Daddy LOVED westerns. He loved watching them on television, but he also loved reading the old Zane Grey western books.
I didn't know much about Zane Grey until recently. I only knew he wrote the books my Daddy loved so much. Turns out Zane Grey's first name was Pearl and he was not originally an author. He was an American dentist who attended college on a baseball scholarship! He actually played minor league baseball for a time. His working life is as diverse as my own. I'm pretty sure I would have liked this man, if he had lived during my lifetime.
A baseball player turned dentist turned western novel writer. He also loved to fish. I never knew.
Riders of the Purple Sage was Zane Grey's best selling novel, but he wrote many western novels. You can buy Zane Grey: The Ultimate Collection - 49 Works - Classic Westerns and Much More to read on your Kindle or Kindle app for $1.99. I own this particular collection and plan to read them all after I retire. I love reading books on my Kindle. The Kindle has saved me from having to buy a larger house to store all my books. I'm afraid I'm a bit of a book-aholic.
But I digress....
Zane Grey Theater was a television series that aired from 1956-1961. It was one of the shows my Daddy loved to watch. Daddy also loved Gunsmoke, Rawhide, Have Gun Will Travel, Cheyenne, The Lone Ranger, The Rifleman, Maverick, Bonanza, Wagon Train, Roy Rogers Show, Laramie, Gene Autry Show, and probably a good many others that I am forgetting.
We also watched a LOT of old western movies back when Daddy was alive. He loved the movies too. Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier. The Man from the Alamo, Rio Bravo, the original Magnificent Seven....
The westerns were a great escape. Men never did hard work in the westerns. They mostly were sheriffs who walked around the town talking to the various characters. The characters played cards or rode around on their horses hunting bad guys to shoot. They were always heroes and if they died, they died fighting with honor. They were about as far away from real life in the wild wild west as you can get, which is why they were so popular, I guess.
Even today I've had people tell me they wish they had been born in the wild wild west. My reply to them? "Ugh. I prefer running water, indoor plumbing, and electricity. Hospitals and real doctors and dentists are nice too."
They don't really want to live in the real wild west. They mean they'd like to be Matt Dillon with a star on their chest and six shooters on their hips.
They don't really want to plow with a mule and carry water from a spring and have to use a chamber pot late at night when it's too cold to go to the outhouse.
They just want to walk through those swinging saloon doors with their gun-belt and spurs on their boots and order a whiskey at the bar.
They want a fantasy. Unfortunately real life is not like fantasies. We should all be careful what we wish for because we just might get it and find out it's not really what we want at all.
Life is like that.
I still like watching the westerns though....
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