art by frank mccarthy
White Hat Down
“As a kid, whenever a guy got killed
in a Western movie, I always wondered
what happened to his horse.”
--George Carlin
Quite the journey, that juxtaposition
of the buttoned up Miss Kitty being visited
slyly and regularly by Matt Dillon,
to the more realistic cum-stained raunchy
cleavage-revealing saloon whores
of Deadwood and Hell on Wheels;
from the pig-tailed two-gunned Gail Davis
wearing her drugstore white leather frilled finery
to the mercurial Robin Weigert vomiting rot gut
onto the chest of her sweat encrusted leather blouse;
from the days of Duncan Renaldo giving
The Cisco Kid perfectly pressed black vaquero
Hollywood Latin accent and charm,
to Eli Wallach’s gold-toothed cringing ugliness
in that Sergio Leone spaghetti epic;
from Hugh O’Brien’s tight-lipped prancing dude
marshall, always fingering his Buntline barrel,
to Kurt Russell’s blue-eyed mustached killer titan
riding down and blowing away his adversaries
while just seeming to step out of several
Remington canvases--much like laconic Lee
Marvin did in that battered hat as Monte Walsh;
from the skinny kid Cheyenne with the painted chest
that Anthony Quinn played in The Plainsman,
standing rigid in front of a De Mille diorama,
to the huge Will Sampson as Ten Bears saying,
“then it will be life” to Clint in Outlaw Josey Wales,
or the believability of Graham Greene’s Kicking Bird
as patriarch to Costner in Dancing with Wolves;
From Roy Rogers as William Bonny in Billy the Kid Returns,
sidekicking with Smiley Burnette to those flawed sociopaths
played later by Paul Newman, Kristofferson, Kilmer,
& Michael J. Pollard, mixing in
the politics of the roughshod cattle barons
and the ragtag squatters and small ranchers;
from the Depression dignity in handsome Tyrone Power’s
Jesse James, passing by Robert Duvall’s raging
raving Jesse in The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid
to the naked preening arrogance of
Brad Pitt’s complex unsympathetic version;
from the sweet natured Paul Newman’s
Robert Leroy Parker riding a bicycle
to the silly strains of raindrops dropping
awkwardly from the Bacharach score,
to the taciturn aging Butch Cassidy
that the brilliant Sam Shepard played
in Bolivia in Blackthorn;
From John Wayne lip-synching Singing Sandy,
to his bloated brilliant departure Rooster Cogburn,
to the wiry bearded lethal hooligan
bounty hunter that Jeff Bridges
played for the Coen Brothers.
Personally,
I preferred Keith Carradine’s Will Bill Hickok
to the silliness of Guy Madison’s,
Ellen Barkin’s lusty Calamity Jane
to Doris Day’s scrubbed songbird,
and I do enjoy the full nudity
and the proliferation of the F-word
in modern Westerns. I am pleased to acknowledge
the powerful presence of black cowboys & Indians,
but,
we definitely have lost the joy
of those long Saturday matinees
at the Orpheum cheering Tex Ritter,
Audie Murphy and Randolph Scott,
resigning one’s self to their remastered
flicker on Encore’s TWC, lost the cleanliness
of American pioneer white hat charm,
seeing it vanish into parody, nostalgia,
and frantic internet image searches;
some mornings I just want Jay Silverheels
to awaken me to the oder of kemo sabe coffee,
or have Dale bang the Double R Bar triangle
for some happy trail pancakes and eggs
as old Roy strums an expensive guitar
while harmonizing with the Sons of the Pioneers
who always seem to be out in the front yard,
take a ride in Nelly Belle,
throw a real bone for Bullet,
being genuinely sad that I never
had a son to give my Davy Crockett
coonskin cap to.
Glenn Buttkus
October 2012
Posted over on dVerse Poets OLN
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