Doc Coles SASS 1188

Guys, with all due respect, and as a car guy myself, let me just ask what do your cars have to do with early days is SASS?

The lady on the left is Aurie Bradley (whose alias I don’t recall). The lady on the right is May Lillie, wife of the late great Pawnee Bill (who won a number of the early costuming awards in the early days). The nice thing about this picture is that their clothes are period perfect. Today, most of the clothes seen in SASS scream “COSTUME”. These look like clothes. They did shoot full house BP loads and did it with style.

I worked at Old Sacramento Armory with Dick for a number of years then we started the River City Regulators along with five other good folks. Before he retired, Dick was captain of homicide for the Sacramento County Sheriffs Department and carried a nickled ivory gripped Colt Sheriffs model as his duty gun (there was a 1911 in his glove compartment as well as a riot gun, and an m16 in his trunk in case things got serious). He was a great guy and had great stories to tell about old time law enforcement. A true friend who helped me out at a critical time in my life. Another good man gone.

Isn’t that Diamond Dick on the right?

The pictures got me reminiscing. Here are a couple of shots from Northern California. The first one is the main stages at Railroad Flat up at Mokolomne Hill somewhere about 1985-1986 and the second one was me at the same match, back when I was a 22 year old kid and had a 28 inch waist! Not sure why I am only wearing one gun. This match changed my life. I met friends here including the late great Carl Ontis (Pawnee Bill), who got me interested in reenacting, which led to pursuing my interest in history, and eventually a Ph.D in historical archaeology. On top of that, we had a heck of a lot of fun. Sad to say, many of the old crowd are gone. But it was fun while it lasted.

I remember shooting the stage on the bottom with all the red buildings. You went down stage as you shot and the last target was inside the outhouse in the center. It was in the dark and you shot it through the half moon...if you ever saw it! This kind of stage would cause a riot these days, but it was great fun. I recall that the team match was shot on this bay and the props really took a beating. Brings back good memories.