THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 30, 1995 TAG: 9507280528
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
During my childhood, downtown Norfolk was the backdrop for many spectacular parades, one of the most colorful being the cavalcade that kicked off the last appearance of Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Show here on Oct. 10, 1916.
I had just turned 7, and I will never forget the fleeting glimpse I caught of the long-haired, mustachioed and Stetson-crowned old scout as he rode down Main Street through cheering crowds.
Although it was a regular school day, my mother, who dearly loved pageantry of any sort, and I rode the ferry from Berkley to Norfolk to witness the big event. My mother even sweet-talked a Main Street merchant into providing us with a wooden box to serve as a curbside seat directly in front of the old Victoria Hotel.
Although we were not aware of it at the time, the parade had almost been canceled because a train wreck the night before had resulted in the death of several horses while the circus was en route to Norfolk. But Buffalo Bill was not about to deprive his local fans of the eye-popping procession that always raised the curtain on his popular extravaganza.
Born William Frederick Cody in Iowa in 1846, Buffalo Bill, a crack shot with a rifle, earned his nickname as a youth by supplying buffalo meat for workmen building a railroad across Kansas. By 1916, however, he was a tired, 70-year-old man. But he was a dedicated trooper and wasn't about to give up.
From 1884, when he organized his first Wild West Show, an outdoor exhibition that demonstrated the contemporary Western scene, he increasingly gained a reputation for exhilarating entertainment. In 1887, his show attained international fame when he took it to London for Queen Victoria's Jubilee. From then on, according to the Norfolk newspapers, he made almost yearly appearances here.
Before that, he had starred as an actor in May 1873 at Norfolk's Church Street Opera House in a melodrama called ``Injuns'' with other wild and woolly performers such as Texas Pete and Ned Buntline. But it was only after he organized his Wild West Show that he began to draw large crowds locally.
Although I didn't attend any of the Buffalo Bill spectaculars while he was here for the last time (my mother considered them too rough), I vividly recall the parade and its showy participants. Leading the procession on spirited horses were the units of U.S. Cavalry and Field Artillery that the government loaned Buffalo Bill to make his re-enactments of the derring-do on the plains more authentic. Then came the Cheyenne Champion Cowboys and Cowgirls mounted on bucking broncos. These were followed by gaudily attired units of Siberian Cossacks, Arab warriors and Japanese cavalry, the last brandishing flashing sabers.
Best of all were the Indians in full-feathered regalia - proud, inscrutable Native Americans who rode their piebald steeds like so many demigods. Some of the older members of the contingent, I later learned, had helped defeat Custer at Little Big Horn in 1876. They were followed by a small herd of snorting buffalo that served as a parade preface to the principal attraction. This was Buffalo Bill himself, riding in the celebrated Deadwood stagecoach, bowing right and left to the excited spectators.
For one small boy, at least, the parade was a glorious and only too fleeting glimpse of an American past that had by then become but a faint echo of his country's growing years. And once the procession had passed, the sights, sounds and smells of Norfolk's Main Street and the ferry ride back to Berkley were prosaic, to say the least.
Three months after his last Norfolk appearance, Buffalo Bill died in Denver on Jan. 10, 1917. The Virginian-Pilot included this characteristic anecdote in his obituary: ``Let's have a game of `high-five,' he said after he had talked with his family. And everyone joined the colonel laughing and joking because he was winning.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Buffalo Bill
by CNB