We had a manure pile lurking behind the dairy barn.
It was called a manure pile because “a pile of manure” was taken. It’s what our neighbor called his Dodge Disappointment, which started only on Tuesdays and every other Thursday.
On TV, when there were horses or jungles, quicksand was an effective method of population control. Poor souls, trying to evade pursuers, fell into the sucking quicksand. The more the ill-fated individuals struggled, the deeper they sank.
The manure pile was our quicksand. I’d step onto it and there was a significant amount of suction applied to my footwear. Sometimes, it pulled a shoe from my foot with the accompanying sound effect of an evil whoopee cushion. I didn’t always recover that shoe because my eagerness to search a manure pile faded quickly.
Why did I walk on it? Why do people climb Mount Everest? Because it’s there.
I felt sorry for those unfortunate children living in town who had no manure piles behind their barns. Too bad there wasn’t crowdfunding available in those dark days.
We had the manure pile going for us, but we didn’t have air-conditioning. Ice cream was our air conditioning. That and an angry box fan. Later, we moved up to an oscillating fan that was supposed to find me and keep me cool no matter where I was sweating profusely. When I visited homes with window air-conditioners, I learned to find a seat near an air conditioner on a sultry day. We may not have had air-conditioning before it was cool, but now we’ve all become ACaholics. Air conditioning is gravy on life’s mashed potatoes.
There were years when horse operas ruled prime-time TV. Shows featuring Old West adventures and cowboys like “Bonanza” (I expected to meet a family with three sons named Adam, Hoss and Little Joe), “Have Gun Will Travel,” “Rawhide,” “Rifleman” and “Maverick” captivated greenhorns and drugstore cowboys. It wasn’t educational TV, but “Wagon Train” taught us that the chuckwagon was a mobile kitchen providing food and medical supplies. It was driven by the cook (Charlie Wooster), who made a stew with everything in it but the horns and the hide. The menu included whistleberries (beans), a durable cracker called hardtack and piping hot coffee for most meals, and he prepared vinegar pie when fresh fruit was unavailable. Texas designated the chuckwagon as its official vehicle in 2005. But the star oater was “Gunsmoke,” which portrayed the thriving cattle days of the 1870s.
I watched an episode of “Gunsmoke,” a series that ran for 635 episodes from 1955 to 1975, while waiting for a recent appointment. “Gunsmoke” was set in Dodge City, Kans., during the thriving cattle days of the 1870s, when parking a stolen horse illegally earned you time in the lockup.
I visited Dodge City once. I saw Dodges and dodged them all. It was a friendly place, and nobody told me to get out of Dodge. Wyatt Earp was a lawman in Dodge City from 1876 to 1879. “Gunsmoke” had Marshal Matt Dillon, played by the 6-foot-7 James Arness from Minneapolis.
In “Gunsmoke” days, they didn’t have air-conditioning and ice cream was in short supply. What they had was uncomfortable underwear riding up on any cowboy riding off into the sunset. This led to chronic surliness. Some cowpunchers, who might have actually punched a cow, had the demeanor of a wolverine with a toothache. Imbibing rotgut whiskey (redeye or Kansas sheep dip) did nothing to improve their dispositions.
Festus Haggen, a character on “Gunsmoke,” described those ornery cowpokes and gunslingers as “Crookeder than a dog’s hind leg,” and “Rougher than a wagon full of cobs.”
Because there were so many unreasonable men, it necessitated frequent gunfights. According to True West Magazine, Marshal Dillon was shot 56 times, knocked unconscious 29 times, stabbed three times, and poisoned once.
On my drive home, I considered “The Lone Ranger,” which brought me Rossini’s “William Tell Overture,” and “A fiery horse with a speed of light, a cloud of dust, and a hearty ‘Hi-Yo, Silver!'”
At the end of an episode, someone asked, “Who was that masked man?”
I wished I could have been there to answer, “I don’t know, but if he’s wearing only one boot, he grew up with a manure pile.”
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