Have Gun, Will Travel

Nope, no double meaning to that headline. I just received season one of Have Gun, Will Travel on DVD. The program starred Richard Boone as hired gun, Paladin. The half-hour show aired Saturday, at 9:30 p.m., just before another popular western, Gunsmoke, and ran for six successful seasons. (It opened as the #4 rated show for the year, then followed up with three years ranked #3.) The show hasn't been widely syndicated, because liberals, who scream "censorship!" at every attempt to quash porn, say it is too "violent." No bursting blood packs, no profanity, no sex or nudity. Paladin was a perfect gentleman. But it was too "violent." It seems that Paladin killed bad guys, and for some reason (heh), that makes liberals uncomfortable. It was so successful that it was one of the few TV shows to spawn an excellent radio series the next year, starring John Dehner. Google that name. Whether you know the name or not, you've seen him, and you'll be surprised to see his picture. The video quality of these DVDs (six of them) is amazing. Considering the strides we've made in TV technology since the show originally aired, they are probably better than what you or your parents watched. You can actually see the texture in Paladin's big-city felt hat. I'd also forgotten what a great actor the ruggedly handsome (i.e. ugly) Richard Boone was. He was as comfortable and natural in front of a camera as my favorite actor, Charlton Heston. This is a truly great DVD collection. The boxed set includes 39 episodes. Thirty-nine episodes!!! That was television back in those days. A season would be 39 episodes long with 13 weeks off. Now, it's exactly the opposite, because TV shows have become so expensive to produce. I remember when Battlestar Galactica was the most expensive series ever produced, at a million dollars an episode. Now, greedy television stars are demanding a million-dollar salary a week! I wonder how much of their riches go to charity. By the way, if you order anything from Amazon.com, could you do it through the Radio Equalizer site? It won't cost you a cent, and it will benefit a really good blog.

Before I was the Lone Ranger, I was Tom Sawyer

I just got to thinking about my youth, so if you'll indulge me, I'll talk about myself for awhile. I was talking to my mom a few weeks ago and told her about how I wear out my cowboy boots from the inside out, because when I walk, I tend to dig in my toes. She told me that's because she didn't let us kids wear shoes unless it was to town, to church or to school. We were poor. But nobody told us kids. We didn't have government social workers back then to tell us that we should feel sorry for ourselves and should be resentful of anyone who had more than we did. There were times when we were out of milk, but it never occurred to us to steal the milk off our neighbor's porch. There were times we went to bed hungry. But we went to bed early so we didn't feel it. We thought Santa Claus brought groceries to all the houses on Christmas eve. I still have a picture of my six-year-old sister handing Santa a Hamm's beer -- two months before she died of leukemia. No miracle cures back then. That was life. We thought the wealthy purple-haired lady at church took all the kids shopping for clothes. The one time I remember walking home in tears was one winter when I didn't have gloves and the teacher gave me one blue glove and one red mitten from the lost and found box. My mom didn't work, because rearing kids was more important than making extra money. And there were no daycare centers back in those days. It never occurred to our family to expect anything from the government. And we certainly didn't resent the government for not taking care of us. That wasn't the government's job. The government's job was to pave the roads and pick up the garbage and protect us from the godless commies. There was no class warfare. You had what you had and if you could EARN more, more power to you. And if you had the misfortune to have less, well, even the people who had little themselves helped out. To this day, if I go back to my old stomping grounds in North Dakota, my peers recoil in horror at the thought of taking government money. They refuse to even apply for grants or small business loans. They don't want the feeling of shame at taking a handout. Apparently shame is a lost emotion these days. Too bad, it was one of the better ones. We had no video games or TV. We had no ipods, and when we wanted to listen to music, we had to work for it -- by turning the crank on the spring-powered Victrola -- not too tight though or it would break. My sister broke more than her share of Victrola springs. We all gathered around the radio at night to listen to Have Gun Will Travel, Gunsmoke and my future namesake, the Lone Ranger. American kids apparently had opposable thumbs back then, because there were no soccer moms. We would pick up balls, throw them, catch them, hit them with a bat or croquet mallet. There were also no other organized events to which our moms had to drive us. Good thing, because even those who knew how to drive, didn't have a car of their own. During the summer, Mom would just give us breakfast, open the door and out we'd go. We were left up to our own devices. That consisted of hunting varmints, fishing, building rafts, hiking for miles and miles, building a tree-house, riding horses, playing cowboys and Indians or Tarzan and Jane (one of my favorites with my girlfriend), or with toy soldiers and just sitting around and conversing or playing board games. We once played a single game of Monopoly that lasted 8 days. Kids back then were low maintenance. If we were hungry at lunchtime, we'd stray back home for a quick sandwich or be fed by the mother who happened to have possession of us at the time. Since I was the oldest, I had to keep an eye on my brother and two sisters, which I did in a Tom Sawerly way. It made for some interesting supper conversation: "Mom, Tom got charged by a buffalo today. You should have seen him run!" "Keith pushed Tom off the raft today. Did you know he can't swim?" "Tom almost got run over by a deer today. He didn't even see it coming!" "Tom almost got sucked into the sewer system because of the big rain. It took five of us to pull him out!" To this day, I'm not much of a dinner conversationalist. Back then, it took a village to raise a child. But that didn't mean establishing a socialist system as Hillary wants to do, it meant each parent watching out for other kids and expecting the same from every other parent. Sexual predators were few and far between and when discovered, would be dealt with swiftly and permanently. The only time we thought about the government is when it was discussed in school. I have to look back at my youth to see how radically the left has changed this country since I was young and how much more radically they want to change it. We were all much freer and much happier and much more care-free when I was a kid.

Why Lie?

If the liberal agenda is so noble, so correct, so perfect, why must they continually lie, cheat, deceive, mislead and smear? Why not just state their case, show where and when it has worked in the past, point out its superiority to the conservative agenda and let their ideas win in the marketplace of ideas? Because they can't. Their ideas can't win because their ideas don't work. Some of the most dishonest groups on the left are the gun grabbers. They will tell any lie, ignore any facts, try any deception to deprive honest Americans of their basic HUMAN RIGHT to self-defense. One of the worst of these groups is the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. In their latest scurrilous campaign to disarm honest citizens, they are telling tourists that they could be shot if they travel to Florida. It seems that a Florida law that comes into effect today gives Floridians the right to shoot first and ask questions later. The Stand Your Ground Law says Floridians do not have to flee an attack, they can now stand firm and fight back in their home or in their car. Of course, the only right a state can grant is one it has first taken away, so this law helps return man to his natural relationship with nature. It is not a civil right, it is a HUMAN right. Well, that bothers the Brady Bunch no end. Despite ALL the evidence that an armed society reduces crime and that a disarmed society results in more crime, the Brady Bunch is warning both domestic and foreign tourists that if they go to Florida, they could be shot. Don't get into an argument with a Floridian. Don't get into a road rage incident with a local, etc. How insulting and demeaning to Floridians. Basically, the Brady Bunch regards Floridians as rebel flag-waving, moonshine-swilling, violent rednecks -- just as they do all southerners who didn't vote for John Kerry. And if they can hurt the Florida economy, so much the better. They'll just blame it on George Bush. Actually, tourists ARE in danger when they travel to Florida, but not from legally-armed citizens. It seems that criminals who want to live to tell the tale of their evil deeds are targeting people with rental or out of state license plates because they're scared yellow of being shot down if they try to rob a local. That's the way it's SUPPOSED to work. The criminals are SUPPOSED to cower in fear and the honest citizens are SUPPOSED to walk the streets in freedom. Now THAT is what I call gun control!