Notes from my Knapsack 8-26-21

Notes from my Knapsack 8-26-21

Jeff Gill

Granville and Deadwood

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Two summers ago, at the encouragement of a friend, we stayed a few nights in Deadwood, South Dakota. Our plans were to hit the Corn Palace and Wall Drug on the way, and up to Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, and Custer State Park's bison herd in the Black Hills, all of which lived up to advance billing and beyond.

I knew Deadwood was touristed up, and my expectations were lower. Seth Bullock's grave I visited, but Al Swearengen the actual or the fictional character isn't in Mount Moriah Cemetery, though Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane Canary and Preacher Smith and Dora DuFran are.

Down in the town, which is clustered tight in Deadwood Gulch on either side of Main Street, I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, they built their renewal of the historic district on gambling years ago, and casino action is still woven into the streetscape, but the peak excitement downtown is three times a day all summer (except Mondays), when they have . . . shootouts. 

Yep, shoot outs on Main Street. If you are a fan of logistics and crowd management (which my wife and I both are), it's fascinating to watch the cast quietly move into place, set out cones to re-route traffic, and start into their scripted but mildly variable live show at 2 pm, 4 pm, and 6 pm (with a trial for that last shooting in a theatre on the west end of Main most nights, which they claim is one of the longest running audience participation dramas in the world, and they may be right).

But there's no getting around it: we're making a show, and a tourist attraction, and an event to photograph and enjoy, out of something we eye nervously and bemoan on social media when it happens on city streets and side alleys every weekend in urban centers all over the United States. It's . . . odd, if you think about it. Obviously, the appreciative crowd is not thinking about it (and are on vacation, and many are in a very relaxed state of mind to be kind).

For two years, I've kept thinking about it. Deadwood has a history, and a narrative thread of wild west storytelling which has been celebrated for years on television, in movies, and to more recent acclaim in the history warping but recognizably parallel and profanity laced HBO series. So it fits.

But can you imagine any of the cities, Midwestern or elsewhere, which are experiencing tragic levels of gun violence due to lawless, chaotic fights between drug dealers and other desperate characters, re-enacting those sudden fatal encounters in the year 2164? Perhaps they will, but I can't quite see it.

It's a good example of how we enjoy what we're familiar with, even when it makes no sense. The tourist crowd was "out west," the town is Deadwood, and actors are shooting each other dead with stage pistols in full and no doubt very warm costumes of leather and denim. Entertainment for all, huzzah! If I were to stage shootouts on Broadway in Granville, and do it just as well from an acting and logistical point of view, on a busy summer Saturday, how would people respond? Applause? Confusion? Probably more the latter, and hopefully someone would ask "Why?"

Ironically, we went to a church right off Main Street that Sunday, built in part by Seth Bullock, tied to the local history directly and personally. We were warmly welcomed, but it came up a couple of times before and after services that our appearance there was unusual. "Tourists never come here." Even though this, too, was literally part of that early history, there to be experienced.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's interested in living history, though perhaps not with bodies in the streets. Tell him how you've encountered the past in your present at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.