WEBVTT

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Good morning, good morning, good
morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome

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in. It's time now for our
community connection. It's going to be a

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shootout at the old Dewey Hotels when
it's gonna be here today. I am

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Tom Davis. Welcome aboard, Joe
Hears. You brought friends and tell us

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a little bit about what's going on. You're in the door web fun.

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We do have friends with us.
These are the Tom Mix re Enactors.

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Yeah, gunfighters, yeah, and
they are associated with the Tom Mix and

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the Dewey Hotel. The Dewey hotelers
their backdrop for them to put on the

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their scenario skits. And but they're
a new group that's just formed recently,

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and they'll tell you about it.
But we had a gunfighter group in Dewey

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for many years, but they are
no longer. This is a brand new

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group. They're from all over Green
Country and I'll let them tell you about

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it. Young lady, introduce yourself. Thank you. I'm Karen Tonan and

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Karen, now tell us what you'll
be doing here in a little bit about

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your anticipation in this they get together. Yes, I'm one of the re

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enactors and I like to help with
the skits. I help write some of

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them, and I perform in them
and have a good time. Sometimes I'm

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shot and I fall to the ground. Oh my goodness, but I'm alive

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again. So we love to perform, and we sometimes entertain the children that

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come into the parades, and we
will toss some candy out to them.

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But when the cowboys shoot into one
another and they fall down, those children

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are just amazed. And then we
pass out little badgers to them and they

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just love it. And so it's
a lot of fun. And it also

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helps us visit our culture and our
history and the history of Tom Mix and

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the cowboys that settled in the Oklahoma
territory years ago, and that's very important

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to share with the young children.
Of course, it's always great when we

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have firearms to have a doctor president. Hey, we're doing fine. Tell

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us a little bit about what you
do with this. Well. I am

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one of the actors, and I
usually play the part of Doc Well type

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cafting, and it's a couple of
times it has come in handy that I'm

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a doctor, because we had one
of the ladies that got shot. She

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fell, busted her chin clear open, and I was right there to save

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today and patch it up and the
show went on and then we had a

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good time. Uh. There's about
nine of us in the club and one

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from Claremore, one from Glenn Pool, one from Bixby, Muscogee, Collinsville,

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Sperry. We Sperry. We represent
Green Country pretty good. Yeah,

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and it's because we have a love
for the Old West. And of course

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we represent Tom Mix and the Tom
Mix Museum sponsors us. Well, this

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is going to be great, This
is going to be a fun time.

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This is coming up on the fourth
right. Yeah, and it starts with

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it starts with the f f A
marathon that morning. Yeah, the gunfighters

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are going to shoot off the gun
at seven thirty. Start three. I

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wake them up. I think the
f f A is looking forward to that.

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U. And then after the awards
ceremony, the gunfighters are at ten

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and then we have storytelling in the
hotel on the do a roundup Rodeo days

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at eleven and there's a We have
a cellist. Her name is Faith Foot

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and she's a Faith fot f o
O TV. She's an award winning Bartlesville

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High School student who has won state
and national awards for her Uh. She's

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a cill and so she's a volunteer
at the hotel to help out with the

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kids, and she's going to be
there to do her inter led interlude music

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between the gunfight and the race and
the storytelling. So we have a whole

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morning the fourth of July planned up
until noon when it's starts getting hot.

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Then our entertainment subdued. Good morning
session is going to be a lot of

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fun, especially for the kids.
You know, the gun fighters are so

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much fun. It's the kids are
always fascinated. Europeans are fascinated by the

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Old West. And I'm all glad. I was raised in the West,

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but I used to live up in
Cody, and the gunfighters and Red Lodge,

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Jackson Hole, a red River Cody, you know, they used to

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all come together and they have this
wonderful story. They do a safety program.

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You should tell those before the show
starts. Before the show starts,

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we do a safety program to show
people how loud our guns are and the

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shotgun is. But before we do
that, the first thing we do is

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say, if you have hearing aids, turn them off. And then when

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they shotgun goes off, people realize, I'm glad I turned my hearing aids.

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Yeah. Yeah, and we talked
about the safety of the gun that

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the actors. We talk about the
safety of the guns because we do use

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real guns with AMMO. Now.
A lot of places we go, the

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sheriff or the police come out,
we hand them our guns, they check

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our am O and they wash us
load them with a blank AMMO and then

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they okay it. So we safety. We're all about safety, got it.

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And whether it's a shotgun or a
handgun, it's safety first. Are

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all of you retired people, No, Karen's retired, I'm retired. One

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of the other gentlemen's retired. Our
president of the club, Eddie Royer,

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Yes, he is still working.
He wants to retire, but he hasn't

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made it there yet. Get in
line. Yeah, but we all managed

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to get together and have a good
time and go do our shootouts and just

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bless people with what we do.
There's nothing more fun and popular than the

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gunfighters. Cody. Dewey's not a
big tourist town, but it is a

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tourist town, it is. But
the hotel is the center of history around

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here. When Jake Bartles built that. The fourth of July has been a

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big celebration all those years since nineteen
hundred. The Dewey Rodeos started on the

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fourth of July. He did.
It became the third largest rodeo in North

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America, all because the Bartles up
there at the hotel. Mister Bartles was

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dying, Jake Barber was dying.
He said, you know, I'd like

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to see all my old buddies for
the Civil War. So they went to

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Kansas and Missouri. They invited these
old soldiers. They came down, they

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stayed in the hotel, and the
locals put on a Wild West show for

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them, you know, like the
muleundor wranglers and the drummings. And my

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brother used to be one of those
people around here, and they put on

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the Great Wild West Show on the
fourth and it was so popular they did

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it the next year and the next
year to finally they named it the Dewy

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Round Up Rodeo and it became the
third largest rodeo in North America. Now,

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the fun thing was that the local
ranch boys could still compete with the

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pros, and it was the only
rodeo that allowed that. Because they were

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with tradition, they put it on. They started it so forty thousand people

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would gather in Little Dewey and they
didn't have motels to cover that, so

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they camped. Everybody camp had forty
thousand people for three rodeos over the fourth

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and so the storytelling that the hotel
is going to be about those days.

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Now. The hotel ended in nineteen
forty nine when a huge biblical rainstorm hit

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and it caused all that sand and
mud in the arena to get slushy,

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and a clown shot off a gun, and a clown act and the horses

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that were tied to those pilings holding
up the stadium and they started to shim

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it and the whole thing collapsed on
you know, you know, ten thousand

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people, but no one died.
There was lots of injured, but they

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never rebuilt. Doc that the city
said, well, you know, we're

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just going to count our blessings,
and they never rebuilt. Thus ended the

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third largest built of North America.
Some clowns shooting off again in the rains

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do right, So we're celebrating on
the clown. Blame it on the clown.

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But the kids, the families loved
the reenactors. It's a big deal.

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I have a question for Karen where
do you get your ideas for the

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skits and putting them all together to
keep them kind of fresh and original.

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Glad you asked that. Here's a
Tom Mix book that I bought at the

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museum. This is one of many
I have several, but I like to

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use Tom Mix as my character and
his story, yeah, as well his

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movies. Yeah, And some of
the skits come from the movie, all

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right, And so I like to
take the actual action and activities from the

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movie, the history the culture of
Tom Mix to put in the skit so

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that we're following his culture, his
history, and his stardom, to put

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in the skit so that we can
pass that on and put that before the

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children especially and carry that on.
And that separates this group is separated in

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other groups who don't necessarily follow a
film. It's lucky that the Tom Mix

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reenactors have a film to that's an
added debt to her skit. And the

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first film that Tom Mix made in
Dewey, ever, was out at Blue

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Mound, which is about three miles
east of Dewey. People around here are

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familiar with that. That's where his
first film was made. Well, that

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is that's incredible and he was such
a character. I mean, he never

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used substitute people for the tricks that
he did on his horse Tony. He

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did all of his tricks himself.
He never never put anyone else in to

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cover for him, his own stunt
man, that's right. And when he

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traveled and he acted in his own
circus, he went overseas to Europe and

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did things, he always did those
himself. Amazing. Tom was well known

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in Europe, probably more than he
was here in the United States. Europeans

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loved him. Well, Europeans loved
the Western culture, right, and that's

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why they loved him. And then
what I'm wearing today is modern day western

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wear which Tom Mix started. This
This didn't exists before Tom Mix. Flash

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forward one hundred years later. By
golly, look at that. Yeah,

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you're still in the mix. This
is a new shirt. This wasn't one

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of Tom's, no, but it
was designed after one ahead. Yeah so,

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but it would be pretty old if
well. This is great. How

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we tie history and fun together,
you know, that makes it easier to

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learn. It's a great engagement tool. And you know, aside from the

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one lady getting her chin kind of
scuffed up here, it's been really a

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lot of just a lot of fun, right, Yes, sir, absolutely

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have fun where we go and we
let the people have fun. But we

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when we're doing a skit or something, people will ask questions. We answer

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the questions, and sometimes if we
don't have a great answer, we make

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up one. Kary, you talked
about the kids, they're just so fascinated

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by it. You know, first
of all, you tell them what's going

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on so that they're not like,
you know, scarred for life. But

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after that, they watched that and
they just think, wow, that's right,

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that's a piece of work. Right. But see, we have the

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history, so we can tell them
the answers correctly, gotcha, And we

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can give them the history of the
cowboys and the Native Americans that were involved

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in the evolution of our our state
of Oklahoma today. And that means a

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lot to me. I was born
in Washington, d C. I was

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not raised in the Western culture,
but when I came out here, it

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just it enthralled my heart so much
to be here and to be a part

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of this. That's what let me
join this group. I think it's important

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that young people see guns used in
a creative and positive way. They hear

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so much on the news stupid.
They know what's going on. It's a

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violent world sometimes, and this is
an opportunity to see the fun of guns,

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the proper use of guns, and
how it's a part of entertainment.

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So I think it's a very positive
thing for families to come out and have

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fun. I've seen it in Western
States. I think we'd like to see

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deweyes reenactors be successful and they will
grow their own followings, you know.

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And here's your chance. Get out
there right there before the f FA race

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at seven point thirty right, yes, right there and fourth until I get

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up early, and then of course
hang around for a little bit later around

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tennish, and then we're going to
have the big show. Yeah, big

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show. So you need to be
out there, get a good place to

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sit down and take a look see
and just have some fun and ask questions.

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Yeah, and ask questions yes,
alrighty. Well, I want to

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thank you all for being here with
us today and appreciate you coming here and

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costume here to kind of really sell
it to thank you for having it,

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thank you for having us here.
You're welcome, and we'll see you all

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out there doing on the fourth of
July