Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome
in. It's time now for our community connection. It's going to be a
shootout at the old Dewey Hotels when it's gonna be here today. I am
Tom Davis. Welcome aboard, Joe Hears. You brought friends and tell us
a little bit about what's going on. You're in the door web fun.
We do have friends with us. These are the Tom Mix re Enactors.
Yeah, gunfighters, yeah, and they are associated with the Tom Mix and
the Dewey Hotel. The Dewey hotelers their backdrop for them to put on the
their scenario skits. And but they're a new group that's just formed recently,
and they'll tell you about it. But we had a gunfighter group in Dewey
for many years, but they are no longer. This is a brand new
group. They're from all over Green Country and I'll let them tell you about
it. Young lady, introduce yourself. Thank you. I'm Karen Tonan and
Karen, now tell us what you'll be doing here in a little bit about
your anticipation in this they get together. Yes, I'm one of the re
enactors and I like to help with the skits. I help write some of
them, and I perform in them and have a good time. Sometimes I'm
shot and I fall to the ground. Oh my goodness, but I'm alive
again. So we love to perform, and we sometimes entertain the children that
come into the parades, and we will toss some candy out to them.
But when the cowboys shoot into one another and they fall down, those children
are just amazed. And then we pass out little badgers to them and they
just love it. And so it's a lot of fun. And it also
helps us visit our culture and our history and the history of Tom Mix and
the cowboys that settled in the Oklahoma territory years ago, and that's very important
to share with the young children. Of course, it's always great when we
have firearms to have a doctor president. Hey, we're doing fine. Tell
us a little bit about what you do with this. Well. I am
one of the actors, and I usually play the part of Doc Well type
cafting, and it's a couple of times it has come in handy that I'm
a doctor, because we had one of the ladies that got shot. She
fell, busted her chin clear open, and I was right there to save
today and patch it up and the show went on and then we had a
good time. Uh. There's about nine of us in the club and one
from Claremore, one from Glenn Pool, one from Bixby, Muscogee, Collinsville,
Sperry. We Sperry. We represent Green Country pretty good. Yeah,
and it's because we have a love for the Old West. And of course
we represent Tom Mix and the Tom Mix Museum sponsors us. Well, this
is going to be great, This is going to be a fun time.
This is coming up on the fourth right. Yeah, and it starts with
it starts with the f f A marathon that morning. Yeah, the gunfighters
are going to shoot off the gun at seven thirty. Start three. I
wake them up. I think the f f A is looking forward to that.
U. And then after the awards ceremony, the gunfighters are at ten
and then we have storytelling in the hotel on the do a roundup Rodeo days
at eleven and there's a We have a cellist. Her name is Faith Foot
and she's a Faith fot f o O TV. She's an award winning Bartlesville
High School student who has won state and national awards for her Uh. She's
a cill and so she's a volunteer at the hotel to help out with the
kids, and she's going to be there to do her inter led interlude music
between the gunfight and the race and the storytelling. So we have a whole
morning the fourth of July planned up until noon when it's starts getting hot.
Then our entertainment subdued. Good morning session is going to be a lot of
fun, especially for the kids. You know, the gun fighters are so
much fun. It's the kids are always fascinated. Europeans are fascinated by the
Old West. And I'm all glad. I was raised in the West,
but I used to live up in Cody, and the gunfighters and Red Lodge,
Jackson Hole, a red River Cody, you know, they used to
all come together and they have this wonderful story. They do a safety program.
You should tell those before the show starts. Before the show starts,
we do a safety program to show people how loud our guns are and the
shotgun is. But before we do that, the first thing we do is
say, if you have hearing aids, turn them off. And then when
they shotgun goes off, people realize, I'm glad I turned my hearing aids.
Yeah. Yeah, and we talked about the safety of the gun that
the actors. We talk about the safety of the guns because we do use
real guns with AMMO. Now. A lot of places we go, the
sheriff or the police come out, we hand them our guns, they check
our am O and they wash us load them with a blank AMMO and then
they okay it. So we safety. We're all about safety, got it.
And whether it's a shotgun or a handgun, it's safety first. Are
all of you retired people, No, Karen's retired, I'm retired. One
of the other gentlemen's retired. Our president of the club, Eddie Royer,
Yes, he is still working. He wants to retire, but he hasn't
made it there yet. Get in line. Yeah, but we all managed
to get together and have a good time and go do our shootouts and just
bless people with what we do. There's nothing more fun and popular than the
gunfighters. Cody. Dewey's not a big tourist town, but it is a
tourist town, it is. But the hotel is the center of history around
here. When Jake Bartles built that. The fourth of July has been a
big celebration all those years since nineteen hundred. The Dewey Rodeos started on the
fourth of July. He did. It became the third largest rodeo in North
America, all because the Bartles up there at the hotel. Mister Bartles was
dying, Jake Barber was dying. He said, you know, I'd like
to see all my old buddies for the Civil War. So they went to
Kansas and Missouri. They invited these old soldiers. They came down, they
stayed in the hotel, and the locals put on a Wild West show for
them, you know, like the muleundor wranglers and the drummings. And my
brother used to be one of those people around here, and they put on
the Great Wild West Show on the fourth and it was so popular they did
it the next year and the next year to finally they named it the Dewy
Round Up Rodeo and it became the third largest rodeo in North America. Now,
the fun thing was that the local ranch boys could still compete with the
pros, and it was the only rodeo that allowed that. Because they were
with tradition, they put it on. They started it so forty thousand people
would gather in Little Dewey and they didn't have motels to cover that, so
they camped. Everybody camp had forty thousand people for three rodeos over the fourth
and so the storytelling that the hotel is going to be about those days.
Now. The hotel ended in nineteen forty nine when a huge biblical rainstorm hit
and it caused all that sand and mud in the arena to get slushy,
and a clown shot off a gun, and a clown act and the horses
that were tied to those pilings holding up the stadium and they started to shim
it and the whole thing collapsed on you know, you know, ten thousand
people, but no one died. There was lots of injured, but they
never rebuilt. Doc that the city said, well, you know, we're
just going to count our blessings, and they never rebuilt. Thus ended the
third largest built of North America. Some clowns shooting off again in the rains
do right, So we're celebrating on the clown. Blame it on the clown.
But the kids, the families loved the reenactors. It's a big deal.
I have a question for Karen where do you get your ideas for the
skits and putting them all together to keep them kind of fresh and original.
Glad you asked that. Here's a Tom Mix book that I bought at the
museum. This is one of many I have several, but I like to
use Tom Mix as my character and his story, yeah, as well his
movies. Yeah, And some of the skits come from the movie, all
right, And so I like to take the actual action and activities from the
movie, the history the culture of Tom Mix to put in the skit so
that we're following his culture, his history, and his stardom, to put
in the skit so that we can pass that on and put that before the
children especially and carry that on. And that separates this group is separated in
other groups who don't necessarily follow a film. It's lucky that the Tom Mix
reenactors have a film to that's an added debt to her skit. And the
first film that Tom Mix made in Dewey, ever, was out at Blue
Mound, which is about three miles east of Dewey. People around here are
familiar with that. That's where his first film was made. Well, that
is that's incredible and he was such a character. I mean, he never
used substitute people for the tricks that he did on his horse Tony. He
did all of his tricks himself. He never never put anyone else in to
cover for him, his own stunt man, that's right. And when he
traveled and he acted in his own circus, he went overseas to Europe and
did things, he always did those himself. Amazing. Tom was well known
in Europe, probably more than he was here in the United States. Europeans
loved him. Well, Europeans loved the Western culture, right, and that's
why they loved him. And then what I'm wearing today is modern day western
wear which Tom Mix started. This This didn't exists before Tom Mix. Flash
forward one hundred years later. By golly, look at that. Yeah,
you're still in the mix. This is a new shirt. This wasn't one
of Tom's, no, but it was designed after one ahead. Yeah so,
but it would be pretty old if well. This is great. How
we tie history and fun together, you know, that makes it easier to
learn. It's a great engagement tool. And you know, aside from the
one lady getting her chin kind of scuffed up here, it's been really a
lot of just a lot of fun, right, Yes, sir, absolutely
have fun where we go and we let the people have fun. But we
when we're doing a skit or something, people will ask questions. We answer
the questions, and sometimes if we don't have a great answer, we make
up one. Kary, you talked about the kids, they're just so fascinated
by it. You know, first of all, you tell them what's going
on so that they're not like, you know, scarred for life. But
after that, they watched that and they just think, wow, that's right,
that's a piece of work. Right. But see, we have the
history, so we can tell them the answers correctly, gotcha, And we
can give them the history of the cowboys and the Native Americans that were involved
in the evolution of our our state of Oklahoma today. And that means a
lot to me. I was born in Washington, d C. I was
not raised in the Western culture, but when I came out here, it
just it enthralled my heart so much to be here and to be a part
of this. That's what let me join this group. I think it's important
that young people see guns used in a creative and positive way. They hear
so much on the news stupid. They know what's going on. It's a
violent world sometimes, and this is an opportunity to see the fun of guns,
the proper use of guns, and how it's a part of entertainment.
So I think it's a very positive thing for families to come out and have
fun. I've seen it in Western States. I think we'd like to see
deweyes reenactors be successful and they will grow their own followings, you know.
And here's your chance. Get out there right there before the f FA race
at seven point thirty right, yes, right there and fourth until I get
up early, and then of course hang around for a little bit later around
tennish, and then we're going to have the big show. Yeah, big
show. So you need to be out there, get a good place to
sit down and take a look see and just have some fun and ask questions.
Yeah, and ask questions yes, alrighty. Well, I want to
thank you all for being here with us today and appreciate you coming here and
costume here to kind of really sell it to thank you for having it,
thank you for having us here. You're welcome, and we'll see you all
out there doing on the fourth of July