Billy The Kid.




Who didn’t play Cowboys and Indians when they were a kid? Good guys and Bad guys, pretend gunfights.. Well alright maybe not everybody did. The thing is, few legends touched our young imaginations like the infamous outlaw Billy The Kid, cat like reflexes.. The Kid battled his way out of tight spots day in and day out, the scourge of New Mexico, Gunfighter .. Outlaw.. Desperado… few names struck fear and terror in the hearts and minds of decent law abiding citizens like Billy The Kid.. But how much was legend and how much was fact.. Well I went to one of my favorite new websites and found some interesting stuff on the kid.. But the whole story is way to long to digest in one setting so here are a few tidbits that I found interesting.. I hope that you will as well.



Henry McCarty (November 23, 1859[1] – July 14, 1881) was better known as Billy the Kid, but also known by the aliases Henry Antrim and William Harrison Bonney. He was a 19th century American frontier outlaw and gunman who was a participant in the Lincoln County War. He was reputed to have killed 21 men, one for each year of his life.

McCarty was 5'8" with blue eyes, smooth cheeks, and prominent front teeth. He was said to be friendly and personable at times,[2] but he could also be short-tempered and determined. This made him a very dangerous outlaw, when combined with his shooting skills and cunning. He was also famous for (apparently) always wearing a sugar-loaf Sombrero hat with a wide green decorative band. He was little known in his own lifetime but was catapulted into legend in the year after his death when his killer, Sheriff Patrick Garrett, published a wildly sensationalistic biography of the outlaw called The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid. Beginning with Garrett's account, Billy the Kid grew into a symbolic figure of the American Old West.



Notoriety, fact vs reputation

As with many men of the old west dubbed gunfighters, McCarty's reputation outweighed the actual facts of gunfights in which he was involved.

Despite being credited with the killing of 21 men in his lifetime, William H. Bonney is only known to have participated in the killing of nine men. Five of them died during shootouts in which several of the "Regulators" took part, therefore making it unknown whether it was Bonney's bullets that did the killing. Of the remaining four Bonney victims, two were in self-defense gunfights and the other two were the killings of Deputies Bell and Ollinger during his jail escape.

Left-handed or right-handed?

For most of the 20th century, it was widely assumed that Billy the Kid was left-handed. This belief came from the fact that the only known photograph of McCarty, an undated ferrotype, shows him with a Model 1873 Winchester rifle in his right hand and a gun belt with a holster on his left side, where a left handed person would typically wear a pistol. The belief became so entrenched that in 1958, a biographical film was made about Billy the Kid called The Left Handed Gun starring Paul Newman.

Late in the 20th century, it was discovered that the familiar ferrotype was actually a reverse image. This version shows his Model 1873 Winchester with the loading port on the left side. All Model 1873s had the loading port on the right side, proving the image was reversed, and that he was, in fact, wearing his pistol on his right hip. Even though the image has been proven to be reversed, the idea of a left handed Billy the Kid continues to widely circulate.

Perhaps because many people heard both of these arguments and confused them, it is widely believed that Billy the Kid was ambidextrous. Many Billy the Kid sites describe him as such, and the fact is still widely disputed.

~Source Wikipedia~

Kids..



There are moments in time that we all live through, some of them are so potent and vivid that they become etched into our minds for the entirety of our lives. Snapshots of life.. Not life in those Ivory towers, where silver spoons feed the mouths of privileged babes, who will no doubt one day grow to be privileged adults. No. Snapshots of real life, life caught up in the throes of summer, bathing in the heat of these city streets. Ravaged not only by poverty, but by time.. Time spent by those here wasting their lives running in the same circles day in, day out, trying to escape the inevitable. Snapshots.. Scenes from life… real life.



The Daily Grind



Welcome to the daily grind, the ebb and flow of the city, where every person of every class and color come to ply their trade, elbow to elbow, Black and white, every color in the rainbow all baking under the same summer sun, no escape, no time , no relief in sight until those first clouds begin to appear over the top of the skyscrapers. At first you can’t tell if its just another tease or if this will be the real deal, when your cooking under the sun you just never know… and then the gates open..




You have managed to escape the heat for one day at least, so you bath in it, in the cold rain, so for a moment there is relief.. but theres always tomorrow..




Stay cool Y'all its gonna be a long summer..

~ Scratch ~

I don’t know what it is with me lately musically I’ve been all over the place, here lately its been cool Jazz, I rediscovered an old friend In Boney James, and I even threw in some early Fleetwood Mac and Earl Klugh and Dave Koz for good measure.. Here’s the scoop on Boney..



James "Boney James" Oppenheim, (born September 1, 1961 in Lowell, Massachusetts) is a saxophonist who popularized urban jazz (an updated version of contemporary jazz that contains elements of hip-hop).

Boney James is a two-time Grammy nominee and a Soul Train Award winner. He has accumulated three Gold records. His current and tenth CD, Shine, debuted at #1 on the Billboard Contemporary Jazz charts, #6 on the R+B chart and #44 on the Pop Chart. James produced the CD as well as wrote 9 of the songs.

Mr. James has produced remakes of classic soul songs, such as Chaka Khan's "Sweet Thing," Stevie Wonder's "Creepin'" and Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine (When She's Gone)". In addition, he collaborated with trumpeter Rick Braun on an album called Shake it Up. Their duets include "Grazin' in the Grass," which had been previously performed by the Friends of Distinction and Hugh Masekela. Other collaborations on "Shine" include Faith Evans, George Benson, Dwele and Philip Bailey.

Some James originals include "The Total Experience", "Metropolis," "After the Rain" and "Here She Comes."

Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, Boney James started his teen years in New Rochelle, New York, as a Motown fan, which has contributed to his "musical influence and soulful R&B style." He took up the clarinet at the age of eight and switched to sax when he was 10. He was influenced by popular saxophonist Grover Washington, Jr.. When James was 15 his family moved to Los Angeles, where he joined a fusion band which had some success opening for acts like Flora Purim and the Yellowjackets[1].

He received a history degree from UCLA, but began playing music full-time after graduation. He took up the keyboards and in 1985 played in Morris ("What Time Is It?") Day's band for four years. His R&B influence was strengthened by seven years of touring and sessions as a sideman with artists like Day, the Isley Brothers, Bobby Caldwell, Randy Crawford,Teena Marie and many others.

In the early days, after joining Bobby Caldwell's band, he caught the attention of the engineer/mixer & producer Paul Brown. In 1992 he released his debut album as leader (Trust) and was signed by the Warner Brothers label in 1994. In 2006 James moved to Concord Records[2] and with the release of "Shine" achieved his career highest Billboard chart position.

He is married to actress/director Lily Mariye of television's "ER."

~ Source Wikipedia ~

Don't ya just Love Wikipedia??



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I can not begin to tell you exactly how hot it has been around here lately, and with the exception of Azron, June and maybe Vegas I’m not so sure you could relate. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe not. This morning at work it wasn’t even 8:00 O’clock , before the people at work were running for cover trying to escape the heat. By 11:00 am we were all baking like toasted cheesers, the water quit working on the swamp coolers that were on the roof and NOBODY was going up there to fix them! So I stayed inside mostly, fiddled around at the U.P.S desk, sent out a couple of red label packages overnight. Plastic wrapped three pallets to ship Via Yellow Freight. I made it to 2:00 o’clock in the afternoon before they came by to say I could leave early if I wanted to. So I did, when I got home it was 108 degrees outside and inside it was still 88 and climbing. napping was out.. So I went to the Carson Station Hotel/Casino for dinner and at last Relief.. I had dinner, and mulled around the casino for about twenty minutes wondering if in the hour and ten minutes that I’d been inside that it had cooled off any outside.. So I walk out the door and nope.. Didn’t cool off a bit. I rode around town for awhile mostly in the shade find relief where I could.. Its 9:21 pm as of this writing and its still above 90 degrees here.. And me with no AC.. Well now I know how that baked potato that I had for dinner felt.. Sheeeeesh its sooooooo hot!!!

Signed

~ Melting Scratchman ~

I used to write a piece every Friday called the X page, in it, I would give a shout out to a couple of new bloggers every week to try to generate interest in their blogs. Well the X page is gone for good, but there are still a lot of new blogs out there to check out at least. My friend Sherry came up with an idea that we should Link five or six new blogs on our pages to help them get a little extra exposure, the idea behind it being, if the newer blogs are welcomed and encouraged more, maybe they will stick around for more than one or two posts, What Is Most important about this is that you should form your own opinion about all of the new Blogs that I have linked here, so I will refrain from giving MY opinions of them, I thought of categorizing them, but instead I will leave that up to you as well.. I DO however, reserve the right to draw attention to a blog that should be a must read, for E-V-E-R-Y-B-O-D-Y HERE!.. And on a final note, I will be doing this on Friday mornings as a regular weekly piece, Today is a special occasion since it is the Forth of July and I have a rare day off in the middle of the week, and its just too good to pass up.. Here’s the links.. Please at follow them and at least stop in to say hello, and remember, we were ALL new here, at one time.

Shirl's Lounge

Words of Advice

TheWholeFuddinStory

Here's My Thing

One In Six Billion

Here's the special mention that I thought I would bring your attention
to. There is a young man here amongst us who is amazing with this computer stuff, and he write posts that everyone with a computer should be reading.. His Name is MonsterBox, and here's his link.

Clever Tech by MonsterBox

Oh Yeah And I almost Forgot...



Happy Independence Day Blogstream!!!

~Scratch~