Small Wonders--The Earps of Pella (i)

Tall, dark, and handsome?--all of that. Virgil and his brothers were a shim or two over six feet, handsome, buffalo-shouldered guys whose sheer physical presence could quell a storm, big, buff bruisers who could walk into a saloon and make every man bellied up to the bar feel like a prune. 

They were Iowans. Well, sort of. They did a lot of growing up here, but had roots in Kentucky and Illinois, their father one of those mid-century gold-diggers forever staring west. Nicholas Earp, his name was, a justice of the peace with a nasty habit of running afoul of the very law he administered. 

And you heard that name right--Earp, I said. As in Wyatt, Wyatt Earp. The Earps of the OK Corral and Tombstone and a dozen Dodge City saloons, five Earp boys who never wandered far from each other. The Earps were Iowans. I'm not making this up. 

They were raised here--somewhat anyway. They grew up in Pella, where the old man farmed, sort of--eighty acres. That's right, Pella, Iowa. Windmill country. Tulips and wooden shoes on the straight and narrow path of Calvinist righteousness. Law-abiding, bible-toting, Dutch-speaking Pella was once home to the Earp brothers, firebrands right off a shelf of dime novels. I didn't--I couldn't--make this up.

Wyatt's the star, but Wyatt's boyhood hero was his older brother Virgil, who was right there beside Wyatt wielding a Winchester at the infamous OK Corral. Big brother Virgil, some years before Tombstone, got his little brother his first badge. Virgil got his start in "lawing," as the boys used to say, when he took a job as a bouncer in a brothel. The Earps had a thing for being the law and owning brothels. And yes, that was after they left Pella. 

And it was after the Civil War. Virgil served three years, somehow avoiding the bloodiest campaigns. He was married--sort of--to a nice Dutch girl named Ellen Rysdam, who had his baby a bit before it should have arrived, if you catch my drift.

During those three years, for some unknown reason, Virgil Earp was reported to be a casualty, killed in action. But he wasn't. Never took a bullet. Some claim the whole death thing was fabricated by two fathers with no interest in a marriage that never should have taken place. Anyway, Ellen Rysdam got to believing that Virgil was gone, so she remarried and moved to Oregon. No matter where you read the Earp story, there weren't many tears shed by anyone. 

Meanwhile, old man Earp led a wagon train of Pella folks out to California, in a trek that may have set a record for horrors even though they never saw an Lakota warrior. Old man Earp, by all accounts, wasn't any better at keeping wagons in line than he was his boys. As far as I know, neither the old man or the boys ever returned to Pella's paths of righteousness.

Soon enough, the boys were all out seeking their fortune, looking for gold, taking law-and-order jobs for cash to make those dreams come true. Deadwood, Dodge City, Tombstone--places of legend became home to Pella's Earps, who were quick learners when it came drink and cards and fisticuffs.

Virgil made a name for himself in Prescott, Arizona, when he toted that Winchester down the street to apprehend two drunk gunslingers shooting at a woman's dog. Just like that, seven men stood in the street, guns drawn. Minutes later, they were blazing. Virgil's rifle took out both roisters, who were wanted for killing two Colorado lawmen. We're talking wild west here, not Pella, Iowa.

more tomorrow. . .