Blog 2149 – 09.03.2021
My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys
One of my favorite Christmas gifts as a boy came from my Uncle Joe and was a Hop-along Cassidy six gun set with two ivory handled chrome plated six guns and twin holsters to strap them on my hips. I was a proud little cowboy that day. I think Santa even brought my a cowboy hat that year. My little brother, Bob, got furry chaps and a vest to match, I think. We were loud enough to wake the dead as Dad often remarked about his two little cowboys.
The nineteen fifties that I grew up in was prime time for cowboys in America. All the western movies that were made and released in the nineteen thirties and forties were run and re-run on TV till we had the plots (slim as they often were) and dialogue memorized. Every boy I ever knew, could die on command and the command was always, “Bang, you’re dead.”
I am a non-violent person and though I served my last year as a teenager in a combat zone on the other side of this big blue ball fortunately for me and the guys who served with me I never was in a situation where I had to shoot anyone. And most of those who were will tell you how much they wish they had not been. David Allan Coe in his song “If That Ain’t Country” sings “Daddy bought our house on the G.I. Bill, but said it wasn’t worth all he had to kill to get it.” Amen, D.A.C, on that I whole-heartedly agree with your dad, probably not much else. But we can all find common ground if we try.
One of my favorites, that I refer to often of The Ten Intentions for a Better World reads: “I refrain from opposing or harming anyone but allow others to have their own experience.” All the good guy cowboy heroes of my youth, especially Gene and Roy, lived by that code too, it was an important part of the cowboy code. Though they wore their trusty six guns on their hips they sang a lot more than they shot and only fired their six shooters when necessary to rescue their friends, protect their cattle, or in self-defense.
It seems to me that many folks think we still live in the wild untamed West. They see bad guys everywhere. This past week a the new law in Texas says that anyone in Texas who has not been convicted of a violent crime can legally carry a hand gun without training or a license. There are a few other prohibited categories, but since no background check is required to purchase a hand gun if you can prove you are twenty-one you can buy one and start toting it around with you. The police chiefs in Texas mostly agree that this is a very bad idea but Texas seems to be ripe with them these days.
It seems half the country is operating from a different set of “facts.” I heard a fellow say in Nebraska yesterday that he preferred listing to radio stations that tell him the true facts not CNN, CBS, and those other guys. He said he used to listen to Fox News but not longer trusts them either to tell the truth. Wow, and he is not alone. In the mid fifties Jack Webb played a Los Angeles police detective and his signature line when questioning a witness to a crime was, “Just the facts, just the facts.” But how long can we continue to believe that even the facts aren’t really the facts.”
The former President before he was elected said that he could shoot someone on the street in New York City and his numbers would still go up. That is a fact that many dismissed then and still do because it is unreconcilable with what they chose to think and believe.
Irrefutable facts are persistent though and will, I believe, win out over the fabricated “facts” in the end.
In the early years of my adventures before I was old enough to pay very much attention to anything on TV besides my cowboy adventure movies and shows. There was Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy and his Communist conspiracies hearings on TV and in all the papers. Senator McCarthy could never keep straight the actually number of Communists that he had irrefutable proof (which he never provided) that were in the Federal government. It seems Hitler was right about the bigger the lie you tell the more people will believe it. I grew up thinking Communists were everywhere, damned and determined to get us all. And all the while they were parading their missile arsenal every May Day they were buying discounted grain from the U.S. to feed their people. The military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about in his final speech as President needed The U.SS.R. to be The Big Wolf in order to sell Congress on stock piling war materials and missiles and nuclear bombs enough to destroy the whole world several times over. The handgun manufactures have, I think, the same marketing plan.
I hope the fever dream ends soon and we wake up to realize the puppet masters, truth benders, and false fact tellers and sellers, have only their own profits in mind and not the greater good of anyone else.
The family who got rich legally manufacturing and selling the opioid Oxy-Contin/Oxycondon that has ruined countless lives and continues too may indeed get off and not have to pay for their crime. The cattle rustlers, and killers never did in my boyhood cowboy movies.
Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White
Sweet Baby James & Long Ago and Far Away
theencouragingword 