TV WESTERNS FROM YESTERDAY

Post by Doris McCraw
writing as Angela Raines

Photo property of the author

As I pondered this months post, I wasn't sure what I would write about. Of course, I would prefer to write about history, but when time is short, research isn't always an option. Then it hit me, I've been streaming old TV shows. So, here are some of the oldie by maybe goodie's I've caught up on over the last year.

Of course, a new oldie is "The Adventures of Brisco County". I've always been a fan of Bruce Campbell. He carried the show on some pretty impressive shoulders, with some great tongue in cheek.

Who can forget "Wild Wild West" which was popular during the hey day of the James Bond craze. I confess I was a bigger fan of Ross Martin than Robert Conrad, but the chemistry between the two made the show.



Then I found "Yancy Derringer". Although not technically a Western, Jock Mahoney filled the screen with a panache that was fun to watch.

In short order, there was "Whispering Smith" with Audie Murphy, "Tombstone Territory" with Pat Conway and Ricard Eastman, and  "Hopalong Cassidy" with William Boyd.

Of course there is a special place in my heart for "The Cisco Kid" and "The Magnificent Seven".



Although the Cisco Kid was filmed in color, it aired in black & white. To watch the streaming now, the colors are interesting, as the show was filmed in 1950. The stars and their backgrounds make the watching even more fun. I may do a post just on the show and its stars. (For those who are interested, there were numerous movies in which the Cisco Kid was the star, and it had Duncan Renaldo and Leo Carrillo as the same characters they play in the TV show. imdb.com is a great resource if you want to look into those early movies.)



I saved what I consider the best for last. "The Magnificent Seven" television show was based on the movie of the same name. As some already know, the movie was based on the Kurosawa film "The Seven Samurai" an absolute top of the list movie for me. Although the TV show only lasted two seasons, the writing and acting were so top notch for the time. Ron Perlman, Michael Biehn, Eric Close, Dale Midkiff, Anthony Starke, Rick Worthy and Andrew Kavovit chemistry on screen only added to the already fabulous scrips.

I know there are so many others, but I've just not had time to catch up with most of them. And yes, I watched Brisco, and Magnificent Seven when they first aired. The others were either a bit before my time, or on networks that were not available where I grew up.

What were some of your favorites and why? Any the same as mine? Did these older shows inspire your own Western Stories?

Doris Gardner-McCraw -

Author, Speaker, Historian-specializing in
Colorado and Women's History

Angela Raines - author: Where Love & History Meet

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CONAGHER AND CINDERELLA--THE DEVIL'S IN THE DETAILS PART 4 by CHERYL PIERSON

Have you ever read a story that made you wonder why the author spent such a long, boring time describing an item or place that seemed of little importance to the story?

Usually when that happens, it’s because its importance will be revealed later on, or some scene will call up that particular memory or description for some reason—and its usually a pretty darn good reason!

Let’s look at Cinderella’s slipper as our first example for this. Of course, a glass slipper would be highly unusual, wouldn’t it? In fact, most likely, there would be no other slippers like that one pair!

This particular pair of shoes serves as a symbol for the entire story—improbable things happening to a young woman who has been treated so terribly for so long that lead to her ultimate happiness—it’s a story we can all relate to!

The magic that brings her happiness is not just going to the ball and all the wonderful things that happened on the way—the beautiful gown, the carriage, and so on—the true magic for Cinderella is falling in love. And how can the two lovers hope to be reunited? Well, if it weren’t for those exquisitely, perfectly-fitting glass slippers, everything else that came before—all the magic, hopes, and dreams—could have amounted to nothing at all. Everything hinges on the glass slipper fitting!

Hence the description of the slippers themselves, carrying the slipper on a pillow (which I always believed was taking a terrible chance!) and the endless search and trying on of the slipper throughout the kingdom.

The slipper is all-important because it is the proof that she is “the one” –and it has come to symbolize the very story itself. When we see a picture of the glass slipper, we know it “means” Cinderella, right?

Think about Lous L’Amour’s iconic western, Conagher. Two lonely people meet and fall in love through heartfelt notes that Evie, the heroine, writes and ties to tumbleweeds. They could be found and read by anyone—or no one at all.

http://g.tinyurl.com/y6y8yj33

But the fact that Conagher feels they speak directly to him, shows us how important what she did is to the story. This is further borne out when, in conversation with him, she uses a phrase she’s written on one of the notes—and he knows immediately it is she who has been writing them.




Loneliness and the vast emptiness of the land is a common theme throughout the book. It was unimaginable to her that Conagher would be the one who found “that note” – the one she repeated the phrase from in conversation with him—but it wasn’t impossible. And his line to her is one of the most romantic of all time, in my opinion.




He takes one of the notes out of his pocket and asks if she wrote it, and she says yes, she did. She tells him she was just so lonely she had to talk to someone, even if no one was there to hear. He says, "There was, Evie, there was me." 

The details of:

1. The land around them and their feelings about the emptiness and aloneness of where they are...
2. Evie’s acting on those feelings by just writing them down on paper and tying them to tumbleweeds...
3. The act of Evie repeating the phrase in conversation she’d used on the note Conagher found...

all add up to make this story so special and memorable—and one you will not want to put down once you start reading!

Conagher isn’t a fairy tale, but it does have its own brand of magical connections that lead to love. The details and descriptions in both of these stories, as different as they are, give the reader insights that the author, in both cases, was masterful in providing throughout the story!

Finally, another couple of tales that come to mind are two short stories many of us read in our high school English classes—The Necklace, by Guy De Maupassant, and The Gift of the Magi, by O. Henry. Do you remember these—both based on objects that were described in great detail—and the twists at the end that left you gasping in surprise?

If you haven’t read them, or even if it’s been a while, they are always good to revisit and are classic examples of why detailed descriptions of “things” can be so important to a story’s premise.

Can you think of an example in your reading where the detailed description of something had deep importance to the story?

Western Fictioneers Announces the 9th Annual Peacemaker Awards

(For Westerns Published in 2018)

BEST WESTERN NOVEL:

GRIT by Ron Schwab (Uplands Press)

Finalists:

THE PISTOLMAN’S APPRENTICE, Linell Jeppsen (Wolfpack Publishing)

TIMBERLINE, Matthew P. Mayo (Five Star)

GYPSY ROCK, Robert D. McKee (Five Star)

FATHER UNTO MANY SONS, Rod Miller (Five Star)

BEST FIRST WESTERN NOVEL:

(Tie)

WHERE THE BULLETS FLY, Terrence McCauley (Kensington)        

I AM MRS. JESSE JAMES, Pat Wahler (Blank Slate Press)

Finalists:

THE CHAPMAN LEGACY, John Neely Davis (Five Star)

THE SCARRED ONE, Tyler Boone (Charles Gramlich) (Sundown Press)

REBECCA’S HOPE, Kimberly Grist (Winged Publications)

BEST WESTERN YA/CHILDRENS FICTION:

ESCAPE TO FORT ABERCROMBIE, Candace Simar (Five Star)

Finalists:

MYSTERY ON THE PECOS, Alice V. Brock (Pen-L Publishing)

RAWHIDE ROBINSON RIDES A DROMEDARY, Rod Miller (Five Star)

CASTLE BUTTE, John D. Nesbitt (Five Star)

THE CHRISTMAS BEAR, B.N. Rundell (Wolfpack Publishing)                                                                                   

BEST SHORT FICTION:

“The Lake Spirit”, Troy D. Smith (THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO: FRONTIER JUSTICE, Moonstone)

Finalists:

“Byrd’s Luck”, Jeffrey J. Mariotte (THE UNTAMED WEST, Western Fictioneers)

“The Gamble”, Cheryl Pierson (THE UNTAMED WEST, Western Fictioneers)

“Father Pedro’s Prayer”, Michael R. Ritt (THE UNTAMED WEST, Western Fictioneers)

“Peyote Spirits”, Ron Schwab (Uplands Press)

Western Fictioneers would like to thank the judges for the excellent job they did and the long hours they devoted to reading the submissions.

Michael Atkinson – American artist by Kaye Spencer #westernfictioneers #americanartist

In the early 1990s on one of my visits home to Fort Morgan, Colorado from where I’d moved to take a teaching position in the southeastern corner of the state (a 500-mile round trip), I stopped in Limon at a convenience store/souvenir shop. The shop had a bin of posters and prints that you could flip through. This is where I came across my first Michael Atkinson painting. I was immediately enthralled, captivated, and in love with Atkinson’s work. (The images I'm sharing are prints I've purchased.)

'Western Majestic' - Michael Atkinson

'Unknown Title' by Michael Atkinson

'Pueblo Sentinel' ceramic tile by Michael Atkinson

For the next several years, I checked that same shop for Atkinson prints every time I passed through Limon. I also looked in shopping malls, other souvenir shops, second hand stores, etc. Every time I found an Atkinson, I thought I had a treasure. It mattered not at all that the prints I bought weren’t originals or even expensive. Keep in mind, this was just as the Internet launched (1991), and years before eBay (1995) and Amazon (1994) started and it took these venues a few more years to gain their current popularity and convenience for finding what you want at the click of a few keyboard keys.

'Emerald Lake' by Michael Atkinson

L-R: 'Scouting Party' | 'Unknown Title' | Mountain Reflections

by Michael Atkinson

Upper Left to Right then Below:

'Spring Rider' | 'Thunderstorm' | 'Crystal Cliffs'

by Michael Atkinson

'Unknown Title' by Michael Atkinson

So, who is Michael Atkinson? He is a painter and sculptor, but beyond that, an Internet search produces scant information about him. These two websites, www.prints.com and www.galleryone.com, offer a tiny bit about him.

From his Smoky Ridge studio in Texas, Atkinson seeks to capture the emotion, be it subtle or exaggerated, a pursuit that has been in evolution since he started painting as a child in the northwest Texas town of Lubbock. Attracted early to the study of architecture, he earned a degree from Texas Tech University, then taught and worked in the field for a time. From the first, his art, prints and posters have reflected his training, experience, and wide-ranging interests, as he creates images buildings, oceanscapes, animals, and Southwestern landscapes through a unique, semi-abstract style and a mastery of watercolors, spontaneity, and freedom. White space is an essential element of the composition that characterizes Atkinson's art, prints and posters. The white is not empty. It is completely finished. Treating the paper as an element of design, the artist works from one concentrated area of detail and color, leaving much of the paper white and allowing the eye to focus on the central image without intrusion from the periphery.

The other source of information I have is this paper that is attached to the backs of several of my prints. There is a reference to ‘seven years ago’, but there isn’t a year listed, so there’s no point of reference. You’ll notice this information is stamped with Diversified Art, Inc., Tucson Arizona, but an Internet search didn’t reveal much about this organization.

I have a Pinterest board of Michael Atkinson’s artwork, and these few prints hanging on my living room walls are enough.

Kaye’s Michael Atkinson Pinterest board: https://www.pinterest.com/kayespencer/michael-atkinson-artist/

Are you familiar with Michael Atkinson’s works? 

I’ve labeled three of the pictures as “Untitled”, because the prints lack titles. I haven’t found them on the Internet, either. But I’ll continue to search. That’s part of the enjoyment of having a reason to browse through Michael Atkinson’s art.

Until next time,

Kaye Spencer

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