I'll Take Trigger

Fire up the wayback machine, Sherman, and take me back to a simpler time. A time when TV showed Westerns - including those oddball not-quite-Old-West ones, like 'Sky King', and 'The Roy Rogers Show'.

Ah, Roy Rogers and his horse, Trigger. And faithful dog Bullet. And his sidekick's old jeep, 'Nellie Belle'. Good TV for a dreamy kid back in the day. Who cared if it was in black and white? Trigger was beautiful, and 'triggered' a lengthy but ultimately unfulfilled obsession with Palomino horses that lingers (impotently, but firmly) in my psyche still.

Fast forward to a time not so long ago. Visiting the 'Roy Rogers Museum' in Apple Valley with my own kids, admiring the knick knacks and detritus of Roy's life on display along with his deceased and stuffed companions (just the animals, his sidekick escaped that fate). My kids impressed at all the 'stuff' and I half amused at the tackiness of much of it, but half still a kid in a candy store.

There were a few more good visits to that museum of American Dream nostalgia, but not enough by us or anyone else to keep the place solvent, so the Roger's estate up and moved the whole thing to Branson, Missouri - that showpiece of midwest banality done up as Disneyland Music Hall meets a family-friendly Las Vegas. A logical move I guess, since Branson was targeted at the soft white middle of the great mass of nostalgic boomers and their still-extant parents and kin. Just the folks who might remember and love Roy best. But to yank out the cowboy heart of high desert California and stick it in Missouri? Criminal.

A bit of sadness tinged with resentful glee, then, to hear The Roy Roger's Museum in Branson is closing its doors due to declining attendance and 'the economy'. The news isn't all bad though: the 'memorabilia' and 'artifacts' will be sold, according to a blurb in USA Today (October 7, 2009).

I'll take Trigger. I'll even trade my 1955 Roy Rogers Singing Cowboy guitar for him ...