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Remembering Gene Autry
Gene Autry was big time when I was a kid. He was in the black and
white movies, and Roy Rogers came along a bit later while the singing
cowboy thing was still vogue. Does anybody know the song Gene
sang, or the one Roy sang. Do you know the name of their horses, their
sidekicks? by L.D. Sledge Gene's horse was Champion, Roy's was Trigger and his sidekick was Gabby Hayes. If you remember Gabby had no teeth, a beard, spit chewing tobacky, and stuttered and stammered as he flustered around knocking things over. Actually, Gabby was a Shakspearean actor who, with his teeth in and dressed in his tux, spoke quite eloquently and was every bit the poised gentleman. Looking at these simple little good guy bad guy stories that filled the screen of those days, I know times had to be different then. I was raised in Castor, a little country village in northern Louisiana. It was a crossroads with six stores, two cafes, a barbership, and a blacksmith shop, a hotel and two service stations. A railroad track ran through town. Land companies bought up all the land after the depression and wouldn't sell any to the returning WWII veterans. So Castor shrank. Those returning to the old home places had to find work at the sawmill or at a munitions plant thirty miles away near Minden or work in Shreveport, fifty miles away. Castor didn't have a movie, so we had to go to Ringgold, a little town slightly larger than Castor, ten miles distant. There was intense rivalry between the two schools. Our baseball and basketball teams were formidable and went for blood. I pitched for the baseball team during my last two years. The owner of the cafe also was a cattleman, and he had a big truck with high ramshackley staked sides. He went to the show (we didn't call them movies in those days) every Saturday night, and we would hitch a ride on his truck for the jostling ten mile trip all the way to Ringgold. Sitting down on the bed after he had just delivered a load of cows was indeed risky business. Sometimes it would rain. But rough and tumble country boys thought that was just part of living and the price of getting to go to the show. Most of the movies were westerns, and that is probably why that old cowpoke with the truck loved to go. There were other westerns besides Gene Autry. They were all black and white. Lash LaRue was another. I can't remember the others right now but westerns were popular and these grade B type movies were main fare. You could get popcorn for a nickel, and maybe a candy bar. I don't remember any drinks being sold because there were no fountain type drinks available and it was before canned drinks. Blacks were relegated to the roost in the second floor. There was no restroom for anyone. As a matter of fact, most places didn't have restrooms. I can't remember what we did about the lack of restrooms. The ride back was usually quiet and always seemed to take twice as long as getting there. We had used up our enthusiasm on the way over. The white hats always won in these movies, and Gene always had on his huge white hat, and he sang, "Back in the saddle again. Out where a friend is a friend. Where the longhorn cattle feed, on the lowly gempson weed. Back in the saddle again." |
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