The Wild West Would-Be Cowboys And Cowgirls Strap On Their Six-Shooters For Annual Fracas Of Fun

Lawyers, mechanics, chefs and others donned hats and six-guns Sunday to recreate a little of the Old West.

There was a Yukon Jack, an Idaho Jack, a Panhandle Pete and - say it fast - a Wes Turner.

It was the third “Great Northern Far Country Fracas,” an annual event drawing would-be cowboys and cowgirls from as far away as New Mexico and Colorado. More than 110 people showed up to shoot old-style guns for prizes.

“It’s like a Halloween party. You get to play John Wayne,” chuckled Dennis Mader, retired police investigator. Mader is vice president of the Panhandle Regulators, a local shooting club that sponsored the event. The regulators were a vigilante group in the 1800s.

Twenty yards away, shooters blasted away with revolvers and rifles, cutting planks in half and sending dozens of scarred bowling pins toppling into the dust.

Unhindered by her gingham dress and bonnet, Anita McGee worked a lever-action rifle, drilling targets and bowling pins.

“I’m just a big kid at heart,” the California seamstress said later. “This legitimizes people’s desire to get out and play cowboy.”

Nearby, federal records librarian Mark Scherting conferred with shooting teammate Dotty Jolley, a computer technician with two revolvers slung around her waist.

“There’s some history to it,” Scherting said. “It’s more fun, more social shooting.”

Competitors had to go through different shooting scenarios, blasting away in a simulated barroom or cowboy camp. One event was named “Rescue the Schoolmarm.”

Organizers built a small town at the site, a former Navy shooting range. The storefronts included an assay office, railroad depot and shops, some filled with modern-day peddlers. The mock town had a mock graveyard, which included “George Johnson, hanged by mistake,” and a stone marked “Here lies Lester Moore, four slugs from a .44. No Les, no more.”

Mader said he never lost his boyhood admiration for cowboys.

“It was the old idea of the man in the white hat, the good guy. I know that sounds corny,” he said. “But it was a simpler time. Cowboys were fairly lonely men, but they had a code of honor.”

Like nearly everyone at the event, he wore a cowboy hat, boots, and an old revolver slung low on his hip.

“I would dress like this all the time,” he said, chuckling. “If I wouldn’t get laughed at.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo