On the Western Front

Some of you know I love Westerns and try to watch them every afternoon on our local religious TV channel. It's an hour's worth of wholesome entertainment that you don't get in the evening on the national networks.

Though I do wonder sometimes about the religious channel showing shoot-'em-up action, beer-guzzling cowboys, and saloon gals with big hearts and scanty clothing (relatively scanty clothing - my goodness, they display bare arms and flash naked ankles and knees with wild abandon.

Anyway, a couple of scenes caught my attention recently that I wanted to bring to your attention

First scene:

On Gunsmoke, some really nasty bad men were holding Miss Kitty, Doc, Sam, and Louie (the town drunk) in the Long Branch as a trap for the marshall. Marshall Dillion gathered his deputies and commanded, "Festus, you go in the side door, Newly, you go in the front, and I'll go in the back."

Uh, "I'll sneak in the back" and "Newly will go in the front" where all the guns are pointed, didn't seem quite fair to me.

(I'll tell you about Louie some other time.)

Second Scene:

On Bonanza, Pa told a cowboy with a patch over his left eye, "Keep an eye on things up there and let me know if any of Bradford's boys cross into my land."

I thought it was rather thoughless of Pa to tell a one-eyed cowboy to keep "an eye" on things.

"And in my mind's eye, I rode with [her] in every scene" ... Ride Off In The Sunset, Bill Anderson