Nearly two years ago I was involved in a head-on collision and broke a bone in the same foot that is now connected to my broken ankle. At the time, Stubborn was just an idea churning in the back of my head.
I decided to do a warm-up piece before I seriously started writing Stubborn. Here is what I wrote. It provides insight into what was, and still is, running through my head:
Bonanza
You knew everything was going to be OK when you saw the Cartwrights riding up - or even just one of them. The good guys would prevail and the bad guys would get their comeuppance. In the end, 60 minutes later, all would be right with the world and as a little kid I could go to bed and sleep well.
I wasn't very old when it came on, every Sunday night, at 8 o'clock. It took a special dispensation from my dad to watch Bonanza - bed time was also at eight but it was only one night a week so I was pardoned.
And so every Sunday night I was at the Ponderosa where I was welcomed as a guest into Pa Cartwright's house.
I rediscovered Bonanza so many years later when I was sidelined with a broken foot and two bum knees in December, 2009. It was reassuring to see the Cartwrights again - albeit interspersed with commercials for motorized wheelchairs, portable oxygen suppliers, innumerable scam insurance ads, and ambulance-chasing lawyers.
At least somewhere justice was still clean-cut and so was right and wrong. And I was still welcome at Pa Cartwright's house.
Yah, the acting and scripts were terrible and so were the plots - but so what? Good and Bad and Right and Wrong. All right there and wrapped up in a tidy 60 minutes.
And really cool horses. I was always a sucker for the horses.
Not too long ago Adam (aka Pernell Roberts) passed on to be with the rest of the Cartwright family on the Big Ponderosa in the Sky. He was the last of them, you know. Who besides me shed a tear? I bet more than one little kid from the 60's.
What I wouldn't give to be living on that Ponderosa.
No comments:
Post a Comment