“We can’t all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.” — Will Rogers  I will probably support the local Cowboy Festival into the next 11 lifetimes. There are things I lament, not so much about the fest but about the changing face of the valley. It’s so odd to host a Wild West show when its surrounded not by hostile Indians but latte-sipping Yuppies by the hundreds of thousands.

One of the forgotten treasures of The Life Western is the self-inflicted gunshot wound. We guys have always been more of a menace to ourselves than to others.

While the days of steely-eyed hombres toting custom-tooled holsters and shiny revolvers, so are the volumes of reports of men accidentally aerating themselves.

There are so many documented stories here in the SCV, going back over a century.

One of the problems was that prior to 1965, just about everyone in the valley owned a firearm. So, there existed just more of a statistical chance to shoot yourself.

Back in 1944, a local Castaic boy went up into the hills to try and bag dinner. He ended up shooting himself in the head. More interestingly, except for the entrance wound, it apparently didn’t do any damage. The kid was marching home, dropped his hatchet, bent over to pick it up, discharged his rifle and a bullet went into his head and rattled around his skull for a season. The boy walked home and spent the rest of his days with a .22 slug in his noggin.

You could fill volumes with people who shot themselves with “empty” guns while they were cleaning them. One fellow — strangely, he was from Castaic, too —  cleaned his shotgun by wedging the stock between his feet and pressing the barrel against his tummy. He was in the living room with his wife, who was knitting. The not-so empty gun went off. At the autopsy, the found the brass button to his Levi jeans had welded itself into his spine.

How do you not snicker at the guy’s funeral?

Some guy back in the 1950s was holed up in — I’m not making this up — a Castaic motel. He was so drunk you think he had epilepsy. While resting, he saw something move at the foot of his bed. He took a sidearm, made careful aim and blew his little toe clean off. Here’s the interesting part. The guy then shot off the little toe of his other foot. When Sheriff’s deputies responded to the gunshots, they asked the obvious question: “Why?”  The drunk noted: “Because the first one didn’t hurt so bad.”

Before there was the Cowboy Festival, our homage to things Western was Frontier Days, blessedly, not held in Castaic. The Canyon Country fair used to offer stuntmen exhibitions.

In 1972, two of the local wannabe pistol fighters of the Jayhawkers exhibition shooting group mistakenly loaded their guns with live ammo.  They plugged each other in the legs.

It gets better.

The Sheriff’s Department were investigating whether even using fake ammo was a danger in a crowded situation. The two deputies used a little too much gunpowder and wadding in their experiment and ended up shooting one another while re-enacting the original scenario.

My all-time favorite story about the self-inflicted gunshot wound doesn’t involve any particular anecdote, rather, a period in our history about not quite two years long.

At the end of the 1950s, Westerns were the runaway favored entertainment of America. Get this. A staggering 9 out of the top 10 TV shows were oaters.

Along with this popularity came a cottage industry. Right around the time the Hula Hoop was at its zenith, fast-draw competitions were sweeping the nation.

Forget that 90 percent of the TOP shows were Westerns. There were tons of really bad ones and we’re just talking TV. Nearly every Western ended with the obligatory showdown on Main Street, usually in front of the saloon, between the bad guy and the good guy, to see who was the fastest.

Men of all ages were buying replica revolvers and slicked holsters and practicing their quick draw. The Santa Clarita, with its then-unpopulated area and countless canyons and fingers, became a Mecca for both target and quick-draw practice.

Frequently, to get the edge, guys would monkey with their triggers, filing them down or otherwise making them hypersensitive.

There was this period in our local history where the number one reason for admission into our tiny Newhall Hospital was the self-inflicted gunshot wound. On average — on AVERAGE — someone dripping blood would be admitted because he failed to get the order right on: Draw, Aim, Fire. Many times, it was completely reversed and hapless would-be gunslingers dislodged their firearms while they were still in the holster.

The result was a lot of men limping around with holes in knees, feet and thighs.

I suppose the capper was this one chap who tried to emulate his hero, the actor Hugh O’Brian. He played the title role in the TV show, “Wyatt Earp.” In the show, O’Brian’s  gimmick were these matching and outlandish Buntline Specials, high-caliber revolvers with barrels as long as irrigation pipe.

Our hapless copycat motored out to one of our distant canyons, strapped on his gunbelt and placed a couple of tin cans on a rock. He marched back 10 paces, crouched, grabbed both knock-off Buntlines, fired simultaneously, pulled them out of the holster, aimed, and pert near swooned.

When he woke in the emergency room several hours later, he had matching holes in his thighs, calves and feet.

He perforated himself real good.

John Boston was named Best Humor Columnist in America by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Again. This goes along with his 117 other major national, regional and California awards for writing excellence. Look for his new web page, thebostonreport.com, coming, fingers crossed, next week! (OK. Cripes. We’ve been working on all sorts of stuff and life’s happening and the new and improved Boston Report IS coming out right around the corner.)