Open Writing

Some mornings I just can’t get going. I wake about 5 am, mentally plan my day, take the dogs to the dog park for their free running time and then return home, by which time my plans are beginning to evaporate along with my good intentions. Then, I sit in the recliner and tune the television to the morning’s Western. This morning, the hero was a man I am more used to seeing as the hooded-eye villain spreading menace and terror in the hearts of those unlucky enough to be in the same place as menacing Robert Mitchum.

This morning he was not only the hero of the piece, but he was moral to the very zenith of altruism, spurning fabulous wealth for the sake of his conscience, even before he fell in love with the cattleman’s beautiful daughter. I was impressed.

Most Westerns move along in broad lumps in which the minor details don’t matter very much and are only there to pad out the slim plot and delay the final battle between evil and good, with the inevitable result that once again Hollywood proclaims that "right triumphs over might and crime doesn’t pay" to which is added the truism that "The good guy always gets the girl."

Once I have grasped the gist of a particular chunk, I am then at liberty to entertain the ideas that certain scenes, or parts of dialogue suggest to me. Mitchum’s burgeoning sainthood had me pondering the meaning of life, the universe, and everything else once more. Yesterday, I had it all figured out, but with my memory…

Before we – Frankie, Belle, and me – set off for the Dog Park, I inspected the grass in the back garden. It is growing well, thanks to the monsoon rainstorms. My eye was caught by something unusual, and I wondered if Belle had revived her little puppy habit of removing our treasures and taking them to her 'safe place’ out back to chew it all to heck. It turned out to be a huge mushroom. It was six inches across, white, and beautiful, but unless I buy mushrooms from the greengrocer’s I am loath to ingest, just in case it turns out to be hallucinogenic, or worse, deathogenic!

I suggested to Gay that I cut it in half and cook it for her, and if she was still alright thirty minutes later, I would have the remaining half for my breakfast. She indicated that one of us was crazy and that it wasn’t she. I pondered for some time as to who she could mean, but answer came there none.

Mitchum rides very well, and I decided they had got him an especially big horse so that he didn’t look like Clint Eastwood on a donkey, and puzzled over what size horse they would have to have given Alan Ladd. The cattleman was voicing his grave suspicion as to why Mitchum was in town, guessing correctly that he was a gunsel for Robert Preston, and therefore his deadly enemy. Mitchum gave nothing away, reserving his defence for later, thus heightening suspicions that he was up to no good, especially so it seemed to the rancher’s beautiful daughter who was beginning to get some lines in the drama.

That gobbet under my belt I saw in the eye of my mind, someone touting lucky rabbit’s feet as charms. Whoever thought that these were lucky when they didn’t do much for the rabbit was either very stupid, or else very clever. If he was stupid, then I am clever for finding him out. However, if he is clever, then people with rabbit’s feet are stupid for swallowing his improbable tale.

When Robert Mitchum threw a desperado though the saloon window, and then a couple of back shooting scoundrels broke out a couple of cabin windows I recognised that I had never seen a glass warehouse in a Western. From where, then, did the replacement, glass and mirrors come from? Huh?

When the big fellow was too slow and let Preston break a chair over his back I had serious misgivings about the quality of the furniture in bars and saloons west of the Pecos. What, I wondered, would Arthur Negus have had to say about them? "This is a beautiful chair. Just run your hand down the cabriole leg and feel the polish. But for goodness sake don’t sit on it!"

I imagines the director with a roomful of chairs and bit actors, and watched the scene almost helpless with laughter as one by one the chairs were struck across the back of the ten dollar a day hopefuls, until with not a single chair dented, and the casualty ward filling up muy rápidamente, they ran out of volunteers. Then a genius on the set suggested, "Say, Hank, can’t we make these consarned chairs outta balsa wood and not have to stand for all those medical bills?" The genius was sacked on the spot, and Hank claimed the idea as his own, saved the company a fortune, and was hailed as a genius!

Simon pure Robert was too taciturn for my liking when he had a couple of chances to explain to the cattleman’s beautiful daughter that he was a good guy and had not killed several people who had been despatched by Preston’s hired guns, which were just two out of several reasons he parted company with the Music man. Nevertheless, Mitch remained shtum and let her doubts linger over his character. I knew he was a goodie, but he didn’t defend himself and she thought the worst of him. That is dramatic irony at its best.

I call the girl the cattleman’s beautiful daughter to distinguish her from his other daughter who was, shall we say, less attractive and who had formed an emotional attachment to Robert Preston out of her love for him and his greed for her father’s land and livestock. When he kissed her and kept his eyes wide open I knew something was wrong and that her heart would be broken at about the same time that her father’s business went broke.

I sensed the drawing together of the film’s various themes and subplots, and saw the end looming, which turned my thoughts to Armageddon, the final great battle between the forces of good and evil that will usher in the New Age. The similarity between the prophecies of Armageddon and the major plot of Westerns is remarkable.

There are always two powerful forces, often personalised as Preston and Mitchum personalised Evil and Good. The rest of the players represented the world’s masses of humanity, who are witness to and victims of various evils that seem for a season to have the big battalions on their side.

But even as tragedy is deliberately presaged, here comes the stranger – it could be that superlative outsider, Superman, or the unlikely Cain of Kung Fu fame, but today it was Bob Mitchum riding a big horse – and the stranger fixes what needs fixing, saves the day, rescues the cattleman, earns the undying love of his daughter, tells the truth to the cattleman’s other daughter, kills Preston’s hired guns, and takes a couple of bullets from Preston before killing him dead in the street to the applause of the grateful townspeople and homesteaders.

It doesn’t get any better than that, and the morning passed pleasantly. The only sour note was when it occurred to me that Charlie Chaplin once entered a Charlie Chaplin look-alike competition and came second, although what that had to do with anything I have no idea. The human mind is a wonderful thing, especially when it is unemployed.

Copyright © Ronnie Bray
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Other stories at:
http://www.2theheart.com/author_ronnie_bray
http://www.meridianmagazine.com/voices/011024summer.html