Wild West Show gallops into new location

The Pine Mountain Posse reenactment players were back for their third year at Sisters Wild West Show, performing skits and shootouts around a Western town façade at a new location just outside of Sisters.

The Bend/Sisters Garden RV Resort offered up lush gardens, lawns and a lake.

The new venue had friendly atmosphere, but the cowboys and gunslingers from yesteryear quickly showed folks that the Wild West - at least the one of the imagination - was anything but friendly. Shootouts were spur-of-the moment and the undertaker had more business than the local blacksmith.

All The Pine Mountain Posse players belong to the Single Action Shooting Society (SASS), which has been around since the early 1980s.

Besides the six shootout performances on Saturday and Sunday, the RV resort was filled with a variety of Native American and Western-themed arts and crafts for folks to meander through.

For the second year in a row Greg Booth, a Sisters resident, set up his tepee on the grassy area along the highway near the other vendors. He showcased his knives and arrowheads.

"I've been holding monthly primitive skills meetups in Sisters," he said. "It's a free social group. You can learn and practice primitive skills. They can enhance your outdoor recreation, and offer you a default position in an emergency."

Vendor Don Jones from Canyon City featured historical-themed shadowboxes at his booth, Black Feathered Art.

"I finally found my niche in 2003 and started making shadow boxes containing the history of the Old West," Jones said. "I am a retired teacher and taught history for 27 years in the John Day School District."

Folks stopped to enjoy the music performed by Mac McCartney that went hand-in-hand with the Western theme.

On Saturday evening the Wild West Show provided a special 30-minute dinner show and sing-a-long. The dinner show required tickets

"We have a great dinner menu including a 141 pound roast pig prepared by Chef Scott Thompson," said Richard Esterman, event organizer, who reported that 300 people turned out for the show.

Scott Thompson was on hand to tell The Nugget about how he prepared the roast pig with all the fixings.

"I've been cooking up pig roasts many years for events here at Celia Hung's RV park. They call me the "pig guy,'" Thompson said. "I came in last night to put the pig in the cooker around nightfall. It needs to cook for 24 hours, and I babysit the cooker. Then I get up in the morning and add some pork shoulders and around mid morning I put together my baked beans with my homemade barbecue sauce."

Saturday evening the first shootout performance kicked off at 7:15 p.m., and during the skit spectators stepped back into the wild age of gunfighters, saloons, and cowboys, and had the chance to lay eyes on a reenacted scene from the infamous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Whispering Wade was Morgan Earp, Mohave Nick was Doc Holliday, and Deadwood Pete stepped in for Wyatt Earp.

The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral between outlaw Cow Boys and lawmen lasted all of 30 seconds. It is generally regarded as the most famous shootout in the history of the American Wild West. The gunfight took place on Wednesday, October 26, 1881 in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. It was the result of a long-simmering feud between cowboys Billy Claiborne, Ike and Billy Clanton, and Tom and Frank McLaury, and opposing lawmen: Town Marshal Virgil Earp, Assistant Town Marshall Morgan Earp, and temporary deputy marshals Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday.

"We have nearly 20 players with us this year from all over the region, including 18-year-old Huckleberry Hickock, who will be playing Billy the Kid in one of the five dinner performances. And he gets to shoot me dead," said Whispering Wade, aka Wade Palmer.