This morning I am still down for the count, so I wonder maybe I'll watch a little television. When we were kids and we stayed home sick, we had maybe five channels, eight tops, and we ended up inevitably watching soap operas, which is how so many of us got hooked on the damn things (not that it matters now because I think every one of them has been cancelled). So, I figured: #1 - I have tons more channels than I ever did as a kid, #2 - I have On-Demand, and #3 - It's Saturday, so there has to be something on the tube.
Man oh man, was I ever WRONG.
Apparently, infomercials are on every station prior to 9:00 a.m. on Saturday morning, or so it seems. I start flicking the channels. I stop on an old Western. Oh, look, it's Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, and they're on their horses chasing a wagon with some bad guys. You know the wagons I mean; the kind from the old Wild West with the big wooden wheels.
I don't remember actually watching this show growing up. I watched a little bit of
Rawhide and
Wagon Train and a lot of
Bonanza and
Lancer. I watched quite a few Western movies,
The Cowboys being my all-time favorite with
Once Upon a Time in the West right behind, but all the others, too. The Spaghetti Westerns, the Australian
Quigley Down Under and the amazing horsemanship in
The Man From Snowy River.
I'm figuring the setting for the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans series to be no later than the 1880's or so, since many of these Westerns feature the politically incorrect slaughter of Native Americans every chance they get. Geronimo surrendered in 1886 and Wounded Knee happened in 1890.
I'm also figuring that the television show probably isn't any later than the 1890's since there are always train robberies and horse-ridden escapes from bank robberies. The gunfight at the OK Corral took place in
1881, the same year Billy the Kid was shot. The Dalton Gang was gunned down by townspeople in 1892. But, the last stagecoach robbery in the US was reported in 1916, so maybe, just maybe, what I am about to tell you must be true.
Folks: Roy Rogers and Dale Evans were following this errant wagon of degenerates with a small posse on horseback and ... and ... and ... (drum roll) ... two guys driving a Jeep.
A frigging Jeep. I totally don't shit you at all. A Jeep was screeching through the desert sand on television in the same show that Roy Rogers and Dale Evans were performing cow-poke jokes. Honestly, the third wall completely obliterated. The Jeep seemed like it was supposed to be there, but I missed the first half of the show and eventually turned away, so I missed the ending, as well..
No damn Saturday morning vigilante cowboy show is going to make me believe there were Jeeps tear-assing through the Old West. Excuse the pictures. I was still on sea legs this morning, and I had to rush and get my phone and snap these shots because I really could not believe me eyes. Model T? Maybe. Jeep? No way. The first civilian Jeep models weren't sold until 1945, and there's no way Roy and Dale would be chasing criminals in wagons through the same town week after week in the 1940's.
No matter. It was ruined for me. It
is ruined for me. Now I can share that sentiment with all of you.
