Hypergamy in a Coffin-Themed Town

After touring downtown Nogales, I took off driving north, away from the border, along the back roads that cut through the scrub hills to the northeast. For most of the morning I had "good road," as I like to say---no one behind me and no one ahead of me. I could cruise at whatever speed I wanted, and the day was warm and beautiful.

Within a couple hours, I'd come down from the hills into the valley around Sierra Vista, an Army post town, and then cut straight east through more hills to emerge at my major sightseeing destination for the day, the famous old western tourist town of Tombstone.

It was rustic and western-themed, as one would expect. I parked near the courthouse and walked around downtown, passing actors dressed as gunfighters standing on the way to the main "western" street. There are a couple blocks of interest there, and after buying some postcards and walking the length of the blocks, past a smattering of tourists and passing stagecoaches carrying them on tours, I'd felt I'd already seen most of what there was to see.

But there were some must sees there. At the end of the block I found the Bird Cage Theatre, which purported to be a famous site. I'd never heard of it, but it turned out to be an importance place all in all. It was basically the town performance hall and bordello.

I walked in just as a woman dressed in a period costume was giving a presentation about the history of the place. As a theater, it saw performances from the likes of Eddie Foy and Lillian Russel. The woman also pointed to a huge painting on the wall of the famous stripper Fatima, also known as Little Egypt, who became world famous on her tours after getting her start at the Bird Cage.

As a bordello and saloon it was quite wild. She pointed out many bullet holes in the walls and gave a rundown of the men (and one woman) who were killed at the Bird Cage.

The most famous prostitutes of Tombstones plied their trade at the Bird Cage. The tour guide described the most noteworthy ones, and how they became the mistresses of the gunfighter-gambler-marshalls who came and went, switching their allegiance from one top alpha male to the next one. It was a beautiful lesson in the nature of sexual politics in a world stripped of all morality.

All things being equal, prettiest young women, in the bloom of their youthful beauty, tend to gravitate towards the most brutally dominant of men. It's something our society does not like to admit, but which many young men have to learn with great heartbreak. It seems a matter of instinct, just as men are drawn to youth and beauty almost beyond their ability to resist. Our society seems to acknowledge that men can be prisoners of instinct but we somehow bestow on women a higher reasoning about their choice of mates.

But in a place like Tombstone in its heyday, there was no veneer of pleasant fictions about such things. It was life and death, and all was made manifest. The law of jungle ruled.

The woman said a full tour of the place cost ten bucks. One could see the Black Mariah, the famous gold-plated hearse that carried the cowboys, courtesans, and gamblers up to Boot Hill. I decided to keep my money.

After the Bird Cage, I walked down to the other end of the street and found the OK Corral, the most famous site in Tombstone. Out in front was a coffin with the name "William Harrison Clayton" on it. I paid six bucks to go in the back lot to see the figures of the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Claytons facing each other at the moment when the bullets began to fly. At the entrance was another hearse.

Afterwards I sat through the half-hour "Historama" presentation of the town history narrated by Vincent Price. It was definitely worth it, the kind of kooky figurine-based automated show that no one bothers to make anymore, but which is a delight to see (here's a snippet of the end of it). If you go to Tombstone,  and you like this kind of stuff, this is a must see.