NakedCity Wichita

beans… it’s what’s for dinner

Posted on 01. Jun, 2010 by molly in op-ed

words > “BLACK” BART WILCOX

When the cowboys of the Old West dragged their weary cowboy butts off of their saddles to the chuck wagon, “What’s for dinner?” was the expected question, even though everybody already knew the answer–“Beans.” Then the usual half-hearted grumbling about beans would ensue, followed by ravenous consumption. When 1950s kids dragged their weary kid butts off of the saddle seats on their big red Schwinns to the TV room, “What’s on tonight?” was the expected question, even though everybody already knew the answer–“Westerns.” Afterwards followed similar grumbling and consumption.

In those days you couldn’t toss a horseshoe without braining a TV cowboy star: Hopalong Cassidy, The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Gunsmoke, The Rifleman, Wanted: Dead or Alive, Paladin: Have Gun, Will Travel, The Rebel, Wagon Train, Rawhide, Maverick, Bonanza, Broken Arrow, Colt 45, Tombstone Territory, Restless Gun, The Deputy, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Johnny Ringo and Rin Tin Tin; and that was just Wednesday night.

Rin Tin Tin wasn’t technically a cowboy, but a German Shepherd that had been drafted by the cavalry. To correct the stupidity of drafting a dog, the same army also drafted a ten-year-old kid named Rusty. An Indian raid had orphaned both the boy and dog. This was during the time when Indian fighting in TV westerns was politically correct, maybe because white guys always played the Indians.

I watched ’em all, but, man, those westerns were boring. I didn’t want to see people “doin’ chores” in a flat, dusty, varmint-encrusted wasteland. I could just go outside for that. Watching Gunsmoke was like listening to my uncles talk about crap that had happened last week. But I watched it anyway because that’s what you watched—television, whatever was on. That was television and you watched it. You even watched The Lawrence Welk Show. Why, because you liked to watch geezers doing the polka? No, because it was on, that’s why. You wanted candy you had Baby Ruth or Bit-O-Honey. You wanted a soda you got Coke. “You want a Coke?” they would ask. If you replied “yeah,” you would be handed anything from a chocolate Yoo-hoo to a Grape Nehi, but it was all “Coke” to us. It was just easier. “You wanna watch a western?” “Which one?” “Whaddya mean which one? A western.” You put the TV on a channel and it stayed there. You didn’t get up and screw around with it unless you had to cram more aluminum foil onto the rabbit ears. Rabbit ears were… long story. You certainly didn’t have a remote. If you were the youngest one in the family you were the remote.

The shows all had the same plot because they all had the same writer—a guy named Artie who had never been west of Bayonne and could only work for TV westerns because he had been blacklisted in the McCarthy commie purge. Cop shows like The Naked City, or spooky stuff like Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits were more to my taste. You wouldn’t catch anyone doing chores on The Outer Limits unless it was curry brushing the giant spiders. Also, because of the stupid westerns, really clever grownups would variously call me Black Bart, Bart Maverick, and one other name that just rhymed with Bart and really had more to do with intestinal, rather than westward, expansion.

The early TV western pioneered today’s merchandising tie-in. Hopalong Cassidy was like Pokémon in chaps. I had official Hopalong Cassidy pistols, boots, hat, lunchbox, pajamas, and dental retainer. My mother, with the best intentions, bought me Hopalong Cassidy cufflinks. Paladin would have shot anyone wearing Paladin cufflinks; but Hopalong was too nice a guy, too nice to be a gunfighter, really. Could you fear someone called “Hopalong”? Hop’s street rep amounted to wearing black clothes and a black hat, when usually only villains wore black. Oh snap, Hoppy. The way Hopalong threw down was to come into the bad guys’ lair. They’d take one look at him in his black-on-black metro cowboy outfit with the camel-toe Stetson, tooled silver belt and matching hatband, pant cuffs stuffed into his silver-toed boots, and start laughing so hard that they couldn’t draw their guns. He’d shoot them in the forehead two at a time with his twin pearl-handled Fabergé pistols. Then he’d apologize and tidy up the place.

It is sad, but eventually all the old western heroes were naturally-selected out of the westerns, which became too nasty to suffer guys with manners. Clint Eastwood was the only one with the survival gene. He was on Rawhide or Wagon Train or both. Even the actors in those two shows didn’t know which one they were on. Of all the great TV western theme songs, Rawhide’s was the best: “Get ’em up, move ’em up, move ’em in, move ’em out, clean ’em up, chat ’em up, shoot ’em down, skin ’em up, chop ’em up, grind ’em up, pat ’em out, grill ’em up, special sauce, lettuce, cheese … RawHIIIIIDDDDDE!”

Not that different from TV today, the stories were secondary to the real content—cool guns for young boys. In Wanted: Dead or Alive, Steve McQueen had a cool cut-down rifle, the “Mare’s Leg,” that he’d fast-draw like a pistol. The Internet Movie Database synopsis for the show is simple: “A young man with a sawed off rifle as a holstered weapon makes a living.” That’s all: have gun; will travel. Not “have gun; will dialogue you to death.” Chuck Connors, “The Rifleman,” had a cool Winchester repeating rifle with a big circular loop in the lever. He cocked it by twirling the whole rifle under his arm. Not only was that the stupidest conceivable maneuver to use in a gunfight, but it was also beyond cool, forcing you to badger your parents until you got the Mattel version, with which you would have immediately knocked your brains out had it not been made of such cheap plastic. According to Legend (which was what they called the Mattel marketing department), Wyatt Earp packed a Buntline Special, which was a Colt revolver with a 16-inch-long barrel, also known as “The Over-Compensator.” Bat Masterson’s coolest piece of made-up history was probably, if I remember right, a fancy cane that had a Derringer pistol for a handle. Kind of a creepy thing for a western hero to pull on somebody, I thought, but cool creepy. There was also a Derringer disguised as a belt buckle, fired by pooching out your gut. At this point they had really jumped the shark concept-wise. But it was still cool.

What killed TV westerns and these great product tie-ins was James Bond. Even a bullet-belching belt buckle couldn’t compete with an attaché case that you could use to shoot your cousin in the eye. “Hey, dork! Where’d you get the dorky suitca—gack!” And besides, by the mid-60s, westerns had become all literary and sensitive with stuff like “The Virginian” and “Big Valley.” What nine-year-old boy would want to dress up like Barbara Stanwyck? Of course, if Mattel had ever had the sense to develop a double-Derringer peek-a-boo bra, history might have been very different.

Tags: bart wilcox, cowboys, nakedcity, tv, westerns