Cowboys and Cowboys

I grew up with television Westerns.  Back in the day I sat on the floor in front of the television watching “Lawman” with John Russell and Peter Brown as Deputy Johnnie McKay; Cheyenne; Maverick; Laramie.  They caught you first with their introductory music, often with catchy lyrics. 

  

                      Have Gun will travel reads the card of a man

            A knight without armour in a savage land

His fast gun for hire head's the calling wind.
A soldier of fortune is the man called Paladin.
Paladin, Paladin
Where do you roam?
Paladin, Paladin,
Far, far from home.

The stories were usually honest episodes with a little action where our hero came out the winner, righting wrongs on a weekly basis.  One of the later westerns “Laredo” had some good humour in it, sadly lacking in the earlier shows.  Today when I watch reruns of the different westerns I find myself chuckling.  For instance, have you noticed how The Rifleman walks down the street but he is looking sternly into the camera at right angles to the street he is walking down, blasting off his rifle?  I laugh every time I see it, so not right.  And when you see the cowboys wearing spurs and gloves, another big no, no in the real world.  One of the Christmas gifts my brother John got one year was a really beautiful rifle.  Later Peter got a six shooter but he never got the gunbelt to go with it.  Most of the boys in our neighbourhood had some type of six shooter to play with.  Few got the cowboy hats to go with it though.  But every one of us, girl or boy, could throw ourselves on the ground, clutching our breast as we made to die.

            Watching reruns today I am particularly struck with how, in the early days at least, they rarely showed the body of the person shot.  I noticed it particularly in The Virginian and Gunsmoke episodes.  Today they show us cadavers being cut up in front of our eyes.  How real do we want to get with our fantasy?  Apparently the uglier, grittier and nastier the better.  But I look back at the shows I watched as a youngster and then think about the behavior of the children at school.  We didn’t have kids misbehaving in our classroom.  Sure once in a while one of the boys would have to stand in the corner but it was not an every day occurrence; maybe once or twice a year Kurt or Gerald would have to do penance for talking or throwing a paper airplane across the aisle.  Talking with my friends who volunteer in schools they tell me that there are at least 5 or 6 children with “special needs” in a class of 30; frequently it is even more.   Why is that?

            Is it possible to go back to “Leave it to Beaver” and the white picket fence fantasy?  Do we want to go that far?  Remember “My Three Sons” and there little dilemmas?  Even The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family was pretty innocent stuff.  Today it seems we prefer to watch “Law and Order”and “CSI”.  Our comedies include obnoxious children such as the ones from Rosanne or “Malcolm in the Middle”.

            The westerns gave us the dab of violence we need in our life but ended on a note that told us that good would always triumph over evil.  You went to bed knowing that Daniel Boone and Davy Crocket were heroes who always did the right thing.  And the girls?  Well, we knew that we could never marry Little Joe or Adam because if we got engaged to them we would croak for sure!  But that’s another story.