Shooting straight

As happens every September, Eureka Springs hosts an antique auto parade this weekend. At the end, actors reenact a bank robbery shootout that occurred on Spring Street on September 27, 1922.

The story of that day will be in my book, Welcome to Eureka Springs: The I-Sh*t-You-Not History of America’s Quirkiest Town.

It’s been told many times, in both the reenactments and earlier histories. When I went to write my chapter, I found many discrepancies among the various versions.

Some versions have gang member Mark Hendricks as the getaway driver; others say it was John Cowan. Some confuse a pistol with a revolver, or a shotgun with a rifle. At least one gives an incorrect date of the 22nd.

Almost all say the Price brothers, mortally wounded in the Eureka Springs shootout, were former members of the Henry Starr gang. That’s not quite right. They were part of a loose band of Oklahoma outlaws that Starr had also been involved with earlier, but never worked with him. Their bank robbing spree started after his death.

The Oklahoma operation didn’t have a catchy name. The press sometimes called it the Cookson gang, after their Cookson Hills hideout and one of their leaders, Mont Cookson. Fred Walker was the “brains,” engineering a string of bank robberies with an ever-varying cast of heavies, including the Price brothers. I call it the Fred Walker gang in my book.

This weekend’s reenactment will be wonderful fun, but for entertainment only. If you want straight shootin’, you’ll have to come to Poetluck at the Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow on Thursday, September 18. I’ll read my fact-checked chapter there.

The featured reader at this month’s event is award-winning poet Wendy Carlisle. Come at 6PM for good food, good company, and deeper meaning than social media can provide.