The Slingers

In April, my family and the Proberts attended a civil war re-enactment. Both families had other plans for the first day of the event, and both families had those plans change at the last moment. We attended and had a blast! Civil war events are fun to attend, but way more fun to participate in. Well, the San Joaquin Gunslingers had a parade scheduled for the first day of the civil war event and like I said, my family had plans with our girls softball so we told the group we would not be in the parade weeks before. Well, our softball game and picture day were rescheduled so off we went to the civil war event! The king of the gunslinger group didn't like that we went there instead of the parade and, after being charter members, told my family we were not welcome in the group anymore. What a guy! So I said "fine, maybe I'll just start my own group and give you a run for your money!" The response was "Bring it on.....best of luck to you" I think he figured we would only fail. To be honest, I really didn't have a big interest in continuing anyway. I was getting kind of tired of the lack of commitment from that group and was looking forward to having weekends off in December for the first time in like five years!

Well, I went ahead and made a website, http://goldrushgunslingers.com , and a myspace page http://www.myspace.com/goldrushgunslingers , with the new group consisting of my family, the Proberts (who got a pink slip too) and Wayne Brown. Sadly, the move depleted most of the old group as these people chose to go with my group. We named the group, the Goldrush Gunslingers.

None of us really gave much thought in what the slingers would do, if anything! We did do a birthday party for a 5 year old, and received a bit of teasing for it. But what the heck, we had fun, the people at the party had fun and the mom gave us a very large donation! Win-win-win situation!

Then one day, I received a e-mail on our web-site from the Fresno Philharmonic out of the blue! It said they were interested in talking to us about opening for them and the Sons of the San Joaquin in front of four thousand people! Ummm, sure! And we

were off to the races!

We did GREAT for the Fresno Phill, impressed the Sons and local radio man Ray Appleton and made connections! From that event has come more bookings, some I won't mention just yet until we cross all the "t's" and dot the "i's" but one is working with the Selma Pioneer Village and another is a large corporation asking us to preform for their event in September and soon you (if you live around here) may be seeing the Slingers on a T.V. near you!

I try not to think with the "how do you like this" attitude towards the old group, but he did issue the challenge by changing his group's name to "The One and Only...", posting what a great group he has now on his myspace page and lying about finishes in parades they entered. (Sorry, I have the proof.) As far as I'm concerned, he has his and we have ours and ours is getting more and more popular as a direct result of the hard work, and fun, we put into every show! It shows!

So here's to the Goldrush Gunslingers!

Miss Rose E. Beautoks

Miss Pepper Box

Miss Tess

Miss Izzy Single

Captian Call

Newt

Johny Reb

7XL kid

Blackjack Ried

J.C. Cuffnstuff

Dusty Stranger

and me,

Slone Stranger