The gunfight at the O.K. Corral took place on October 26, 1881, or 143 years ago. But if you go to Tombstone, Arizona today, you can see that the entire town is dedicated to attracting tourism dollars off this long-ago showdown between the Earps, Clantons and McLaurys. They have daily reenactments “in The Streets of Tombstone Theater.” You can hear “actor Vincent Price narrate an exciting multimedia history of Tombstone from Geronimo’s Apaches to modern times.” A visitor can “Walk through the O.K. Corral stables as they appeared in the 1880s. Admire our 1880’s blacksmith shop. Sit in our buggies. Pan for gemstones in our running water mining sluice.”
I don’t blame the locals. There’s only 1,300 of them and it’s a bit of a wonder that Tombstone didn’t become a ghost town after the mining industry collapsed in 1886. The famous gunfight is the only thing they have going for them.
I can’t say the same for Butler, Pennsylvania. Butler County is “one of just two counties in Western Pennsylvania where the population is growing.” But Jennifer Ford, the executive director of the county’s historical society, says of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump that “Unfortunately, it will go down in history as the most notable event that ever took place in Butler.”
And, already, if you pay a visit, you’ll be treated to a 400-pound sculpture of Donald Trump raising his fist in the air capturing the moment when he rose bloodied from the ground and yelled, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
“The statue and ‘fight, fight, fight’ resonates with everybody,” said Bob Oesterling, a local businessman and Trump supporter. “Everyone knows you got to ‘fight, fight, fight’ or we are done as the United States of America.”
Walking around town, you’ll notice that “the word ‘fight’ has been graffitied on streets and utility boxes.” And, yes, there’s already a store for souvenir shoppers:
“People that come in are very afraid and very angry,” said Barbara Davidson, a manager for United Republicans of Butler County, which runs a store that sells T-shirts and trinkets depicting the moment after Trump was shot. “They are angry not only about the assassination attempt. They are angry about the direction the country is going on.”
Doing some math, 143 years from now will be the year 2167, and I have no idea if Butler, Pennsylvania will be thriving then. But if civilization hasn’t completely collapsed, I can almost guarantee you that there will be a tourism industry based on the assassination attempt of Donald Trump. It might be the only work in town.
Meanwhile, here in the eastern half of the Keystone State, the assassination attempt is a quickly vanishing memory of much less interest than the upcoming debate between Trump and Kamala Harris.
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All of this bears such an eerie resemblance to much of Ohio. The biggest difference being that the odds of Pennsylvania going for Harris/Walz in November are significantly higher than Ohio. If the margin here in November is less than 6 points it will be a seminal moment. I saw my first banner flying here the other day with the iconic picture of Trump, fist raised and bloody trail from his ear, after the assassination attempt. You can literally go from one side of my county to another and feel like you have traversed between entirely different planets. Unfortunately, I live on the planet nearest the Death Star, so I have to worry about putting out a sign for Sherrod Brown, Greg Landsman, or even our State Rep Candidate Laura Marie Davis. Meanwhile, on the other side of the county, Harris/Walz signs are popping up like crocus’ in March. Geographically, my township is the largest one in our county, yet as far as Democratic canvassing, it isn’t even on the list. They don’t even print turf for it. It’s like it doesn’t even exist, and I understand why. I’ve tried to canvass here, and it’s just not a good use of your time.
It’s quite the mind bender to live in this sort of bifurcated world, where a 30 minute drive can place you in what seems like a totally foreign land, yet, you have hardly left your own back yard.
Long after this deranged menace will be gone, we will have to worry about the substantial fraction of deeply racist people in this country. Humans are by nature clannish – that is programmed in our evolution. But this rabid racism – I had NO idea when I first came in 1980. Aside from one truck passing through the Princeton campus (Alexander Road) that had a few youth in the truck bed shouting “Go back to Iran” (our group was primarily South Asian Indians) – never encountered that type of racism.
When we did the cross-country trip in 1987 from Boston to Los Angeles, our stop in Salinas KS was interesting – only 1 small breakfast place – and when we entered all heads turned, as if they were seeing ghosts. But not much more than that.
Only yesterday I saw on Twitter a white person in a restaurant screaming and almost hitting his wife because she spoke to an black person! What do we do about this deep racism will be the existential question for the polity!
I keep forgetting you went to Princeton. I was in middle school at John Witherspoon then and the few Iranian students had to weather some abuse during the hostage crisis. They were quite possibly from families that fled the revolution, too, which made it particularly stupid.
Somewhat off-topic (could not resist), but three places from Princeton I miss the most:
Hoagie Heaven, Thomas’ Sweet (the wet nut toppings), and the Buffalo Wings place one street adjacent to Nassau St.
Some years later when I went back (our daughter was Class of 2011) it had changed ownership and some Asians were running it – and the wings were not as great.
Did you ever visit these places?
Yes, of course, religiously.
Did you know that the Menendez brothers, the ones who murdered their parents, bought the wings place and ran it up until their arrest? It may have been just the older brother, but in any case.
Hoagie Haven is also garbage compared to what it used to be, but Thomas Sweet is as good as ever. And Pizza Star and Conte’s are still doing their thing, serving some of the best pies you can find anywhere.
Wow – did not know about the Menendez brothers! Ghastly!
Another true story. The murders happened in Los Angeles where I was living at the time, but the parents were buried in Princeton in the cemetery on Witherspoon Street. My roommate in LA’s family back in Princeton shared a fence with the cemetery and his mother walked the dog there. One day she came across a young man weeping at a grave. He explained that his parents had been murdered and she sought to comfort him. She invited him back to her house for lunch. She made him a sandwich. It was Lyle Menendez. He appeared to be having a genuinely remorseful moment when she encountered him, but inviting a cold-blooded murderer into her house wasn’t the best move. She was compassionate, what can I say? She was a great woman who was a great help to me in a time of need.
But when he was arrested, her son and I told her she was crazy.
I drove to the Twin Cities from Central Wisconsin through the back roads yesterday. It was indeed interesting to note the contrast between some neighborhoods of western Wisconsin (a lot of Trump signs) and then I found myself in a suburb of St. Paul and it was precisely the opposite. I’m unused to this, because I live in a 60/40 city, in a 50/50 county, inside of a 50/50 state.
But I was heartened to see that at least if the signage is any indication, Democrats are putting up a fight in rural areas.
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Jennifer Ford appears to be a fine person doing worthwhile work in the latter years of her work life at the Butler County Historical Society, but just going from the county’s Wikipedia page, *somebody* (or, more likely, some group of local residents) has plenty of material to work with to make sure that Trump’s shooting isn’t remembered as “the most notable event that ever took place in Butler.”
*Before building the Brooklyn Bridge, John Roebling and his brother Carl founded the town of Saxonburg & produced “wire rope” there.
*William Smith & Edwin Drake first proved oil could be tapped from underground there.
*It’s where the Jeep was developed in 1941.
*Defense Secretary William Perry grew up there.
*Bret Michaels, lead singer of Poison, was born there in 1963.
There’s lots of great history in small places, including places like Butler that have been left behind by the social and economic changes of the past 75 years. It’s important to reclaim and celebrate that history. Otherwise we end up with what we’ve got across the South, where the dominant/defining history is (for too many people) the four years when some of their ancestors committed treason in defense of slavery.