THE OUTLAW of CAVE CREEK Bob Boze Bell, Owner and Operator Of
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THE OUTLAW OF CAVE CREEK Bob Boze Bell, owner and operator of True West Magazine, rocks back in his office chair and throws a laugh at the ceiling when he recalls the stories his grandmother used to tell him about the Old West outlaws in his bloodlines. As a child, Bell was thrilled by the exciting news that he was related to infamous villains. His mother was not. "When my grandmother said I was related to "Black Jack" Ketchum, John Wesley Hardin, and "Bigfoot" Wallace, my mother heard: the Boston Strangler, Jack the Ripper, and Charlie Manson," Bell says as his laughter rolls out his office door and through the halls of his magazine's Cave Creek, Arizona headquarters. Bell followed the winding trail of his family's history back through the tangled branches of an extended family tree to the two gunslingers and the former Texas Ranger for his new book, "The 66 Kid." The illustrated book entwines the history of America's most famous highway with Bell's personal story of growing up on one of the stops on the road in Kingman, Arizona and the winding career path that ultimately led him to True West Magazine. WYATT EARP WAS A JERK The 1950 census listed 3,342 people living in Kingman. By 1960, it had grown by only 1,183. "It was a backwater," Bell said. "We had no T.V.; radio only at night. There was only a dirt road from Kingman to Phoenix." His book further paints the picture of life in Kingman in the 1950's: there was a 10 p.m. curfew every night and a siren blared throughout town when it was time for folks go home; mail was picked up at the post office instead of being dropped at individual houses; dogs were allowed in classrooms at Bell's junior high school. And the most antiquated feature, even by the standards of the day, was the telephone. "Our telephone number was Blue 549 and there was no dialing. You picked up the phone, and an operator came on the line and asked for the number you were calling. I'd say I was calling the Harshbergers at Blue 427, and she would make the connection," Bell says in his book. In this environment, Bell was about as close to the Old West as a person could get at the time. In 1912, Arizona was the last state in the continental 48 to be added to the Union. The same year, his grandmother was growing up on a ranch about 90 miles from Tombstone, the legendary home of Wyatt Earp and the O.K. Corral. Bell vividly recalls racing into his grandmother's living room when he was 9 years old and planting himself in front of the television to watch his favorite show, The Life and Times of Wyatt Earp. As the theme song played, his grandmother walked through the room, pointed at the screen, and uttered words that would stick with him for the rest of his life. "'Wyatt Earp was the biggest jerk who ever walked the west,'" Bell says, quoting his grandmother. Thirty-three years after the gunfight that would become arguably the most famous in American history, men who had interacted with the Earps were still working near Bell's grandmother's ranch. "All the cowboys in that area hated the Earps," Bell says. "And so that blew my mind, that the T.V. was showing this hero who never did anything wrong and here my grandmother hated him." That moment was the first ingredient in Bell's love of the Old West. "I had -- I still have -- a major fascination with the Earps and Tombstone and that whole story. And so the next summer I bought a fake photo of Billy the Kid, and you put those two things together and that was the explosion," Bell says. MIND-BLOWING CARTOONS As Bell grew into a young man in the rebellious times of the 1960's, new influences pushed his love of the Old West into the background. Zap Comix opened his eyes to the world of underground comics and he credits it with being a major inspiration to follow a life of painting and illustration. The comic book was founded in San Francisco in 1968 by cartoonist Robert Crumb and it was filled with irreverence. It was filled with raunchy characters and lewd behavior. It was filled with all things counter to 1950's culture. It was perfect for a 22-year-old Bob Boze Bell who had left the University of Arizona a few credits shy of receiving his degree. By this time, he friends simply called him Boze. Many still do. A common misconception is that it is his middle name. It's actually a nickname that was spawned from a classic example of Bell's own irreverence. "Everybody in my hometown had a nickname. We had Chicken, we had Salty, we had Punchy, had Low Pants Jance, we had Box Lip Darrell," Bell says and cracks up at the memories of his old friends. Bell's nickname came from a baseball game in high school. His team was playing their hated rivals from Needles, California and Bell hit a line drive to right field and easily cruised into second base for a double. To taunt his opponents, he rounded first and started running backwards to second. His coach, who was also his Spanish teacher, shouted out "Payaso!" from the dugout, which is Spanish for "clown." Bell's best friend, Charlie Waters, manipulated the reprimand into "bozosco" and the rest of his teammates shorten it to "boze." Boze was drawn specifically to a cartoon strip within Zap Comix called Hog Riding Fools by S. Clay Wilson. "That was the comic that literally blew my mind. It was just absolutely spectacular," Bell says. Two years later, he earned his first job as a cartoonist with the Arizona Republic. He illustrated a short cartoon strip about growing up in Kingman. In 1977, a new source of inspiration was discovered: National Lampoon magazine. The humor magazine debuted in 1970 and reached its zenith in 1975. That same year, a companion T.V. show was created and the world was introduced to future comic legends John Belushi, Bill Murray, and Chevy Chase. "That was our holy grail. We wanted to work for them," Bell says. National Lampoon spurred Bell to create his own humor magazine called the Razz Revue with his longtime friend and current art director, Dan Harshberger. "That was my master's degree. I learned all about publishing and printing. I went out and sold the ads. From the ground up -- from collating to printing to offsets to photography to developing the whole thing -- we did it all," he says. It was centered around Arizona but as Bell's biography on True West Magazine's website succinctly states: "It lasts 16 issues, four years, and makes no money." 1977 was a pivotal year for Bell for another reason: he met his second wife … at a wake … for her boyfriend. THE "APOCALYPSE NOW" WAKE "It looked like a war zone. There were like four houses left, empty pads and they hadn't come in to build the freeway yet. They had barrels with fires in them. It looked like 'Apocalypse Now.' There were beer cans everywhere and everyone was partying," Bell says, describing the setting where he met his future wife. That is Bell's description of the huge outdoor party that was a wake for William Edward Compton, a popular underground radio station manager who was inducted into the Arizona Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame in 2005. Bell and Harshberger had discontinued the Razz Revue in 1976 and now, in 1977, Bell was working at the New Times in Phoenix as a cartoonist. His first marriage failed that year and left him vowing to stay single for the rest of his life. Mere days after he made the vow, he went to the wake of Bill Compton. Compton had tragically died in a car accident and thousands attended his wake in a neighborhood near the current intersection of Thomas Road and the 51 freeway. At the time, the area had been condemned and many of the houses had been leveled to make way for the freeway, but it hadn't been constructed yet. The condemned zone was a perfect location for enormous event. Not long after Bell arrived, he spotted Compton's girlfriend, Kathy Radina, who had suffered serious injuries in the accident and attended the wake with a tooth missing and a cast on her arm, according to Bell. "I thought she was the cutest damn thing going and she was flirting with me," Bell remembers. At the end of the night, Bell left with some friends to go to a local hangout. In the car, the flirting was the immediate subject of conversation. "So Wonderful Russ [current Phoenix realtor Russ Shaw] says, 'hey Boze, I think Kathy Radina was digging on you.' And I said, 'are you kidding?'" Bell laughs. "I was clueless." Bell hollered at his friends to turn the car around. They obliged him but by the time they got back, the party was over. "The street was deserted. I had to jump out of the back of a Volkswagon while it was still moving. They practically ran over me," he says. He ran into one of the building and found Kathy sitting in a chair with a former boyfriend sitting on one arm of the chair with his arm around her.