Buffalo Bill Meets The Invisible Man

This appeared April 9, 2006

Two famous men - William "Buffalo Bill" Cody and Claude "The Invisible Man" Rains - spent part of their lives in West Chester. But although their homes stand directly across from one another - Rains' Georgian on the southwest corner of South Church and Dean, and Cody's brick Victorian on the northwest corner - they never met. Until recently...
Claude Rains (approaching Cody on South Church Street): Dear man, whatever are you looking for? It's a rainy night and your buckskin rags are soaked!
Buffalo Bill: The marker! My historical marker! I'm sure it must be here somewhere.
CR: What historical marker? There's nothing of the sort on this block.
BB: The devil you say! Look here, sir. I am one of history's great figures. I have been chronicled across time. There is a museum named in my honor, and a town in Wyoming as well. I have known Sitting Bull and Annie Oakley, and been portrayed on screen by Paul Newman. Sure as shootin' they must have a historic plaque here to remember me by.
CR: Sorry, old man. The town that honors a skateboarding jackass and a Jewish reggae rap artist simply has no place for the likes of a dead buffalo scout. There's nothing here of you but that redwood tree you planted so many days ago.
BB: Good investment. Say, what do you think of the old homestead these days? A bit racier than Hollywood in your time?
CR: Reminds me of Casablanca in the '40s, without the Nazis. Cafes populated by wanton women, and run by gambling gun runners. Mealy mouthed chiselers selling exit visas, for who knows where. Czechoslovakian princesses asking piano players for free songs, or spare Mardi Gras beads. All so sordid.
BB: Snap out of it man! That was a movie! This is real life.
CR: Sir, the movies are so much more real to me than life. And you? How does our town strike you?
BB: Lower than a snake's belly.
CR: Well put.
BB: When I brought my Wild West Show to the old Opera House on High Street, I had no idea that 100 years later it would be taken as license to turn the town into its own wild West Chester show. Now, the town seems noisy enough to scare even the most churlish dog in any Indian village I've ever seen. And the characters across the stage! Smarmy dance hall proprietors all. Makes me long for my uncle, who introduced me to West Chester. General Henry Guss. Did you know him?
CR: Gusz, you say?
BB: No, Guss. Consarn it! The past is always escaping here in West Chester. We've so much of it to go around that when bits disappear, we seem not to notice. Piece by piece, it slips by us. And then we wake like the Indian who has lost the prairie, acre by acre. Or the buffalo, one pelt at a time.
CR: Beg pardon?
BB: Sorry. Misting up. Wish I could find my plaque.
CR (gently taking Cody by the elbow): Don't worry, old man. I hear there is a Free French garrison over by Romansville. They'll be needing a few good men. And I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
BB: What the deuce are you talking about?