Hello from the front seat of a Jeep Wagoneer,
As my friend, Kay, a pioneering person in her rite, notes that somehow my brain does not slow down, as I am riding (or driving) it jumps into overdrive. As of this morning the miles traveled since last Wednesday noon is between 2,000-3,000 miles, and the hours to destination is about about 13 more. It will be about 3,400 miles. It’s the first time I’ve driven or ridden straight through, though I’ve made my way across the continent more than once. As I meander across the country, and on any road trip for that matter, I ponder things, sometimes seemingly mundane and at others hopefully something of substance.
As my driving partner or I have been driving, it provides ample opportunity to listen to music, to share about things crossing our minds about all sorts of things, or in the quiet times to ponder. While I have a pretty broad range of tastes in music. As an aside, just entered Nevada. The vastness of the country cannot be overstated, and the reality of both the profound geographic differences as well how people have a particular parochialism is interesting to ponder. Today as we are transversing Utah and Nevada, I am reminded of what ended up being an ill-fated trip with Georg, a snapped cable, a severed brake line, an unexpected train ride, a second snow storm and what would sink my being a host parent. Hard to believe that is almost 5 years ago. But what this trip has reminded me of are those television westerns that were a staple of my childhood. Shows like Rawhide, Death Valley Days, Bonanza, or Gunsmoke were the visual versions of country western music, something not really created as a genre until the 1920s, and yet somehow integral to the reality of our American psyche. The rugged individualism put Zane Grey novels on our television screens and the characters in the shows like Bonanza and Gunsmoke taught many of my generation about morality and doing the right thing in the rough and tumble frontier.
If you ask many baby boomers about their Saturday nights as children, I suspect many would share a similar story to what I am offering in this post. Saturdays around the Martin house followed the same pattern. My father would mow the grass if needed and then he would gather the hose, buckets, sponges, towels that were no longer used by us for showers, and his trusty shamus, and pull the cars into the side yard to be washed. He also vacuumed and semi-detailed the interior so they were ready for Sunday church. As we got older and more capable, we became his trusted assistants. These tasks were generally completed by mid to late afternoon. My mother would have dinner on the table, promptly at 5:00 p.m., which was a sacrosanct time in the Martin household. After supper, my weekly chore was to prepare and polish all of our Sunday “church shoes.” In eighth grade for my woodshop class, one of our first projects was to build a shoe shine box. It was made of mahogany wood, which was both sturdy and cheap, and I stained it a deeper red mahogany color. The top was the classic place one could place their foot so it angled. And the top slid open by pulling that top piece through the tongue and grooved sliding lanes on each side. All your shining materials, of course, fit inside the box itself, which was probably 10” high and 7” wide. I would meticulously work on each pair of shoes, making sure they were appropriately ready for Sunday services. After completing everyone’s shoes, I would line them up for inspection and approval by my father.
After all chores were completed, we would gather in the living room in front of the television to watch the Saturday night lineup. One of the reasons I wanted to shine shoes was it put me in the basement during most of Lawrence Welk show. While I could stomach some of the weekly acts, it was not my favorite. What would follow in the next time slots, however, was a different story. Death Valley Days, which was black and white television (and eventually in color), which we would watch in color sometime after, because we got our first color television – a Motorola Quasar – when we moved into the second larger house in 1966. There are two additional facts I recollect about the show. The commercials about 20 Mule Team Borax and former President Reagan hosted it when was very small. Thinking back it’s not surprising that he used the sort of what might be called the wholesome idea of Make America Great with his cowboy hat, arguing we were great already and had a responsibility to help others, but I digress. The show I remember more succinctly is Gunsmoke. I found all the cast fascinating. From Marshall Dillon to Festus, Miss Kitty to Chester and Doc Adams, each character seemed to have a goodness and realness to them. You looked forward to seeing what the next episode would bring, what sort of dilemma would occur, what difficulties would be remedied before the episode would end. And of course, from time-to-time, there might be a two-week episodes that would leave us wondering for a week. Oh my goodness. As I did some researching about the show, I was reminded of other characters in the show that I had forgotten, the likes of Victor French, who was more memorable to me in Little House on the Prairie, Burt Reynolds, who, of course, is always connected to a black Trans Am and Sally Fields, or Jodie Foster as Agent Clarice Starling among others.
And yet what made that Saturday night television faire so memorable was something that the television effected was a night where we were allowed to stay up past 8:30 p.m.; its running-time allowed us to stay up until 10:00 p.m., though we had to be bathed before, and we sat on the floor in the living room in our pjs. The second thing that happened is my mother made a very large kettle of popcorn. She would butter and salt it and then we each got our own individual bowl to eat. In someways it felt like we were at the drive-in. I think those memories are one of the reasons I love popcorn to this day. I remember when my Crohn’s was particularly active and problematic one of the most difficult was being told no popcorn. What is significant for me in the writing of this blog is two-fold. Throughout the 13 years I’ve penned (typed) this blog, safety has been a theme. The reminiscing about Saturday nights remind me of a time growing up in the Martin household where I felt safe. The safety was being together as family. That is important to realize. Second, there is a connection to the sort of American West and the cultural heritage that has more complexity to it than we often understand. It’s related to today in ways that are difficult to fathom or explain. The video choice below actually speaks to that.
Thank you as always for reading, off for popcorn and reruns,
Michael
