Happy Trails

Tomorrow marks the 98th anniversary of the birth of Leonard Slye, whom members of my generation know better as Roy Rogers, the "King of the Cowboys."  One of the vivid memories of my childhood was watching reruns of "The Roy Rogers Show" on our black and white television on Saturday mornings.  Roy and Dale with sidekick Pat Brady in his jeep (that he named "Nelleybelle,") Trigger, and their dog Bullet roamed the range making wrong right.

It is a bittersweet thing to me to remember those days of my youth, because those days seem to be as long gone as the Middle Ages.  Roy Rogers and the other cowboy heroes were the embodiment of the American ideal.  They were independent, respectful, resourceful, and they instinctively knew right from wrong.  Today, we respect nothing, we increasingly depend on the government, and we need 8 lawyers and 4 psychologists to tell us what is right.  They in turn, will remind us that "right" is relative.  And the last thing many of the elite leaders of this country want is a bunch of independent people who work for themselves, protect themselves, and scariest of all, think for themselves.

We have no heroes such as Roy Rogers anymore, I suppose because we believe that no one is worthy of that status since no one can possibly live up to the American Ideal.  And since no one can live up to the Ideal, then we have cynically abandoned that, too, and so we lower standards in all kinds of endeavors and wallow in our mediocrity.  As long as there's beer in the fridge and something on TV, we're all happy.

Except we're not.  We spend money on trinkets that wouldn't entertain a monkey for more than 10 minutes in an effort to fill our empty souls.  We drink until we pass out for at least we're oblivious to the emptiness when we're unconscious.  Our kids do drugs, because we haven't taught them that the sunset reflects as beautifully off the windows of the alms house as off a rich man's mansion.

We've lost sight of the fact that doing right makes a person happy, but doing right is hard and we can't have that.  We need things to be easy.  Easy credit.  Easy classes.  Easy living.  Happy trails aren't usually the easy trails.  Gene Autry once sang in "Back in the Saddle Again":

Where you sleep out every night

And the only law is right

Back in the saddle again.

The morality of a civilization is inversely proportional to the number of laws that it enacts.  Simply lifting our tax code would give a strong man a hernia.  We better get back in the saddle again before it's too late.

I like to think that Roy Rogers would be pleased with this entry, knowing that he is still inspiring the little boy who used to watch him on Saturday mornings.

Comments

[Anna Kipps]

My brother loved Cowboy western type things when he was really little, so we were lucky and got to see lots and lots of Roy Rogers when we were younger. I still have a photo of Roy and Trigger on my wall.

[Austin]

Anna, I'm glad to hear it. That gives me hope!

[Lizzy K]

Roy Rogers is still King of the Cowboys in our house. :)

[Melissa Dodge]

So, how long have you been off caffeine now?