographs in the 19th century and Wyatt Earp was only known as a pimp and a small town deputy before the gunfight. And it took several decades before fictional writers idolized Wyatt as a hero of the ole west. He died before his Fame was realized and he passed knowing he was a liar, murderer and a fraud.”

Fuck off Don - it’s a movie you fun-killing asshole! It’s not a documentary. Yeah, Hollywood made Wyatt a little more good guy than real life. SO WHAT! It made for a more compelling revenge narrative at the end. Why post this? Why can’t you let people who love this movie have a love fest? “You’re no daisy Don Stone. You’re no Daisy at all!”

Major props to the commenters for not responding to either Don or Mario. Not one response to those trolls.

C. And then like a hundred more happy, fun comments. And then Don Stone is back. Fucking Donny! Fun-killing shithead Donny. He posts.

“Weak, cliche soft tough guy bullshit. They should have just measured dicks and got it over with! Lol.”

No. Not Lol you douchebag. FYL - fuck your life. Not sure that is a real acronym but I like it. Do you even know what cliche means? It means “a very predictable or unoriginal thing” There was nothing predicable about Doc twirling his cup to parody Ringo. It was beautiful you fucking half wit.

You know what is a cliche? Your dumbshit trolling. Now go measure your own dick - guessing it’s somewhere under 3 inches when it’s rock hard you idiot of the internet.

(Chikatilo) “Hey! Seriously? You make dick joke without Chikatilo? You leave me out of show? What I do? What big deal? Why can’t talk about my boner hating penis for two seconds? Nothing, You just going to let outro play now? Fine. I guess Chikatilo idiot for expecting so show up more today.”

PAUSE IDIOTS OF THE INTERNET

VI. ENDING A. Alright. So. Who really was Doc Holliday? Well, he was a tough guy. He was a proud Southerner. He was a guy who probably never was married to Kate and probably was in love with his cousin Mattie. He was a guy who saw his mother and older brother die of the disease he learned he had at a young age. He’s heartsick and his body is dying a lot faster than it was supposed to. He had some anger issues. He was a momma’s boy who may have hated his father. He was loyal to the Wyatt Earp to the end, helping him kill the men who killed Wyatt’s brothers. He was fearless and a man who backed down from a challenge. He was an educated man and good dentist. He was a gambler who clearly loved the adrenaline rush he had to have given him. He was a man who seemed unafraid of death. He

was not without many faults.

I guess, really, we know quite a bit about him for someone who never wrote down any of their thoughts. I’m kind of glad he didn’t. I like the mastery that surrounds him. It allows us to bend him around a little bit and make him into who we want him to be. And for me, he’s Val Kilmer in Tombstone.

Time for Top Five Takeaways.

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS INTRO

VII. Top Five Takeways

1. Doc Holliday is rumored to have killed somewhere around 10 men. Or maybe he never killed any. He was never found guilty of murder and there are conflicting reports around all of his alleged murders.

2. Doc was born and raised in Georgia - the son and grandson of plantation owners. And he’d leave his Southern roots behind at the age of 21 and spend nearly the entirety of the last 15 years of his life in the Wild West becoming a little less Dentist and a little more outlaw every year.

3. Doc Holliday may have never headed out West at all and gotten into gambling and drinking - if only he’d been allowed to marry his first cousin. How weird is that possibility?

4. Doc Holliday was involved in the most famous shootout of the Wild West at the OK Corral and really did track down and help Wyatt Earp kill various members of the Cowboy gang that killed Wyatt’s brother Morgan and tried to kill Virgil. Just like in Tombstone. So dope. 5. Number five, new info. It is hard to imagine anyone but Val Kilmer playing Doc Holiday in Tombstone, but, William Dafoe is rumored to have been fist considered for the role. I love Dafoe but I cannot imagine him in that role. Supposedly Kurt Russell wanted him but Buena Vista Pictures balked because of Dafoe playing

Jesus in the controversial film, the Last Temptation of Christ. So, Val Kilmer, sometimes 2nd place isn’t the first loser. It’s the best!

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS

VIII.CLOSING ANNOUNCEMENTS

A. Doc Holliday! Sucked. Hoped you enjoyed it like I did. And now time for a few more announcements before this week’s updates.

B. Alright. Time for some more tour dates.

Houston, Dallas, San Francisco, Brea, Sacramento, Tempe, Arizona and more tour dates at the freshly built www.dancummins.tv. Come see me live. I’ve been having a great time with all the Timesuckers at the shows.

And again - check out Patreon - become a Space Lizard!! Ensure the survival of Timesuck. Let this experiment in curiosity continue to grow - I can’t do it without you!! And enjoy that new album on Pandora!! For free!! Link in episode description. And here’s a little clip of my OTHER new album, Feel the Heat, the one you get for free when you sign up to become a Space Lizard.

here’s a little taste.

ALBUM PREVIEW CLIP

C. Thanks to Sydney Shives, Harmony Vellekamp, Jesse Dobner, Josh Krell, Maddie Teater, Deanna Marino, and the entire Timesuck team.

Thanks for all the reviews - spreading the suck!! Well over 2,500 reviews on iTunes. It helps so much.

And thanks for using the Amazon button at Timesuckpodast dot com to do your shopping and help the show out while you do.

And thanks to all of you who voted for Doc on Instagram, hundreds

of you seemed pretty excited to vote and vote quickly for Doc Holiday.

This Monday’s episode is fascinating - the colonial devastation of Africa. So many civil wars and corrupt governments on that continent and a lot of the chaos can be traced back to some super shady stuff Europe did in the late 1800s. And we explore the history of various cultures on the very intriguing continent of Africa. Really hope you take a listen.

And now - time for some Timesucker Updates

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES INTRO

IX. TIMESUCKER UPDATES

A. So many updates coming in about last week’s Freemason gender debate update. I knew their would be and I love it! We should be able to talk about stuff like this.

Email From: Matthew

Message:

Hey there Suckmaster, just wanted to throw in my two cents on the gender-exclusive Free Mason issue. I'll keep things brief as I only want to present a counterpoint or two that I don't think have been considered. It's been said that its exclusivity is unfair because it provides men with networking opportunities.

Well if we take this to be true, then doesn't that mean that any other exclusive networking event should also be forced open to everyone if we want to be consistent? What about wealthy country clubs? Should just anyone be able to walk into private events hosted by the rich and famous? This line is too blurry to be drawn anywhere, and much like private businesses have the right to refuse business to anyone, so too should people have the right to make whatever clubs they want and refuse admittance to anyone.

Though like you Suckmaster, I personally wouldn't care about any arbitrary distinctions like these and don't see much reason for them in most cases. On the off chance I were in such a group, I would likely advocate for open admittance as well. It is a shame that no female equivalent exists, but nothing is stopping you from creating one. I myself am a white male programmer, and I can speak from experience that being a woman or minority gives you a HUGE leg up in hiring opportunities. The statement that females have a harder time getting into jobs in STEM fields is largely a myth, and most of the gender gap in these workplaces is due to the simple fact that fewer women choose to go into these fields.

The company I work for in particular is only 40% white, to highlight the level of what I consider to be unjust discrimination, much like affirmative action. Some colleges will actually subtract from white and asian SAT scores when considering students for admittance, while other minority groups get a bonus. If this isn't racist, I don't know what is. It implies that these schools actually think that minorities need help to get into these schools and can't do so on their own merit, in addition to increasing the amount of work necessary for non-minorities to shine over the rest of the competition. For the most part, schools and workplaces are more than happy to hire a female or a minority with lesser qualifications only to fulfill their diversity quota.

If I were a minority in that position, I would be disgusted, feeling that I was being reduced to a statistic and that I didn't actually earn the position. But anyway, that's just a little tangent on the discrimination stuff that's such a hot button issue right now. I personally love debating with others, and even though I'm sure you'll get a ton of e- mails on this subject, I'd appreciate it if you'd take the time to get back. Or if you can't, I suppose I'll just have to see you in Chicago! ;)

Thank you for sharing Matt! I knew this would be a trigger issue for many, as it was for myself actually, and we have been getting a lot of emails.

Your message illustrates both sides. Like me, you value freedom and the right for an institution to admit how it pleases, and like me,

you don’t like it when an institution skews unfairly away from you in it’s policies, like admitting someone to the same place you’re trying to get in, even though they may have a lower test score.

I was told numerous times in LA that I wasn’t going to be considered for important showcases in LA because casting directors attending the show were not interested in seeing any 30 something white dudes. That felt fairly racist too. I was, like Jessica in her original message, banned from something that would help my career because of, in this case, my combination of gender and skin color. But, I also understand that what happened was done because of historical inequality and that, even if it affects me negatively, the intention is good. As is making it temporarily easier to allow historically disenfranchised ethnic groups to get into certain schools or how it may be easier for women in certain situations today to get certain jobs because the employer has a mandate to hire more women. Again, this is done because of historical inequality.

More interesting thoughts. Circling back to Freemasons, I still see both sides. Like you, I would want to allow women to enter personally, but, also like you, I don’t want that enforced because above all I value freedom of choice.

Alright - let’s get some more perspectives.

B. This next one comes in from Runa. Runa - hope I’m saying your name right.

Email From: Runa

About women and the freemasons. I am a woman and the argument that women should be allowed in for networking is fruitless. First of all, there are young professionals groups, chamber of commerce, and female-specific networking groups that any woman could join. However, most women's groups are more social in nature and that is their aim. Gaining business connections and networking is not the sole aim of the freemasons. I think that the sentiment that women should be able to join stems from that same cultural entitlement of this era where everyone is offended by everything, everyone should be included, nobody's feelings should get hurt, and everyone should be rewarded for mediocrity. I fear that we are heading toward a highly censored monochromatic society where nobody is identified by color or sex or sexual orientation and nobody can say anything for fear of offending someone, where we all use the same bathrooms and there are no gender distinctions. I do not believe the freemasons or any other organization are responsible for perpetuating the gender bias of a patriarchal society, if anyone is to be blamed it is us. There are male dominated fields and female dominated fields, and if you're not happy with the balance in your desired field, then be that minority, and if you want to change that, incite and inspire other like-minds until you represent the majority.

I love this Runa!! Excellent incites. Yes - while I don’t feel what Jessica asked for was part of our everyone needs a trophy no matter what culture - I like your attitude of, if they won’t let me in their club, I’ll start my own. That’s what Timesuck is. NO ONE wanted this fucking podcast when it was just an idea. Why? Because I was not part of the LA cook kids club. I didn’t share the exact same political leanings - basically socialist far left - and, well, you knows why. So, I got fired up and started my own.

We can’t change the past - we can only change the future. And in the present, no one is stopping anyone from starting an important all-female networking group.

AND - you’re right - how far do we take this everyone is the same shit? I LIKE diversity. I’m okay with not being able to go to every meeting because I’d want the same option afforded to me. And, with freedom to do that, inequality is going to come. Inequality will always, always, always exist. We’re not all going to be picked first at recess and we’re not all going to get into every club. Rejecting builds preserverance.

And again - I think Jessica would agree with a lot of this. Her argument, as I understood it, was that she was not at all opposed to exclusive groups, just opposed to excluding people from important career groups. And btw - I have gotten a lot of messages from Masons letting me know that they are currently far more of a social group than a career focused group.

C. Alright, one more perspective on this whole web of triggers.

This comes in from Susan

Message: A Co-Ed Freemasons? While I feel for Jessica and agree with the spirit of equality in what she wrote, I feel the right of association is ultimately more important in a free society.

Our Constitution gives us the right to choose who we want to spend time with in private spaces, and the Freemasons, for whatever reason, even in the face of declining membership, continue to insist on the fraternal nature of the group. Good or bad, the right of free association allows free people to define their identities in ways that are important to them. I am a transgender woman, and having lived on both sides of the fence, I can say that private clubs or spaces for men are rare. There is arguably more activity at the Freemason's lodge than professional networking. Although women have, and continue to, suffer from oppression and discrimination, they are free to establish a similar private organization if they wish. At times, I struggle with exclusion from certain women's spaces due to trans status, but again, I support the right to determine who they'd prefer to spend time with in their private lives.

I am also an attorney, and can say that most professions, including mine, have many groups and networking opportunities for women. There are several group that I belong to, and I have used these networks to gain referrals, ask questions, and garner general support. Personally, I feel more comfortable in these groups than their co-ed counterparts, because my female colleagues seem less guarded and more confident in these spaces. While women have some catching up to do, we can do so without abridging privacy and the right of association to get there.

Beautiful Susan!!! Yes, yes, yes! What a wonderfully unique perspective you bring to this having been on both sides. Thank you so much for writing in.

I love it. Yes - let the Freemasons do their thing, there are other

networking groups. Freedom of choice is one of the important things we have in America and will also advocate to keep as much of it as we can.

And again - I hope I didn’t convey Jessica’s tone incorrectly. She truly just comes across as a wonderful person who wants to join this particular group and in that sense, on an emotional level, I feel terrible for her.

Do what I did Jessica - put that rejection on your shoulder and let that chip get big. Get fucking pissed. Start your own group if it really is something your passionate about. Or, you know, do whatever you want to do.

There’s not always a clear cut answer and sometimes it’s just important to keep talking about something. Fucking love you beautiful bastards. Thanks for being part of Timesuck and making it so special and diverse and wonderful. No preaching to the choir in this fucking bunch. We’re all so fantastically different.

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES

X. GOODBYE

A. Have a good weekend everyone! Don’t challenge anyone to a duel unless you’re ready to draw down. Remember that everyone is welcome to be a Space Lizard. Hail Nimrod, maybe even hail Lucifina, and Keep on suckin’.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globe,_Arizona https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillette,_Arizona http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/shootout-at-the-ok- corral http://spartacus-educational.com/WWearpM.htm http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/az/tombstone.html https://truewestmagazine.com/how-many-men-did-doc-holliday- kill/ https://movieweb.com/tombstone-movie-facts-trivia-list/

Primary Book Source: Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend by historian Gary L Roberts