A Note on "Old-Timers"
- James Townsend
- Dec 23, 2022
- 1 min read
I'm not a fan of the general message of the book A Fitting Death for Billy the Kid, by Ramon F. Adams. However, there is a passage about the above-average-height tales of "old-timers" that surround the legend of Billy the Kid.
It reads:
One of the most prolific sources of misinformation is the old-timer who writes his memoirs. Rarely is he a writer to begin with, and seldom does he decide to write a book before he is in his dotage. He then depends upon a faulty memory, hearsay, or the tall tales he has heard around the campfire. If he places his completed effort in the hands of an editor, the latter is frequently utterly ignorant of the West, its language, and its history, and like the average public, usually thinks the author's statements must be true because he is writing about his own experiences...It is disappointing to discover that the men who help make history often cannot record it accurately.
(Source: Adams, Ramon F., A Fitting Death for Billy the Kid, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 1960, pgs. 102-103.)
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