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Show P If . 1 l " V- V- - V--S ' ' ' ... '' r1: ' i 71 . . - Detpite strict rules, Mennonite children teem happy. 1 A 1,1 globe if on of few contacts these children have with outside world. Thev learn from an ancient text 1 PEOPLE in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, the book and their book is the Bible. They are members of the Mennonjte f, A third-grad- boy wears traditional Mennonite haircut. er Billy Was a Mixed-u- man with name of Vigilante has tor years been riding indoor herd on the bad men of the Old West. Although he has spent his life amid the concrete canyons of New York City, he knows Billy the Kid, Jack, and Bat Masterson as well as if he'd A the appropriate SOFT-SPOKE- N, gray-hair- ed Three-Finger- ed made camp with them. Sylvester Vigilante learned all he knows about the bad men during almost halt a century of work among records of the New York Historical Public Library and the Society. For years he was chief of the library's American History Room, but our western outlaws have always been his specialty. "We just don't have gangsters like them any more," says Vigilante. "Guys like Al Capone and 'Baby Face Nelson were cream puffs by comparison." Taker as an' example, William Hr Bonneyr better known as Billy the Kid. "That's all he was," says Vigilante, "a dumb kid, a punk." Billy might have grown up to be & New York businessman, but while he was still a child his family moved to Coffey-vill- e, Kansas. His father died ; the family moved on to Colorado and New Mexico, and Billy began getting into trouble. New-Yo- rk , law-abidi- ng FAMILY WEEKLY MAGAZINE Church, an unusual religious sect which be lieves literally in the laws set down in the New Testament, The Mennonite Church numbers close to 70,000 members, whose ancestors came to this country to escape persecution for their strange ways. Mennonites abstain from fancy MARCH 21, 19S4 p. clothing, elaborate entertainments, and the other vanities of the world. They are also prohibited from holding civil office, and no member may marry outside the sect. Most of the students come to school wearing the traditional garments of their sect, the girls in dark cloaks and. plain caps, the boys in drab colored shirt and pants. For these children, television, movies, and the luxuries of 1954 might as well not exist. Kid! "Judging from his pictures," Vigilante says, "Billy might not have been so if his tonsils had been removed. An operar tion, vitamin pills, maybe glasses and Billy wouldn't have been a problem child." As it was, unhappy, Billy made 12. Some hishis first killing at the age of torians say he killed a man for each year that he lived21. But a former friend who had turned sheriff, Pat Garrett, finally cashed in Billy's chips before he could reach 22. According to Vigilante, "Doc" Holliday was another who was turned into an outlaw by sheer chance. Holliday was practicing dentistry in Tennessee when he contracted tuberculosis and had to forget his career. " Doc' was bitter about the way his life had turned out," Vigilante says. So he went out west with a chip on one shoulder and a " sawed-o- ff shotgun on the others w: n r: "Some say that even Jesse James might never have gone astray," says Vigilante, "but he'd fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. Back home on the Missouri-Kansborder, his neighbors wouldn't talk to him. "That made Jesse mad. All he needed to was keep him on" the some veterans' readjustment training." bad-temper- ed left-hand- ed as straight-and-narro- w r-A- ' After years pf studying the Wild West, Vigilante has settled on two favorites: Sheriff Bill Tilghman of the Oklahoma Territory and renegade Butch Cassidy of Wyoming. . "Butch was smarter than most outlaws of his day," says Vigilante. "Many of them were practically morons. And there's one thing I admire about both these men: they hardly ever killed a man unless, of course, it was absolutely necessary." |