Westward Ho!

 

On Saturday Keith came over to hang out for a bit. I’m never quite sure how to entertain him because we’ve never been close, but I strive to be a good hostess. I asked him if he wanted to watch something on TV. I said, “I know you watch those channels way up on cable. What do you watch on Saturdays?” He answered, “Well they have a western channel that I think starts at around 2000.” I turned to channel 2000 and then starting clicking up. And sure enough: westerns were on a particular channel. And I mean the westerns of our childhood: Bonanza, Rifleman, Gunsmoke and the like.

But what western was on at that time? Wagon Train! I started to laugh. He asked, “What’s so funny?” I said, “Do you remember when you, me and Carl were kids and we’d play Wagon Train? You and Carl got to sit on the foot boards with blankets over them like they were horses and ride, while I had to sit on the bed inside the wagon because I was a girl.” Oh how he laughed at that. “I remember!” he said. “And he and I had toy guns to protect the wagons.” Yes but I never got to have a gun or ride a foot-board horse. Apparently I wasn’t Annie Oakley!

This started a little flood of memories, but I had to ask him one question. “Do you remember our neighbor Kimberly and how she always wanted to play “Uncle Jeff and Uncle Stoney? Why were you Uncle Stoney?” He laughed again. “Stoney Burke was my favorite western character when I was a kid. He was in the rodeo.” Well of course he was!

We talked about some of the other shows, and how he always called home the Ponderosa, after the Bonanza spread. Brie popped in with, “I always wondered where that came from!”

He left after about an hour, and Brie and I went to lunch. While waiting for our food I had her laughing as I told her more about the “games” we used to play. “So my brothers always got to ride the horses while I had to sit in the ‘wagon’ with this blanket wrapped around my head like the virgin Mary about to give birth, holding this baby doll. Women folk never got to ride the horses!” I was very indignant as it all came back. “And when they were playing Uncle Jeff and Uncle Stoney, they wouldn’t let me on the swing set because they were ‘traveling’. Why couldn’t I swing on the regular swing? I didn’t want to be in the 4-seater with weird Kimberly and them.”

Brie was still giggling at the vision of me as the Virgin Mary. “I’m sure as the older brothers they felt they knew best when it came to your games, and lorded it over you.”

“That’s okay, I got back at them.”

“What did you do?”

“Well, one day we were in the bedroom and the boys were playing keep away with my doll. I finally managed to get my hand on the doll but it bounced off my hand and broke the bedroom window. I was terrified! So I told Keith and Carl that I would use magic to conjure up for them Mighty Mo army tanks if they wouldn’t tell mom and dad. They may have been wagon masters, but they weren’t brain trusts because they believed me. Then I went downstairs and told the parents that they broke the window so they’d get in trouble instead of me. And they did!”

Brie burst out laughing and so did I. That would teach them not to put baby in a corner, or Rita in the wagon!