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Welcome to the Dallas Wax Museum

13. Geronimo, whose life is an encouraging story. He led Apaches on the warpath three times over a span of thirty years before surrendering to General Miles on September 4, 1886. But after that Geronimo reconciled his lot. He became a Christian and joined the Dutch Reform Church. He attended the St. Louis World's Fair and the Buffalo and Omaha Expositions. Geronimo rode in the inaugural parade of President Theodore Roosevelt.

14. Then follows a scene where ColonelCharles Goodnight of the Texas Rangers is meeting Chief Quanah Parker, leader of a renegade band of Comanche Indians. The Chief had led his people out of the Fort Sill reservation where they were supposed to stay. They had moved into the Texas panhandle onto the private property of Colonel Goodnigh-a million-acre cattle ranch. The Indians wanted to settle there and start their own farms. The scene captured in wax is when the colonel convinced the chief to "go back to the reservation."

15. With a detailed reconstruction of the fight at the O. K. Corral, there is a brightening in the eyes of the crowd. The theme in Dallas's history is evident. The winning of the West was a struggle. "That's Wyatt Earp cuttin those other guys down," someone says to a child. In the wax, Earp's side is coming out on top. There are four men on his side and three on the other. One of the others is already dead. One of them is wounded and about to get it again as he tries to shoot from the ground. Wyatt himself is in the process of drilling the third guy, who, in a miracle of modern wax, is positioned on a 45 slant to the ground, falling with blood pouring out of the holes in him.

16. There are only four non-wax exhibits in the museum. The first of these is a mock-up of the graveyard in Dodge City. Then there's a huge collection of rifles, pistols, and other guns kept in glass cases. Also, right after the O. K. Corral comes a display of all 211 different kinds of barbed wire there ever were. Overhead the barbed wire is a yellow sign. The sign says "Bonnie and Clyde straight ahead."

17. Straight ahead is a wall full of clippings from the Dallas Times-Her-old about Bonnie and Clyde. The crowd now finds out that they are like crowds in other museums: they're unselfish and patient. People crowd around the clippings, but they wait their turn. The newspapers have big pictures of the dead bodies, the bullet-riddled car, the crowds looking at the car and the bodies. The story describes it this way: "Both Barrow and the woman were instantly killed; Barrow being shot through the left temple and through the left shoulder. The Parker woman was shot through the mouth, her teeth being knocked out through the neck, and the fingers of her right hand were shot off." Around the corner is the original "death car" used in the movie "Bonnie and Clyde." It is very nice. There are bullet holes in the windows and in the doors. The window on the driver's side has been completely shot away.

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18. Opposite the "death car" are the most popular female movie stars born in the Southwest. They are Carol Burnett, Joan Crawford, Linda Darnell, Dolores Del Rio, Greer Garson, Dorothy Malone, Mary Martin, Debbie Reynolds, Ginger Rogers, and Ann Sheridan. They are all standing, sitting, or lounging in what looks like a long pink powder room. Their cushions are velvet. And they're all in stunning silky gowns. They're beautiful. They're all smiling.

19. Next comes a group of sheriffs and Texas Rangers, including Pat Garrett, who blew Billy the Kid to pieces as he was walking across the yard to get a drink of water.

20. Then comes a reconstructed wooden livery stable. We see the inside by looking through the windows. The windows are high enough so that very little children can't look in. Inside there are four men hanging from their necks dead, who have just been lynched. Their tongues stick out, their eyeballs are rolled back, their necks are crooked. People looking inside see other people looking in through the windows on the other side of the hangings. But they only look briefly because others are waiting behind them to look in, too.

21. There's a scene showing Billy the Kid shoot Bob Ollinger. The Kid is firing a shotgun out through a jail cell window. Ollinger, who was running forward, has been knocked backward by the blast. It's one of the old wax museum's most dramatic reenactments. Things are starting to pick up again. Ollinger's left side has been shot away and is covered with blood. Billy the Kid shot him once more after he was dead. And then he tore the gun to pieces and threw them at the body.

22. The next one shows Wild Bill Hickok being shot in the back of the head while he plays poker. A boy's father is explaining to him, "There's Wild Bill Hickok gittin' it in the back of the head."

23. The last wax cowboy is gun-fighter-killer John Ringo, who's lying dead underneath a tree. His stomach and chest are full of holes with blood trickling out down his shirt, onto his pants, and into the dust. He's got a bottle at his side and a gun in his hand.

24. The museum moves to the famous men of our own times with the wax figure of Lee Harvey Oswald leaning forward to raise his rifle. He looks a lot like he's about to blast some skeet out of the air, but, of course, he's really about to shoot Kennedy. The image elicits little more out of the people in the crowd than a knowing nod, which is as if to say, "Yeah, I know: I drive by it every day on the way to work. So I've already seen that one."

25. Then there are the two fathers of Negro culture in America. Dr. George Washington Carver who came up from slavery, learned to go to school, devoted himself to his own research in "God's little workshop," and eventually developed 300 useful products from the peanut, 118 from the sweet potato, and more than 60 from the pecan. And W. C. Handy, who taught himself how to play a $1.75 trumpet, joined a band of roving minstrels, and became famous writing songs like "St. Louis Blues." After his success, his father told him, "Sonny, I am very proud of you and forgive you for becoming a musician."

26. "Dad" Joiner, who just couldn't be convinced otherwise, and started drilling for oil in the arid wastelands of Eastern Texas. Undaunted by early failures, he finally discovered the oil that has made Texas what it is today.

27. Babe Didrikson Zaharias, who first achieved national fame in 1930 when she played on the Golden Cy-clones Championship Girls' Basketball team of the Employers' Casualty Insurance Company of Dallas. She moved into the international spotlight in 1932 by winning the javelin throw and 80-meter hurdles at the Olympics in Los Angeles. In 1947, she won 17 straight golf tiles before turning professional. The Associated Press voted Babe the greatest female athlete of the first half of the twentieth century and, also, named her the woman athlete of the year in 1932, 1945, 1946, 1947, and 1950. In the Texas Sports Hall of Fame she is labeled, "The World's Greatest Woman Athlete."

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