Fortunes won and lost in the Old West
Fortune smiled on Pawnee Bill and frowned on the 101 Ranch and the Miller Brothers
On a recent trip to Oklahoma, I was struck by how fortune can shine on some and not on others. The question of why someone succeeds and someone does not has always been a mystery. Hard work by itself guarantees nothing — except that you will get tired. You do have more chances to get lucky perhaps if you work hard, but the world holds no promises.
There are random events perhaps, and depending on which way the tree falls, we call that good luck or bad luck. This was made abundantly clear when we went to Pawnee, Okla., to see the Pawnee Bill Wild West Show. Next door was the 101 Ranch, which is only a memory now.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, there were a lot of wild west shows. Buffalo Bill was the most famous, but Pawnee Bill was right up there. There was also the 101 Ranch — just down the road from the Pawnee Bill operation- and it had a wild west show.
Pawnee Bill’s Wild West Show
Pawnee Bill, whose real name was Gordon Lillie, was from Kansas and was one of the Boomers who settled in Oklahoma before the land rush. He started a wild west show that traveled the world, but mostly in the United States. They still do the…
