ROY ROGERS AND ANDY DEVINE
When I was a young boy growing up I loved Leonardo Da Vinci, astronomy, the cosmos, rockets to the Moon and Mars, Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, along with comic books and cowboy western movie stars such as Gene Autry, Durango Kid, and Roy Rogers --- to wit, the following:
For my 11th birthday my stepmother, who I loved dearly, had arranged for me to meet one of my then favorite childhood heros, the cowboy-western movie star, Roy Rogers. Prior to the death of my grandfather, my grandmother and grandfather lived in the small California mountain community of Big Bear Lake. The two knew Andy Devine, legendary movie sidekick, who owned a sort of locals travern on the road from Big Bear Village to Big Bear City. Through that connection my stepmother put together the plan for me to meet Rogers.
(source)
The "sort of locals travern" on the road from Big Bear Village to Big Bear City was built in 1946, opening a year later by Andy Devine as the Sportsmen’s Tavern. With no offense intended toward the on-screen persona or personal integrity of the actor, but more or less taking a cue by harkening back to the old days of the wild and wooly western saloon, the place gained a well earned reputation as Big Bear’s den of inequity. It had 35 slot machines upstairs, not to mention a bevy of always-willing call girls. When word came down that the county sheriff and his deputies had crossed over the dam or on their way up up the back grade, word spread quickly. The taveren, located on the main road about halfway between the only two valley entrances available in those days, which were miles apart, always seemed to have time to shove the machines into a hidden backroom while the prostitutes quickly disappeared down the back stairs into the woods.
As for my meeting with Roy Rogers, which was actually the first of three, occurred on the occasion of he and his horse Trigger having their footprints set into cement at Grauman's Chinese Theater. Three years later I had graduated to meeting Albert Einstein.
(please click)
1946 BUCK ROGERS U-235 ATOMIC PISTOL. ONE OF THE FEW THINGS FROM
MY CHILDHOOD. TEN YEARS LATER IT WAS D. T. SUZUKI'S ZEN BUDDHISM.
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