Day of reckoning for Idaho mayors

POST FALLS – With a drawl that would make John Wayne green with envy, Post Falls Mayor Clay “White Shirt” Larkin slung his jacket back and adjusted the pair of guns strapped on his hips.

“Well, well, well, leave it to Sandpoint to send a kid to do a man’s job,” he called out to Sandpoint Mayor Ray “Kaniksu Kid” Miller.

Then in a clink of spurs, pop of gunshots and a haze of smoke, the gunslingers and their posses opened fire.

It could have been a Wild West scene lifted from the pages of a Louis L’Amour novel – except for the blank gun cartridges, the twitters of laughter from the audience and the makeshift “applause” sign lofted by a cowboy hat-wearing high school student.

In the end, Miller and Larkin were the only ones left standing Thursday evening in Post Falls’ first “Mayoral Showdown,” a cowboy-themed community night of fun and entertainment.

Dozens of residents chowed down on free vittles, hooted at hammed-up skits, heard a gun safety presentation and voted in a cowboy costume contest.

The event, which also featured the Panhandle Gunslingers group, was sponsored by Mary Willeford Allstate Agency and held in the company’s parking lot in Post Falls.

“It’s … what our community is all about,” Larkin said of the get-together.

Sitting along the sidelines, spectator Ron Charlton dressed the part in a knee-length black jacket, hat, gun holster and a “Tombstone Marshall” badge pinned to his lapel.

At the end of the evening, his get-up won him the top prize in the costume contest.

“I’ve watched a lot of cowboy movies,” said Charlton, who was in town from Montana to visit his girlfriend. “This is kind of keeping it alive.”