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Billy the Kid's Air Quote
January 25, 2009
Recently, someone sent me a funny quote attributing it to Billy the Kid:
"I like dancing, but not in the air."
While clever and tempting to believe I coudn't recall seeing it all of my Kid research, but you never know. So, I emailed Frederick Nolan, who has been studying Billy and the Lincoln County War for close to sixty years. Here's his reply:
"Sorry, I´ve been and still am on vacation in Brazil since the first of the year and loving every sunblasted moment of it. I love the quote attributed by your e-mail correspondent to Our Billy, but I´m afraid it does not appear in any of the (very very few) authenticated interviews known to have been conducted during his brief period of celebrity. Face it, he was a bright resourceful young fellow, but Oscar Wilde he was not.
"If it wasn´t just made up a week or two ago, I´d guess the quote comes from a novel, although I don´t recall ever having seen it. That he SHOULD have said it goes without saying, and maybe if Lute Wilcox of the Las Vegas Gazette had asked him the riight question he WOULD have but much as I hate being a wet blanket it belongs in the I Wish I´d Said That file."
—Fred Nolan
Recently, someone sent me a funny quote attributing it to Billy the Kid:
"I like dancing, but not in the air."
While clever and tempting to believe I coudn't recall seeing it all of my Kid research, but you never know. So, I emailed Frederick Nolan, who has been studying Billy and the Lincoln County War for close to sixty years. Here's his reply:
"Sorry, I´ve been and still am on vacation in Brazil since the first of the year and loving every sunblasted moment of it. I love the quote attributed by your e-mail correspondent to Our Billy, but I´m afraid it does not appear in any of the (very very few) authenticated interviews known to have been conducted during his brief period of celebrity. Face it, he was a bright resourceful young fellow, but Oscar Wilde he was not.
"If it wasn´t just made up a week or two ago, I´d guess the quote comes from a novel, although I don´t recall ever having seen it. That he SHOULD have said it goes without saying, and maybe if Lute Wilcox of the Las Vegas Gazette had asked him the riight question he WOULD have but much as I hate being a wet blanket it belongs in the I Wish I´d Said That file."
—Fred Nolan
Views: 6
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Comment by Geoff Stevens on January 25, 2009 at 2:21pm -
Hey Bob, I felt like it sounded like something from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. But now I don't think so. Your quote sounds modern. For Billy to say something like like that, he would probably be high on laudanum.
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Comment by Bob Boze Bell on January 26, 2009 at 5:52pm -
Mundo evidently caught my Plugged In commentary in the Arizona Republic last Sunday where I admitted attending a Step Class (think Jazzercize) with my wife. The teacher, a cutie named Gina, said she told her husband that three men came to her class last Sunday. He scoffed and said, "What kind of a men are they?" And she said, "I don't know, but they're cute." Oh, wives can be so deceptive. Now I have to go just to torment the husband. Ha.
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