Marie Taylor, Ink

A few years ago, I broke a six-year abstinence and bought a television set. I did stop short of getting cable and in the days that followed, I watched a 21st century television with a $5 pair of rabbit ears antenna. I got ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS, plus a handful of foreign language stations and shopping networks. Most importantly, I received two local tv stations which were really time machines that took me back sixty years. I could watch the same tv programs that I watched as a child on our first, refrigerator-sized television.

In those days, I watched Wagon Train, Bonanza, My Little Margie, Hogan’s Heroes, Perry Mason, Leave it to Beaver, My Friend Irma, Father Knows Best, Gilligan’s Island, I Married Joan, Ozzie & Harriette, and many other staples of the 50’s and 60’s. But my favorite program was Gaby Hayes’ Western Theater. Gaby came on at 4 o’clock, just after school and just before Howdy Doody and dinnertime.

Gaby’s show featured the grade B westerns of the 30’s and 40’s with stars such as Johnny Mack Brown, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Rex Allen, Smiley Burnette, Harry Carey, Andy Devine, Sunset Carson, Hoot Gibson, Tim Holt, Lash LaRue, Slim Pickens and Tex Ritter. Of the scores of cowboys featured on the screen there were only a handful of women, foremost among them being Dale Evans who was never more than a sidekick to Roy.

The westerns, along with my weekly hour of catechism at St. Bartholomew’s Catholic Church directly across the street, provided the foundation of my morals and standards. While the church focused on fear and guilt, the cowboy movies portrayed the classic conflict between good and evil. Cowboys provided real-life know-how and in cases of confusion, the color of the hats easily identified the bad guys.

For many years I longed to be a boy so that I could ride a horse and be a sheriff in a wild west town. I had a cowboy costume with cowboy boots and a hat — not to mention a black Hopalong Cassidy two-wheel bicycle with a cap gun holster near the handlebars. My favorite song, to which I knew all the words, was “Don’t Fence Me In,” a presentiment of future attitudes.

What did I learn from these movies? The black and white innocence and unquestioning righteousness of the cowboy movies gave a lot of security to my world view as a child. I knew that by the end of the story, after some hard knocks and lightning-fast gun play, goodness would triumph. Indeed, the westerns were the modern versioon of morality plays that were performed in church courtyards in the Middle Ages.

Cowboy movies taught me the need to have courage even through you were surrounded by hostile forces; to stand up for what you believed in especially if it involved barb wire or water rights; to sit with your back to the wall and your eye on the door; that being humble was better than being proud; that women and children were to be protected; that a horse was the best friend you could ever have; and finally, if you rode into the sunset there was a chance you could make a fresh start. All in all, not a bad list of guidelines for living.

 In the 1950’s, the American Dream came true for the middle class. Father made a living wage and mother made cookies; families ate tv dinners on trays while they watched Ed Sullivan; interstate highways linked the nation from coast to coast. 

One of the highways eventually lured me to the very land where all those westerns had been made, California. Now I wear a white straw hat, prop my feet up on the porch rail and watch the sunset at the end of my personal trail.