WhatFinger


Summer, Roy Rogers

Cowboys and --Saturdays?



COWBOYS & SATURDAYS..Yeah, I was eating my Sugar-Frosted Flakes with the shades drawn, staring straight up the barrels of Roy Rogers' twin six-shooters aiming at me out of the TV tube in our living room in black-and-white..preparing to die. When suddenly it occurred to me, Hey it's Saturday! and what am I doing sitting looking at TV when I can go strolling in the sunshine instead? So I pulled on my red cowboy-boots and said "Mom I'm going to the park," and she said,"which one?" and I said, "Hart's Park", --she said, "Okay, here's a sandwich to take with you. And be back in time for lunch. And no funny business." I said Okay. So I walked down the hill not taking the usual short-cuts to the main street past the Rexall Drugstore and all the other businesses, and businessmen, and passed the Sheriff's office; and said 'Hi' to the post-man in his official U.S. Post Office uniform shorts and pith-helmet, walking his cart carrying its leather mail-pouch along his route to William S. Hart Park, where the famous cowboy star once lived and breathed. And where soldiers from the Newhall area who died fighting in the World Wars are buried, beneath bright white crosses spread evenly over hills covered by a blanket of thick, fresh-cut grass; and where, also, the Easter sunrise services are held under the big cross, reflecting...
Eternity... And a little farther west is the Polynesian trailer-park and its rustic charm, where there's peacocks walking around, stray, --their shrill cries, and what all else? their feathers with that color of purple, pretty hard to explain on clean dirt under big cypress trees..families having picnics, kids yelling at each other, parents yelling at kids; and a petting-zoo inside a chicken-wire fence, and animal smells, like goats (which give milk). But here, up on the hill is Hart's Castle, where he lived out his days; a museum, now, full of his personal belongings he left for us, when he went to that big round-up in the sky. Lately, a 1960 summer morning warming up fast. And cool inside the Spanish villa's thick adobe walls, it's like Cowboys and Indians leaping in ambush out of giant paintings by Remington, and others of our western painters, the master artists of the wild west..a cover of LIFE. Looking elsewhere, there's a stuffed buffalo head on a wall by the fireplace here in the Great Room; and in display-cases, six-guns and belts of real outlaws, gifts by their retired owners, former train-robbers and other criminals, to the cowboy god of the silent movie screen, William S. Hart of Hollywood, his photographs staring at you from everywhere..a kind of creepy thrill from yesteryear. He really went for the realism and didn't want a lot of fluff and he doubled as director, too, some of the time. A couple of elderly ladies are taking us on the tour, talking about all of it, --the Indian rugs and artifacts, the period writing-desk and furnishings and a saddle, all of it catalogued..names, dates, when this or that got built and who said "What" and so on. So who cares? Why can't they just let me hang out for a minute and study the Winchester rifles on their gun-racks, and dangling bandoliers stuffed full of .45 longs? Land sakes! they're all I really came here for anyway, I won't bother anybody; and besides, they're locked, why, oh why! must I wait to grow up until I can be a bank-robber grabbing all that quick easy cash? Then I can buy this place! Or even just let me be a good guy with a white hat, that's okay, too, they get rewards..although they seldom accept them. Why is that? Oh well, they're not letting us pause here, so I think we'll have to wait on that, for the time being.

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Stepping back outside it's hot now, much brighter, and moving along, having passed the 'Donations' box sitting quiet like a casket by the rear door in a funeral-home, here's a grave marker below the walk-up, that says 'Fritz' who was his Master Hart's all-time greatest horse. And his favorite. Man I mean that horse was his bread and butter. I think he died at 27..Or was it 33? Maybe it was 37. Thank the vet if it was. And Hart the man died in '46 at age 82 after we beat Hitler. And he died many times before that on the stage, quite dramatically! back in New York City; for he was a Shakespearean actor, in the beginning..anyway I guess after I get home and eat lunch, I'll go spend my fifty cents weekly allowance-money for the matinee at The AMERICAN Theatre, there on old San Fernando Road, in Newhall, California..looking out at blue hills rising high above gold country, and phone-poles strung along railroad tracks running in a North-Easterly direction to the Mojave Desert; and further on, Death Valley. It's cool in there, too, because it's air-conditioned, and they're showing The Alamo with John Wayne, and cannons blasting away the mission's walls..back in the Republic of Texas. And I'll bet you you can almost smell the gun-powder in there; in fact if you go see it when my buddies go, you'll not only smell it. First, you'll jump out of your seat when they light off their fire-crackers from the back row, then you'll smell it, Yippee! And then there may be some explaining to do. And that's why they have a Sheriff's office..lest we forget what the Sunday School teacher said last Sunday. A-men.


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Chris Robinson -- Bio and Archives

Chris Robinson is a writer living in the United States.


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