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Day 41 - 30 May 28degC - nice day. Started off a bit wobbly when we couldn’t find our car in the parking building!!! We wandered around for about 1/2hr and eventually found it in a different building about a block away. Got a bit sweaty there for a while!
Then it was off down Route 66 - now in modified form as (mostly) Interstate 44. An hour down the road we stopped at Dotties Diner - for bacon, eggs over easy and a waffle. Yum! My favourite!!!
Back on the road, Seft and I sharing the driving and 3hrs later we rolled into Springfield MO.
First on the agenda was Park Central - location of arguably the most famous gunfight ever - Little Dave Tutt vs Wild Bill Hickok. History records that on 21 July 1865, these guys both entered Park Central Square and were about 75yds apart when the guns came out. Tutt fired first and missed. Wild Bill laid his pistol (an 1851 Navy 36 calibre, cap and ball revolver) on his arm, took careful aim, and didn’t (miss). And it was all over a piddling gambling debt. Worse, these guys had been friends, both ex-scouts in the Civil War (Tutt for the South, Wild Bill for the North) both now making a living as gamblers. Wild Bill was arrested, charged with murder, got the charge reduced to manslaughter, and finally acquitted (self-defence) after a jury trial.
PS. Important trivia note - Clint Eastwood used an identical Navy Colt revolver in the movie “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”.
So we’ve been there and done that. It was a bit seedy at Park Central, like Springfield has fallen on hard times - and Wikipedia says the city (population 160,000) has the 5th highest crime rate in the US. Think we’ll get the hell out of here ASAP tomorrow morning.
We found our AirBnb easily, a nice little cottage with a deck out front in a quiet neighbourhood. This will do for tonight. Tomorrow Oklahoma City!!
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