L’Ouest Sauvage

“Lash” LaRue De La Paix trotted into town on a magnificent Appaloosa which made the street-tethered roans, pintos and sorrels look like so many hippo-mongrels. Lash was a cow-garçon from Marseilles who had come to Dodge City in search of adventure and some poontang. Sitting high in his saddle, he sneeringly steered his stallion among his lessers, sniffing the air for those female pheromones which would lead him to his evening comfort.

“Lash” wasn’t his Christian name; it was Gregorio. But Gregorio assumed this new appellation on the boat over to America somewhere northwest of the Sargasso Sea in order to distract females from his somewhat androgynous appearance. It worked like a charm. Within fifteen minutes of his rechristening, he was playing the ole in and out with a scullery maid from Bristol who was coming to America to wed her 12-year pen pal from Newark.

When Lash reached the only three-story hotel in Dodge City, The Roxy, he guided his horse to its hitching post. In doing so, he swung his right leg back over the saddle and spent the horse’s last ten paces suspended on his left stirrup. This bit of grandstanding was for the benefit of a comely miss who was standing on the hotel porch with at least eight crinolines hiding her pouting charms (on which Lash was already beginning to fantasize.)

With a tip of his 37.85 liter hat to this potential conquest, Lash tied up his horse and took the porch stairs three at a time. This was a grievous error in judgment. He missed the top step by millimeters and fell headlong into a gunslinger named Mickey from Butte, Montana. Without so much as a how-de-do, this desperado pumped all six bullets from his pearl-handled Colt into Lash’s torso ... which quickly twitched into stillness.

They buried him on Boot Hill with but a single word carved on his graveboard, “Frenchie”. His horse and saddle were sold to cover the funeral expenses. Mickey took the rest of Lash's personal effects for the insult.

© Copyright, George W. Potts

Good & Plenty

As a nine-year old in the late 1940’s, heaven to me was a Saturday matinee at the Manos Theater or the Strand Theater or the Grand Theater in my Pennsylvania hometown, Greensburg. The Grand, behind the courthouse, was the seedier of the three and, therefore, the favorite of the munchkin set. With our silver quarter clutched tightly in our fists, it lured us onto its boisterous ticket queue with a western, a serial, a B-film (generally a comedy or a mystery), and a cartoon. One would enter this cavern of delights after lunch on Saturday and emerge squinting into the late afternoon sun. We never begrudged the squandering of our allowance and much of our Saturday on such frivolity. We were innocents ... we knew not of television or VCRs or Dolby sound systems or the Internet.

Invariably, we spent our whole quarter ... 15 cents to get into the magic shadow show and the rest for such nickel treats as Dots, JuJu Bees, Necco Wafers, Good & Plenty, Red Hots, and that requisite bag of popcorn. Good & Plenty was a favorite since the empty box made the best mouth-tooter to blow in between the features. If one sat in the balcony, half of your popcorn was generally showered on your screaming peers below. Too much popcorn or tooting invariably brought the matron usherette with her ill-fitting brown uniform and massive flashlight. The faded purple braid on her left shoulder rewarded her for what we knew not ... perhaps scowling.

The western proffered usually starred William Boyd (as Hopalong Cassidy) or Gene Autry (and his side-kick, Cannonball) or Lash LaRue or Roy Rogers (and Gabby Hayes). There was always a big posse chase, lots of ricocheting bullets and horse prat falls, but no kissing. If there were western songs, we usually hooted and hollered until the last stanza. The serial would be something like The Perils of Pauline (with Betty Hutton) or Flash Gordon (with Buster Crabb) or Red Ryder (and Little Beaver) or the Lone Ranger or Johnny Weismiller’s Tarzan. Then the main feature could be Charley Chan or Abbott & Costello (meeting Frankenstein or the Wolf Man or the Invisible Man) or Bob Hope and Bing Crosby (on the road to Rio or Bali or Morocco) or Errol Flynn as Robin Hood or Laurel and Hardy in the French Foreign Legion.

Often there was also a Movietone News short which highlighted recent world events in sports, entertainment, and of course, the reconstruction from the war in Europe or the Pacific. But it was the cartoon that took our breath away. Porkie Pig and all his friends coming out of that rainbow bulls-eye was our thrill of the week. And, if perchance there was a second cartoon, we squealed ... for we knew we had been gifted by the gods.

© Copyright George W. Potts