I never thought we’d get our story told, to be honest with you. You couldn’t have made a movie about what really happened to us in Santa Poco, unless you were Sam Peckinpah or that fella made the movies about chainsaw murders.   Hollywood wasn’t ready for it then and they aren’t ready for it now. 

Dusty, he stayed down there after it was all over.  We told everybody it was because of the girl, but it was really because of the blood.  He picked up a taste for it.  Blood and dust, that’s all there was in Santa Poco, and he liked them both.  He killed more men than you’ve had hot dinners.  Even back around the turn of the century, you could build up a big heap of angry with the name Dusty Bottoms.  Of course down there they called him El Culo Polvoriente, which only made him madder.  I heard he died in 1929, right after the crash; he was in Mexico City doing a job on some local commie bigwigs, and a stockbroker landed right on top of him.

Ned was the one who really tried to keep the team alive.  God bless that little bastard, nothing could break his spirits, not even what we saw down there.  He rode a train back to the states, the whole way sitting next to a guy who had a necklace made of Indian tongues, and it didn’t faze him.  Of course we were all too shellshocked to stay together, but he didn’t let that stop him.  He toured Vaudeville all through the ‘20s with the New Three Amigos.  During the Depression, he did a couple of B-movies with some fellas called the Original Three Amigos, and then in the war he had a USO show with the Fightin’ Yank Three Amigos Squadron.  In the ‘50s, he was in a short-lived sitcom called The New Original Three Amigos, which I believe was him, one of the Little Rascals, and a replacement Stooge.  He was performing in the Catskills at age 86 with the Funky Two Amigos Plus One when the stroke got him.

Me, I’m the last one left.  I’m a hundred and eight goddamn years old, and the only time I ever get to talk to anyone is when they send some jackass like you to ask what it’s like to be the oldest man in show business.  No offense, son.  But you want to know what it’s like?  I’ll tell you what it’s like.  All I can think about all day is El Guapo’s death-rattle, and I can’t sleep at night because I’ve had that dopey theme song of ours running through my head since 1954.  I live in a one-room hole at the Home For Retired Dreamboats, and meanwhile that punk Reagan just got elected president.

And they call me Lucky.

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"We wish, in a word, equality -- equality in fact as collary, or rather, as primordial condition of liberty; that is what we wish sincerely and energetically." (Mikhail Bakunin)