"Historical Blindness" with Maisie McAllister, Volume 2

Now, where was I? Oh, yeah.

Crest Top's main claim to historical fame comes from bein' the seat of the territorial capital for four glorious days back in 1878, due to a typographical error on the part of a drunken stenographer. The mistake was soon rectified and the capital was moved back to Prescott, but certain rogue legislators continued to hold sessions in Crest Top as late as 1996. Here controversial measures such as cock-fighting being proclaimed Arizona's "Official Blood Sport" and making "spitting on a Sunday" a hanging offense were passed and largely ignored by the rest of the state.

One prominent early resident of Crest Top was the noted poet, historian, pioneering suffragist, mother of fifteen and inventor of "cowboy bowling," Charlotte Ball. She was one heck of a gal, lemme tell ya. We useta kick up our heels together on many a Saturday night. They named the history museum after her. And all I got was this lousy blog.

The wildest and wooliest section of old Crest Top was "Tequila Row," a strip of 40 of the rip-roarinest, rooty-tootiest hooch joints the wild west ever seen. (Course, it's all hoity-toity turist stops nowadays but whatever.) The whole strip burned to the ground in 18 and 98. That same year the world famous hypnotist Woodrow Mann, otherwise known as "The Devil's Apprentice," performed his amazing mesmerist's act. And around this same time, yours truly foiled an assassination attempt on President William McKinley, who was visiting Crest Top at the time. See, it happened like this . . .

What? Heh, I just got my shoulder tapped by one of them Coyotes I was tellin' you about, a presumptious young feller by the name of Christopher Shmit or somethin' like that.

"Maisie," he said, "You're going to tell that story at the Day of the Dead Dinner Show on November 11. Don't go givin' the story away for free on this blog."

'Course I smacked him upside the gob fer interruptin' his elders, but the boy does have a point. If you wanna hear how I saved the President's life, yer jes gonna hafta pony up for a ticket to the show like evra-body else. I promise it's as thrilling a story as ye ever heard, and it's all 100% historical fact. I'd swear to it on a stack of Bibles. 'Course I don't keep too many Bibles in my house, for obvious fire safety issues.

See y'all at the show!