Wyatt Earp

           On Wednesday, August 1 I paid my rent online, and by email reminded my landlord that he’d walked off with my screwdriver on Saturday and that he'd forgotten to give me a receipt for my July rent.

            I rode to Freedom Mobile to pay for my August phone service but there was only one clerk working both windows and there were a few people ahead of me. On the left a guy was getting a new phone but with him was a late middle-aged guy in a wheelchair. Except for his grey and white sneakers he was all in black, including his baseball cap and around his neck was an ornate silver cross about the size of an index finger crossed by a pinky. The wheelchair bound man seemed to know a lot about smartphones and their components, so much so that the clerk actually asked his opinion about iphones. He said he wouldn’t touch an iphone because he likes to customize his phones and Apple doesn’t allow for customization. When his friend got his phone he advised him to take it home and charge it fully, let it cycle down to zero and repeat that a couple of times to train the battery to last longer.

            My phone service is $28.25 after tax but I only had $30.00 and the clerk didn’t have change. He asked if I would take $1.00 back and come back later on to get the $0.75. I hesitated and then tiredly said okay, but then he shrugged and gave me back a Toonie and told me not to worry about it.

            I pedaled down to Freshco where I got two three-liter plastic baskets of Ontario peaches. The grapes were all from the States and so I got a small pack of Mexican raspberries. I bought another rack of frozen pork ribs, some four-year-old cheddar and some yogourt. The clean-cut guy behind me at the checkout counter looked at my peaches and exclaimed, “Peaches! It's exciting!" He threw me off for a second but I said, “Yeah, it's about time." "Totally!" he added. Peaches are nice and delicious but I wouldn’t call them exciting.

            When I got home I wrapped the two packs of peaches in cloth bags in hopes that precaution would curb the fruit flies that were all over the last bunch of peaches that I had. Putting them in the fridge is not an option because they don’t ripen properly.

            I had a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich with mayonnaise for lunch.

            I decided not to take a bike ride that afternoon because there was a 40% chance of rain at around 19:00 when I’d be on my way home.

            Instead I just worked on my journal.

            Outside my window an Ethiopian guy that I used to see a lot in the food bank line-up but who now just hangs around outside the donut shop drinking beer, was very drunk and verbally attacking a butch looking East Asian woman in a white baseball cap, a white shirt and white shorts. She was hanging out with some of the other neighbourhood regulars, including an Ethiopian woman that’s also always hanging around and drinking but who never seems to get drunk. The Ethiopian guy was saying to the East Asian woman, “You a lesbian! If I had a knife I’d cut your face!” The Ethiopian woman was urging him to be respectful. Another woman who looked like she was from Africa was walking by with her two children and also told him to show respect. A young man who was hanging out with the women threatened to punch him in the mouth and he backed off.

            I went out to buy a can of beer and stopped to look at a striking image on the streetcar shelter of a woman on her left side with her back exposed and what looked like a braided wound running diagonally from her left shoulder to her right hip with red fringes that resemble cuts hanging down. It was an ad for an exhibition by Rebecca Belmore at the AGO. As I was standing there a woman that was walking by said to me, "It's really great!”

            I watched the first and fourth episodes of The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp.

            In the premier, Earp arrives at Ellsworth, Kansas in 1873, fresh from hunting Buffalo on the Great Plains. The sheriff of the town had sent for him, hoping he would replace him as sheriff. He is reluctant but takes the job when his friend is gunned down. He also meets a teenaged Bat Masterson, who becomes Robin to Earp’s Batman.
            There is no record of Wyatt Earp ever having been a marshal in Ellsworth, Kansas or even having been involved with the place in any way. His name is not on any hotel ledger. After his first wife’s death in Missouri from typhoid, from 1870 to 1872 he was arrested for once for stealing a horse and three times for running and being found in a brothel. Bat Masterson would have been 19 in 1873.

            In the fourth episode, Earp is still in Ellsworth in 1874 and has to break up a war between cowboys that are former Confederate soldiers and the authorities in Kansas. Meanwhile Earp is offered the job of marshal of Wichita, Kansas. At the end of the story he accepts the job and sends Bat Masterson to Topeka, Kansas to finish school.

            Earp actually arrived in Wichita in 1974 where his wife opened a brothel. Earp did join the police force in 1875 and earned a good reputation but he got fired after getting into a fistfight with a politician. He immediately moved to Dodge City where he became an assistant marshal.  It was in Dodge that he met a 22-year-old Bat Masterson for the first time who was also a deputy. Masterson, though five years younger than Earp was probably the more experienced fighter. Earp is apparently accurately portrayed as a non-drinker but he certainly didn’t mind selling booze to others. He was a hardcore gambler and he loved to make a buck with every chance he could so he was a pimp, a saloon owner, a mine owner and tried his hand at every money making scheme that existed in those days. He was also a successful lawman though when he wasn’t in trouble with the law.