They’re falling fatally and disturbingly fast. Roy Rogers, Buffalo Bob Smith, Shari Lewis — all representing the last time the world made sense to the Baby Boom generation.
Even Robert Young made sense in the 1950s. If you’re going to get a whupping, it might as well be a benign word-whupping by a kindly insurance agent in a cardigan sweater.
More Top Picks Adhd Homework Tips For Parents Fighting Nightly Battles
The times seemed so utterly rational that an uncanny number of icons had repeating initials. Roy Rogers. Marilyn Monroe. Mickey Mantle. Mickey Mouse. Doris Day. Buffalo Bob. And Brigitte Bardot, who wafted into the decade on a forbidden French scent.
I’ve decided I was wrong to feel this way, but later in life I felt uncomfortable with some of these iconic figures, especially the ones associated with kiddie TV shows.
They never changed. They tried to remain surrogate uncles, aunts and even parents for a generation that not only outgrew them but also scorned them.
Buffalo Bob wore fringe and glowed with giddy enthusiasm until the end of his days.
Roy Rogers kept the faith, too. He was born someone else entirely, in Cincinnati, but he became Roy Rogers and stayed Roy Rogers for all the buckaroos who adored him and then forgot him.
Clayton Moore, once the Lone Ranger on TV, held firm even after the rights-holders stripped him of his mask. He switched to wraparound sunglasses and kept firing silver bullet blanks.
I was on a TV press tour, years back, when Moore strode into the back of the room early one morning and announced his arrival by firing his gun. Dozens of critics nearly had heart attacks, then spun around angrily to see who’d splattered their eardrums.
All I can say is that when you saw it was the Lone Ranger, in the flesh, you felt a very odd mix of sensations. Whatever else Moore is doing these days, I’m sure he’s still Kemosabe.
As life became a succession of political assassinations, wars, scandals, careers, families and mutual funds, the figures from our TV closets devolved into dusty, awkward quaintness. Among them, only Shari Lewis, with her Lamb Chop sock puppet, seemed capable of self-renewal.
But think again. These were people who, upon their honor, would not abandon us. They probably knew we scoffed at them as silly anachronisms, and still they loved us. They no longer needed the money, in most cases. They’d simply accepted lifelong responsibilities.
So maybe kids made decent choices in the first place, all those decades ago. Constancy. Love. Responsibility. We knew heroes; we just stopped wanting them.