In the 1950's and early 60's, Westerns were popular on TV. Actually they were my favorite shows. There was Wild Bill Hickock with his sidekick Jingles, there was Wyatt Earp and everyone knew the theme songs for each of these shows. "wyatt earp , wyatt earp , brave courageous and bold...", There was Yancy Derringer, where my favorite character was a pick pocket named Jodie and an "indian" aka native american name Pahoo Katiwa (wolf who stands in water). Have Gun Will Travel was a pretty cool show and had some very interesting Zen stuff going on , which I noticed years later. Maverick was a fun show where the main characters were always playing poker. The Lone Ranger and his sidekick Tonto was popular , the theme was the famous trumpet charge from William Tell overture. He used silver bullets. The Lone Ranger , Tonto referred to as Qui no sabe ( in spanish it means he who knows nothing), and Tonto , in spanish means stupid,, Go figure! Also , there was Lawman, Hotel de Paris, Hopalong Cassidy, the Cisco Kid. Of course Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, and Gabby Hayes. Alot of shootin' up and killing. The bad guys usually wore black and the good guys always wore black. The crazy thing is all the kids watched all this killing. That was OK with everyone. But the TV Gunsmoke, was referred to as an "Adult Western", because there was never any killing or shooting in that show. James Arness was the sheriff, Miss Kitty was the bar hooker or something like that , but never any killing. That should have been the Children's western not the Adult western. Crazy world we live in.
As kids we had alot of toy guns. Kid guns in those days actually shot things. Today they just make sounds. Except for Paintball of course. The Mattel, Greenie Stickem cap guns were cool. Caps are a paper thing that has gun powder and when you hit it with a rock or hammer or something they explode with a loud sound. We used to buy rolls of caps and bang them with rocks. They had little dots of gun powder on this red paper. We also put them in "cherry bombs:, which were a rocket like plastic thing we threw up high and when they landed on the metal tip , it would explode a cap. Well, Greenie stickem caps went on the back of a bullet, so that when you pulled the trigger the cap would explode, sounding like a gun shot, and the plastic bullet head with fly out like a real bullet. We'd be shootin' each other all day long. Seeing who was the quickest draw. They had a cool little deringer that was built into a belt buckle. You breathe out hard and the gun would pop out and fire a bullet. We had rifles that fired corks, I had a machine gun that shot out wooden pellets. The Rifleman gun, was a rifle with a handle that you could load and shoot with one hand like a pistol. Was very cool and a cool TV show with Chuck Connors. Some of us had BB guns which shot BB's , or little metal balls. OUCH. Yeah later on , in junior high school , I mentioned in another post, we used to play in this guy's basement on Newport St, one of us had the BB gun the other two or 3 of us had ping pong rackets. Imagine trying to block a tiny metal ball coming at you at 60 miles an hour. The player who had the BB gun was definitely the winner. We would come home all dotted up with BB wounds.
Yep , no wonder we grew up so nuts.
No comments:
Post a Comment