WESTERNS HAVE ALWAYS attracted me. In fact, yesterday afternoon I watched one of the best: “The Outlaw Josey Wales” with Clint Eastwood. It’s at least the sixth or maybe even the eighth time I’ve watched it. As a kid, I watched the early western stars on television, guys like Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger. Then there were the early classic westerns like “The Searchers” with John Wayne, “Shane” with Alan Ladd, and “High Noon” with Gary Cooper. Life in the old west, as portrayed in these films, was no less strange to me than space creature flicks. I knew I’d never be going into space, but I had this idea that, one day, I’d gravitate out west and see for myself, at least what was left of it. Somewhere along the line I learned that the depiction of the Native Americans in the old westerns was inaccurate. Perhaps it was the white man that was the savage. Contemporary westerns such as “Little Big Man” and “Dances With Wolves” presented a more Indian centric perspective. Good new westerns kept coming. “Forsaken” with Donald & Kiefer Sutherland, “The Unforgiven” with Eastwood, and “Open Range” with Robert Duval & Kevin Costner come to mind. Eventually, I did make it out west, and lived fourteen years in southern Utah among the sand and the sagebrush and the slickrock. I was no cowboy, but I did cultivate my own version of the cowboy’s frame of mind. Started reading great western writers like Ed Abbey and Wallace Stegner. Hiked the slot canyons and got my first pickup truck. Now that I’m back in Florida, it’s more important than ever that I keep watching westerns, just to remind me what it looks like out there where I was fortunate enough to live for a while. And I just got two more books by Ed Abbey; my love affair with the American West continues.
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Learn more about caring for children with an ostomy on vacation.