“I’m an old cowhand from the Rio Grande
and I came to town just to hear the band
I know all the songs that the cowboys know
about the big corral where the dogies go
I learned them all on the radio yipi yi-o kiyay” Johnny Mercer
When serving subpoenas, timing is everything. I knew that if I rolled into Huron before 6:00 PM, I probably wouldn’t find anybody around but grandmas and kids. It was only 50 miles from Visalia to Huron, so I had some time to kill. I gassed up then hit the Midtown News over on Acequia. I’d be dining alone this evening and needed something to read. I settled on the latest issue of No Depression over Small Arms Review because Kelly Willis was on the cover.
I headed up Court St. to La Taqueria across from The Oval, a small grassy park infested with out of work Mexican men. I ordered a couple of asada tacos and an iced tea and took my food and drink out to a small table on the sidewalk. It was a typical hot July afternoon, but it’s a dry heat in the valley, and the breeze felt good compared to the muggy, swamp cooled air inside. I ate and watched the Mexicans in the park drink their Tecate. Tomorrow, many of them would cross the street to La Taqueria for their $1.50 (Sabado y Domingo solomente) Menudo and tortillas.
I ate some more and read how Kelly Willis had a new album out and that being a wife and mother agreed with her. And there was Chuck Prophet too with another album . I’d actually heard his new single on KFOG up in the Bay Area a couple of weeks before, something about summertime.
Some guys follow their favorite teams and players and play softball on the weekends? Me, I stay up on the music I like and play the guitar. I could care less what Sandy Koufax’s ERA was when he retired, but I can tell you the make and model guitar Pete Townshend was playing when The Who recorded Live At Leeds, who Emmylou Harris’s road manger was up until the mid ’90s and the real reason Neil Diamond was in The Last Waltz.
Just trivial knowledge really but those Rock & Roll daydreams make the slow days go by faster. I’ll admit it, I’ve always wanted to be a rock star when I grow up. Either that or a cowboy…I never could make up my mind. The more I think about, I think I can probably trace most of my problems straight back to Hopalong Cassidy. When I was growing up in Fresno, Hoppy was bigger than Jesus and The Beatles put together. He was on TV every day after school and on every carton of milk my mom ever brought home. You’d be eating your Cap’n Crunch in the morning and there was Hoppy and Topper right there on the milk. Our school lunches all came with a half pint of Producer’s milk with Hoppy’s little smiling face on it. Then after school I’d come home and watch him on TV riding around on Topper.
I never could figure out what Hoppy’s actual job was. It seemed like he and California would just mosey into town…hit the saloon, beat some guys up and then later, they’d chase more bad guys around on horses and shoot at them. How could I help but develop a lifelong infatuation with firearms and saloons? How could I not consider violence a legitimate means of conflict resolution and have a deep seated aversion to gainful employment?
In a roundabout way, it was Hoppy that turned me on to the Beatles too. I was watching the after school show of Hoppy reruns, when the host came on after a commercial and started talking about these four guys from England. He had some news footage of them playing over there that was just nuts, girls screaming and crying, cops looking worried under their funny bobby hats. The Beatles had these sleek electric guitars and they’d wiggle them a around a bit and the girls would scream, some even flat out fainted. I wanted one of those guitars so bad.
The convergence came when I was snooping around in the linen closet for God knows what and miraculously found a Marty Robbins album mixed in with all the Doris Day and Andy Williams records. Marty was dressed all in black like Hoppy, and the music rocked in a creepy kind of cowboy way. There was lots of twangy guitar and cool songs like “El Paso” and “Big Iron” that were packed with people getting shot down in the street. I drove my parents nuts playing that song Big Iron over and over. I got to where I could sing that song just like Marty would have if he was nine years old.
No shit, I was good. So good that when they had a talent show at school, I didn’t even think twice about signing up. My mom bought me a black western shirt with mother of pearl snap buttons and my dad borrowed my uncle Bob’s old guitar for me to pretend to play.
At the talent show I got up in front of the whole school and sang Big Iron along with Marty through a real microphone, every now and then I’d wiggle uncle Bob’s guitar a little too. No girls fainted, but when I was done people clapped and hooted and hollered. It was probably the greatest feeling I’d ever had up till that point.
My Mom and Dad (God bless ‘em) were so proud they signed me up for guitar lessons with a man named Cletus Clark. Cletus claimed to be the first man ever to play an electric guitar on The Grand Old Opry, and was a strict disciple of Mel Bay. The lessons included guitar rental and he set me up with a Classical guitar with a neck like a baseball bat. I was hoping for one of those Beatle guitars but Cletus said I needed to learn on a Classical guitar so as not to develop any bad habits. Sounded reasonable. Back then, I honestly thought he was taking about the whole fainting girl thing.
The half hour lessons were in the evening, on the other side of town. Afterwards my dad would sometimes drive out to Producer’s Cotton where my Grandpa worked as a night watchman. I’d show grandpa what I’d been learning on the guitar and he’d take me out on his rounds riding an old three-wheeled Harley Servicar. He always carried three things on his rounds. A .38 revolver in a holster on his hip, a leather covered watchclock slung across his shoulder, and a thermos of milk under the seat.
Two years later, I was on Mel Bay’s 4th book and could ride the Harley all by myself, log in with the clock and key at all the checkpoints and feed the momma cat and her never ending brood of kittens that lived in one of the warehouses while my Grandpa and Dad listened to the Giants and smoked Tareytons back in the office.
The gun stayed with “the men” where it held a powerful fascination for me. It was a beautiful 5″ Smith and Wesson Model 10 with checkered walnut grips. I always asked Grandpa to let me hold the gun but my dad would say “I don’t think that’s a good idea tonight”.
Twelve years of age must be some kind of milestone for boys. In California, you can get a hunting license at age twelve and that’s how old I was when my dad finally nodded his approval when I pestered them about the revolver . Pop made a big show of pulling the weapon out of it’s holster, swinging the cylinder open and dumping the six shells out into his palm, then into a small jar in the drawer of the desk. He spun the cylinder, double checking there were absolutely no rounds in the gun, then snicked the cylinder shut and presented me the revolver on top of his huge open palm.
I grabbed the gun and pointed it out the window and drew a bead on the little Coppertone girl up on a billboard across the street, thumbed the hammer back and pulled the trigger. Click! I lowered my aim and…click! took out her little dog too. ”That’s enough Deadeye” my dad said. I handed the gun back to Grandpa and watched him reload and slip it back into his holster. I asked him why he needed the gun, why would anybody try to steal the cotton bales stored in the warehouses?
”I’m not here to keep people from stealing, I’m here to keep the bums from moving in like Miss Kitty and her kittens.”
”Did you ever have to use it?”
”Just once. “
”What happened?”
”I was coming home from work one morning and stopped at The De Marquis over on Golden State for a pack of cigarettes. Now can you believe there were four or five punks in there drinking beer and shooting pool at six in the morning?”
My dad laughed a little and said “Oh I believe you Pop.”
”I could hear them cracking jokes about my outfit, calling me Barney, you know, that guy on the Andy Griffith Show?”
”Yeah, Barney Fife”
”Well son, one of those boys came over with his pool cue and asked me if they let me have any real bullets for this gun.”
”Were you scared Grandpa?”
“No I was just real tired, so I stuck this gun right in that boy’s belly. I cocked the hammer back and I told him he was gonna find out all he ever wanted to know about bullets if he didn’t drop that pool cue.”
“Then what happened?”
“Everybody got real polite in there Luke. That boy dropped his stick and apologized. They all did, and the bartender let me have my smokes for free. Everybody was just as nice as could be, but I never go anywhere near that place anymore.”
My grandpa was a rough old Missouri boy, nobody in their right mind would ever get him confused with Barney. Smoking those Tareytons, he looked more like Lee Marvin when he looked at me real serious then and said, ”We never go looking for trouble Luke, but we never take any shit off anybody. Isn’t that right Sonny?” My dad tousled my hair and said “No Pop, we sure don’t.
I loved the way they said “we”.
So here I am tonight, thirty some odd years later, somewhere between Coalinga and Mendota. The pistol is here too.
