Mosquito Dharma

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. -- Lao Tzu

PHOTO:KCS

I met with my guru recently. I say "guru" for lack of a better word. He's a person just like you and me, but unlike me he has studied various religions of the world and their histories. His Tibetan Buddhist studies and practice have earned him the honorary title of rinpoche.

He helps me to understand the greater picture of what's happening in our world and what we might do about it as individuals. I always learn something from him. We met at a coffee shop in Santa Cruz while construction was taking place nearby. The din of tractors and graders beeping and grinding served as our background. Soon those noises faded away as time passed while we talked and laughed.

Following is our conversation:

Me: So good to see you. It's been too long. 

Rinpoche: Yes, too long. What a beautiful afternoon to see you. 

Me: Agreed. What have you been doing?

R: Nothing.

Me: That's funny. I said that to my high school football coach when he asked what I had done over the summer. He answered sharply: "Nothing! Don't tell me you did nothing!" I was taken back.

R: He was obviously trapped in what we call samsara, the state of always having to do something but never going anywhere. Like running in circles.

Me: What's wrong with running in circles? 

R: That's fine as long as you know you're going nowhere.

Me: Where should we be going?

R: Nowhere. There is no should. We are not given orders. We make that up.

Me: Don't we need direction to get along and accomplish things, like building homes and acting civil to each other?

R: Yes, there is a balance to maintain. But our primary activity to sustain life is to act with compassion for all sentient beings.

Me: Does that include our enemies, even mosquitoes?

R: It includes all sentient beings.

Me: But a mosquito could transmit an infectious disease to me, like malaria. I could die. Is it wrong to kill a sentient being who can kill you?

R: What is WRONG? Let's for a minute dispense with right and wrong. Mosquitoes are not calculating right or wrong. They are just being mosquitoes.

Me: And I'm just being human.

R: Are you?

Me: Yes, I'm protecting myself from disease.

R: Must you kill the mosquito?

Me: I guess I could run away, or spray repellent on exposed parts of my body.

R: That's an idea I like.

As we stood talking in the patio twilight, I could hear the buzzing of a mosquito nearby. A second or so later Rinpoche slapped at his forehead, leaving the remains of a dead mosquito stuck to his skin.

Me: You just killed a mosquito, Rinpoche, after telling me to show compassion for all sentient beings.

R: Do you DO everything anybody tells you?

Me: No, but I don't understand your lesson. I don't consider you just ANYBODY.

R:  Would you rather that I had simply allowed the mosquito to bite me?

Me: No, but...

R: As a human being I am not perfect.

Me: But isn't the mosquito perfect?

R: It is certainly more perfect than I am. Shall we drink tea?

September Song

My father Frank Samson in our driveway with his '57 Studebaker Silver Hawk, Pomona, Calif., 1958.  San Gabriel Mountain peaks barely visible in background. Shot with my Brownie Hawkeye camera.

September always meant going back to school following a long hot summer. In Pomona, where I grew up, it also meant the Los Angeles County Fair. 

We students were given free tickets to the fair since the Fairgrounds were located just north of the center of town. My memory tells me there was a little piggy on the face of the ticket welcoming us to the annual show of agriculture, all sorts of exhibits and of course the Midway where the giant ferris wheel was located. That Ferris wheel was so high it identified the Fairgrounds from miles away, a landmark that stood vacant and fallow for most of the year.

There was -- and may still be -- a horse-racing track at the Fairgrounds with a large grandstand. As I got older, I began to look forward to the races that were held in conjunction with the Fair. If I had earned extra cash during the summer, I would place two-dollar bets on "the ponies." I liked the long shots whose payoffs were more substantial, although I was never much of a bettor, although some of my friends were. I played my money conservatively. I enjoyed watching the horses race, their hooves pounding under long legs and slender ankles. Betting enhanced the experience. Curiously, you didn't need an ID to place a bet.

My favorite exhibit at the Fair was the photography show of mostly black and white pictures that captured unique perspectives of mundane scenes, some of people doings things as simple as eating an ice cream cone or standing on a corner. Why were they so interesting? What made me stop and study these photos? I never spent too much time wondering about it, but I was intrigued and never missed the opportunity to pass through the photo exhibit.

The Midway with its rides and music and roaming kids was a big draw for teenagers. One night I watched a girl dance, amazingly, to Ray Charles's "Hit the Road, Jack", her lithe body floating above her dazzlingly quick-moving feet, her hair hanging over her face glazed in concentration. She had become the music. Watching her, I was entranced by the rhythm and beat...  don'cha come back no more, no more... hit the road...

We met high school friends at the Midway on Friday night, hung out, enjoyed a few rides and took in the scene and when we got home our shoes were covered in black greasy oil. You never wanted to wear white shoes or pants to the Midway.

At St. Joseph's, September meant seeing kids you hadn't seen since June. The girls changed the most with their new hair cuts and smiles. Their bodies were changing, too, as they were becoming young women with budding breasts that made you realize the wonder and excitement of sexual arousal and the awkward activity of flirting, if it only meant a second look.

The nuns attempted to keep the boys and girls separated, in the classroom as well as during periods of recess. So we met at the bowling alleys and movie theaters. There was always a workaround. There were actually three bowling alleys in town! I was bowling before I knew how to drive.

September weather could be brutal in our inland valley of Southern California. Temperatures could reach into the 100s, my forearms dripping sweat on my desk and notebook after coming in from recess where we boys never seemed to stop running, playing keep-away, a crude form of rugby. We lined up at the water fountains our mouths parched from the heat, gulping and splashing each other with wonderful water, quenching every last cell in your body.

In the mid-thirties, Pomona was known as the Queen of the Citrus Belt, with groves of oranges surrounding town. We were the eastern-most city in Los Angeles County located at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains and Mt. Baldy, separated from the rest of the county by Kellogg Hill, near an Arabian horse farm and the campus of Cal Poly Pomona established on 1500 acres in 1938. The major department store was The Orange Belt. Some of the kids' parents acted on TV shows and in commercials. With its historical craftsman houses adorned with stonework from local quarries and streets shaded by leafy trees, old Pomona was early-on a taste of small-town America, a get-away from the bustle of L.A., 30 miles west. 

The rural foothills ran east from L.A. and Septembers were dry and became the peak season for wild fires. Those blazes became backdrops for L.A. noir crime novels by Ross MacDonald, The Underground Man 1971; Don Winslow, California Fire and Life 1991; and Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman, The Burning 2020, among other more recent stories.

September also meant the beginning of football season and two-a-day practices, in the morning and again in the afternoon, with full pads and blocking sleighs and drills like "blood on the moon." They began a week or so before school started and after the morning session we would meet at Pascal's hamburger stand and drain tall cups of Coke with ice. One afternoon, the coaches ended practice early because we were hacking and coughing from the heat coupled with the smog that settled against the foothills blown into the valley by onshore winds from the coast, the opposite direction of the warm Santa Ana winds that blow in from the Great Basin in winter.

The temperature reading on the bank downtown read 105 that day. The air was tinted brown.

September means life, the birth of my eldest daughter, Molly, and the loss of her mother, Linda, 29. Bittersweet September. 

My father, Frank, was also born on the 21st of the month.

September 21-24 brings the autumnal equinox, the end of summer and oncoming of fall. It announces change, a seasonal pivot. It means storms forming up north near the Aleutians, generating major swells resulting in larger waves on the West Coast, the beginning of a new season of surf. It also means the upcoming Santa Cruz County Fair, apple pie and pig races.

Coffee Dreams

 "One more cup of coffee for the road

One more cup of coffee 'fore I go

To the valley below" Bob Dylan

Big Mama Thornton (1926-1984) made the scene at coffeehouses and blues joints including the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach.

Coffee. Made from the seed of a berry. 

Call it a bean. Roast it. Grind it. 

Filter it with hot water. 

Express it with steam

Press it, pour it over ice 

Drink it from a cup, black

Add milk or whiskey 

Our morning elixir.

Afternoon fixer

Wake up and smell the coffee.

Coffee Guys

Benjamin Franklin, statesman and inventor, the face of our 100-dollar bill, consumed coffee like water, dashing between coffeehouses in Boston and Philadelphia for social and political connections, jacked on caffeine.

Honore de Balzac, French novelist with a very cool three-part name, is said to have fueled his prodigious literary output with a 50-cups-a-day habit. 

Composer Ludwig van Beethoven didn't simply write pieces like his Ninth Symphony off the top of his head; to juice himself, he meticulously counted 60 beans for each cup of coffee he drank.

French philosopher Voltaire, who had the distinction of a single name -- like Sting and Beyonce -- wins top prize for quantity of coffee consumed. Reports have him doing 72 cups a day -- presumably while probing the inner meaning of being. 

Coffee lore runs deep in human history, from the 17th Century.

Researching coffee on the internet will lead you around the world from Africa to the MidEast, through Europe to Costa Rica into South America, where the largest producer of coffee is located: Brazil. Although Vietnam has lately made impressive gains into second place, according to Google AI. Expect the price of Brazilian and Vietnamese coffees to rise significantly due to heavy tariffs imposed on those countries by Der Fuehrer of the U.S., who drinks soda pop.

Fun Fact: The Boston Tea Party in 1773 caused a coffee craze in the colonies due to the boycott of tea which came from mother England from whom we were trying to escape. You could call it the original American "coffee break." 

In the 60s my friends and I could go to Coco's Coffee Shop and get a bottomless cup of joe for a dime, maybe it was a quarter. We'd hold the table for hours into the night discussing, more like gossiping about, our friends and telling stories that make the world turn when you're a teenager wannabe-adult. Bottomless meant the waitress would refill your cup whenever it ran low. 

A coffee shop was basically a restaurant, or cafe (origin: kahve, Turkish for coffee), that  might stay open when the dance was over and you wanted to continue having fun with your friends. 

Coffee, where it is served and its price, have changed with the times, yet it has never lost its place as a catalyst for conversation and community.

The term "coffee shop,” seems to be trending again. I overheard this during a discussion at a local "coffeehouse," the name for establishments that sell specialty coffee drinks and offer an atmosphere for lingering, or hanging out. 

Coffeehouse to me has always referred to the bohemian 1950s-60s beatnik scene where jazz, poetry and folk music flourished in an intimate setting. 

Then I find out from Wikipedia that the first coffeehouses were located in 15h Century Damascus, known, poetically, as the City of Jasmine, one of the oldest cities in the Middle East and a crossroads for trade, commerce, silks and spices. 

The muddy drink itself originated about the same time in Ethiopia where the climate and soil are perfect for growing the tree-like plant that produces the prized coffee berries. The dark brew from the roasted berries (actually the pits of the berries) was drunk as a stimulant for staying awake during prayer, among other high-concentration scenarios.

My favorite coffeehouse in the Sixties was the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, located on PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) across the road from the legendary pier and surf break. Although the pier and waves still exist, the Golden Bear remains only a fond memory. 

For me it recalls nursing cups of java with friends while enjoying the likes of folksinger Hoyt Axton, Jose Feliciano and blues original, Big Mama Thornton, whose stage presence was substantial --  big body, short pants, long legs and bellowing voice. She blew a mean mouth harp as well. Truthfully, I was afraid of her.

We didn’t need an ID to get in. We drank soft drinks and coffee. As inlanders, we haunted these coastal joints — including the Prison of Socrates in Newport Beach and the Cosmos in Seal Beach — during the summer. I heard about a banjo player who supposedly looked like me. I'm pretty sure it was Steve Martin, who would soon become known as the guy who wore an arrow through his head on the Johnny Carson show.

Tony Lombardi (left) and Dave Fredricks (right) join me on patio at The Shrine Coffee Shop winter 2023.

cappuccino 

Coffee Renaissance

During the late1970s, coffee became more than a cup of joe. Suddenly we started sipping French roast, chewing bagels and arguing over how to pronounce, croissant.

Perhaps the most influential name from that burgeoning scene was Howard Schultz. (No relation to the popular Peanuts cartoonist of that era, Charles Schultz.) Howard had taken a trip to research the coffee bars of Italy, as a marketing guy for a Seattle coffee roaster named Starbucks. In 1982 he purchased Starbucks and introduced a menu of specialty coffee drinks made with espresso. He served them in cups of varying sizes with weird names, like vente.

Fun Fact: Starbucks is named after the first mate in Herman Melville's classic novel, Moby Dick.

The introduction of specialty coffee drinks is considered the Second Wave of Coffee Culture, according to Drive Coffee Roasters, of Chanhassen, Minnesota. The First Wave of Coffee Culture arrived during the 1940s  under names like Maxwell House, Folgers and Yuban. The coffee was made from Robusta berries that were plentiful, easy to grow and produced a bitter brew. 

The new specialty coffee concoctions were made from Arabica berries, which require unique growing regions and produce lighter, more complex flavors. French roast is made from long roasted Arabica beans. 

Fun fact: The name "joe" for coffee is believed to refer to the common everyman whose lifeblood and energy came from drinking his daily brew and taking periodic rests called coffee breaks during which workers chewed the fat. Few call coffee "joe" anymore. More like "java," which relates to the Indonesian country of Java renowned for its high-quality Arabica coffee beans.

We are currently experiencing the Third Wave of Coffee Culture. That is, sourcing the origins of the various coffee plants to discover unique flavors in exotic growing regions. In this regard coffee culture is similar to whiskey culture, as in, aficionados of Scotch made from peat found in the musky bogs of Scotland. Single origin, or single malt, indicates that all production is completed at the source.

We pay big time for the unique qualities of the single-origin brew. Supply and demand meet advertising and promotion. The 25-cents we paid for a cup of coffee in 1965, is equivalent to $2.55 in today’s inflated dollars. That’s still only half of what you’ll pay today for a decent cup of java.

If you want to go fully retrograde you can simply make yourself a pot of Cowboy Coffee from the remnants of yesterday's grind combined with egg shells, tobacco bits and whatever else will float your boat. That'll make your horse holler! 

Nothing could be finer than a steaming cup of freshly ground single-origin Arabica from say, Equador, on a cold morning listening to the birds chirp when you're out on the range, or at a campsite overlooking a lazy river. 

Fun fact: Caffeine is the most widely consumed and unregulated psychoactive drug on the planet. It comes from the seeds, nuts and leaves of particular plants native to Africa, Asia and South America. Think chocolate. Think Coca Cola. Think coffee.

Coffee Angel

When was the last time you dropped into McDonald's for a cup of coffee? Just sayin, their premium brewed coffee is made from 100% Arabica beans. 

On road trips through the backroads of America (see my blogs Thunderbird at High Noon and Montana Moonrise), McDonald's was my go-to for a cup of mud. The Golden Arches show up in almost every town near a highway. A "senior" coffee will cost you an average of 80-cents a cup at "participating" McDonald's, where you'll likely find a table of old guys shooting the breeze and sipping brew in the morning. These patrons are having just as much fun with their caffeine fix as those paying five-to-ten times more at Starbucks.

Not-So-Fun-Fact-Turned-Fun-Fact: McDonald's has gone electronic so you have to order your viddles (cowboy talk for grub... er, food) at a kiosk. That includes your coffee. Which is a problem. The last time I tried it -- a couple of weeks ago at McDonald's in Gonzales, California on Highway 101-- it became a contest between me and the machine. It was a puzzle of buttons I couldn’t solve. A young woman appeared behind me: "Can I help you?"

She obviously saw how distressed I had become. She was well-dressed, perfectly coiffed and her dark eyes as honest as the morning light. She calmly went through the process, asking me what I wanted and delicately pushing the proper buttons. I would have walked out had it not been for this angel. She was with her mother and father, also well-attired, who were closer to my age and spoke with their smiles since they could not speak English. They were likely related to the great farmworker population of Central California.

I can only guess as to why they were dressed up.

"Thank you so much," I said. "Muchas gracias," I added to her parents. I wanted to tell them that their daughter is an angel. I’m sure they knew that already. Based on their expressions, I believe they saw me as a crazy gringo who just needed a cup of coffee.

Note: Google has introduced automated "meta tags" to blogs and I have started using them in my posts: underlined colored words that link to online information. Let me know what you think? I think they're pretty cool, but could interfere with reading. Much of the information is generated by AI and seems trustworthy. As always, comments welcome. 

As Wes "Scoop" Nisker used to say: "If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own."

The End, The Final Words

"But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and civilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before." -- Final lines of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

King David Kalakaua of Hawaii (left) and author Robert Louis Stevenson.

According to the National Endowment for the Arts, fewer Americans are reading novels and short stories today. The NEA reported 37.6-percent of people read some form of fiction in 2022, down from 45.2-percent in 2012. The number has likely dropped since then.

Most of the fiction that people are reading are the crime and mystery genres. This information has me wondering what has become of the great literary tradition? Obviously we are spending more time online and getting our stories from Netflix, Hulu, HBO and other streaming sources.*

I guess you'd call me an "analog" guy. I like the touch and feel of paper, the typography and illustrations in ink. I probably read more stuff online today since printed newspapers are becoming obsolete. The draw of the online screen is strong and doubtless effecting how we absorb information and stories.

When, as a teenager, I first read J.D.Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, it opened up a whole new world to me. It helped me survive high school. I hadn't before heard a fellow teenager express such feelings of loneliness and personal insights. It was wonderful. I don't know if this kind of experience is possible with youngsters today; losing yourself in a book of words and thoughts and imagination.

As part of our entry to the University of California at Santa Barbara in fall of 1965, freshmen were asked to write an essay from a choice of topics. They included dissecting a sonnet; supporting or refuting capital punishment; comparing and contrasting two novels you had recently read.

I chose to compare and contrast two novels. They were The Stranger by Albert Camus and Lord of the Flies by William Golding, both of which I had read that summer.

I had no idea about what to say. I simply started writing my personal thoughts about the books. I do remember that I gave my essay the title: Who Are We? It got me into freshman English.

Rolling these thoughts through my aging brain got me thinking about the novels I’ve read.  I remembered scenes and characters but not how the stories ended: their final words.

In the interest of the legacy of our great authors and their work, I submit below the endings of a few great stories, most of which I have read. If there is a trend to these endings, it's the connection between the beginning of a great story and its ending, which is circular. 

What we find between the start and finish -- the gristle, meat and sweetness, along with the fear, hope and adventure -- is the essence of the story that makes us human. I wanted to know how these narratives ended. Surely we all want an ending.

Here are a few endings from the great literary catalog. Note: you can find them online just by asking. (I know, it's too easy.) For some, I did consult the books themselves.

 

"Oxen and wain-ropes would not bring me back again to that accursed island; and the worst dreams that ever I have are when I hear the surf booming about its coasts, or start upright in bed, with the sharp voice of Captain Flint still ringing in my ears: 'Pieces of eight! pieces of eight!" -- Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.

"After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain." A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway.

"He would be there all night. And he [Boo Radley] would be there when Jem waked up in the morning." -- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

"Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue. I have had my vision." To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

"So we beat on against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

"And I [Ishmael] only am escaped alone to tell thee." [A reference from the Book of Job, following the destruction of the Pequod by the whale.] Moby Dick by Herman Melville.

"For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate." The Stranger by Albert Camus

"Never was a story of more woe, than this of Juliet and her Romeo.” Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.

"it is accomplished!" [Spoken by Jesus dying on the cross after resisting the final temptation, signifying the completion of his earthly mission and sacrifice.] The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis.

"Poo-tee-weet." [The sound of a bird chirping that is repeated throughout, representing the absurdity of man's horrific destruction by war.] Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. 

"She looked up and across the barn, and her lips came together and smiled mysteriously." [Rose of Sharon smiles as she feeds a starving man her breastmilk.] The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody." The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.

*Note: Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye, Slaughterhouse-Five, Grapes of Wrath, The Great Gatsby, The Farewell to Arms and The Last Temptation of Christ have all been banned at one time or another in various school districts and libraries across the United States. The Stranger has not been banned, but has faced challenges and attempts at removal. The Lord of the Flies has been frequently challenged.

Let's Go to Mars!

If he hasn't already, I suggest that Elon Musk read The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury.  

Today under the genre of "speculative fiction," The Martian Chronicles is a series of short stories about Earth’s quest to inhabit Mars. It reads as a novel with chapters covering a series of expeditions to the planet during the turn of the 20th-21st century. The book came my way recently through a friend who had purchased a copy for his grandson who hasn't got around to reading it. So he lent it to me. 

First published in 1950, the Chronicles are eerie and provocative, fun and imaginative. I read them in college in an English Department Science Fiction class. Writer Ray Bradbury himself showed up in our class as a guest. That was a benefit of attending Cal State Fullerton in 1968. We were near the L.A. movie and television media hub. Several of my classes, as part of the new Communications major, featured guest professionals from the industry who opened themselves to discussion.

There were maybe 30 people in the small classroom and Bradbury enthusiastically entertained us with stories about creative and commercial writing. He had penned the screenplay for the movie, Moby Dick (1956), based on the classic novel by Herman Melville, starring Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab. 

He talked about his novel Fahrenheit 451, titled after the temperature at which a book will burn. He had checked his source on that. Published in 1953, "451” tells of a nation that rids itself of literature or anything else that might criticize or place the current government in a bad light. Sound familiar?

Coincidentally, my daughter Vanessa, a school administrator and teacher, is currently reading 451 with a student she is tutoring. “She’s very bright, only 12-years-old.”

I am impressed by the student’s age as well as the idea that  Bradbury’s stories continue to be read, especially today when we need to hear them, as a reminder of man’s dreams and mistakes.

Bradbury wrote his stories shortly following the atomic bombs that demolished Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Fear of nuclear war was real. The horrors of fascism were also fresh in the Western World.

A master of the English language, his prose soars. I found myself looking up word after word. Full of incessant screen time today, we are not embracing the power and depth of words as we once did. AI may further take us down the road of robotic thinking at a time when we need more imaginative trails to explore.

Which is the true power of Bradbury's work. In the SciFi world he was considered soft on science, but strong on poetic sensibilities and prescient thinking. 

Perhaps Musk did read The Martian Chronicles, and that's why he's so eager to exit Earth. But did he read enough to discover what happened on Mars? 

Gunspeak

High Noon (1952). See notes below.

A Smokin' Yarn from the New Old West.

An American pastime of elocution.

There was a time he figured he was a real hotshot,

A bigshot taking potshots at targets at too close range. 

But he learned he had to bite the bullet, after the smoking gun

Proved that he had shot himself in the foot.

Shoot, he had a hair trigger, mind blowing for sure

But when Kitty shot him down, he wanted to blow his brains out.

He had taken a scatter shot approach, a crap shoot, he confessed. He had rifled through her drawers half cocked. She wanted to put a gun to his head.

If there was a silver bullet, it was that he only got winged. He had faced a firing squad and maybe, just maybe, they had been shooting blanks.

He headed over to Max Patio for a couple of tequila shooters, the hard stuff,

Bullet proof. Savvy? By then, he was locked and loaded.

He was sure-shootin trigger happy again, but Max, being a straight shooter,

Told him he had a double-barreled problem. “Go shoot some hoops with Pistol Pete, Unload,” he advised. “No need to take up arms. Squeeze the trigger gently

Aim high… Shoot for the stars.”

Still he was confused, imagined himself in the middle of a cross-fire. His mind was blazing: Popping, whistling bullets, drop-dead strategies. All manner of 2nd amendment excuses.

He took note of a big-wave gun hanging on the wall behind the bar, said to himself: “I could surf that stick at Mavericks through a couple of barrels an’ explode out of the tube like a cannon ball.”

The photogs could shoot some frames and run em in a magazine. Shoot first, talk later, so to speak.

But that was a cowboy fantasy, a shoot ‘em up kind of deal, take no prisoners.

He remembered how that coward Mr. Howard had plugged Billy in the back.

Then from the juke box across the room he heard the soft lament, perhaps a snapshot 

of his future: “Take this gun away from me. I can’t use it anymore.”

This was no small-bore recrimination or blast of buckshot, but a bullet point on his resume. He looked that barkeep straight into his blood-shot eye.

His lips trembling with resolve, he fired away: “Set me up one last shooter, friend,” he said. “I’m not driving the Bronco tonight, I’m riding shotgun."

Fade to dusty road leading into town and a few dead bodies sprawled in front of the saloon. The moody Western twang of Tex Ritter breaks the silence... "Do not forsake me, oh my darlin'/Do not forsake me, oh my dar-lin/ /Although you're grievin/Don't think of leavin/Now that I need you by by side."

Wait along/ wait a-long, wait a-long.

Notes: I wrote this piece several years ago as a spoof, attempting to show, and discover for myself, how gun references have influenced our language. Looking for an image to go with it today, I landed on the picture of Gary Cooper, from a poster advertising the 1952  film High Noon, which created a controversy during the McCarthy Era of blacklisting communist sympathizers, many from the Hollywood film industry. The film is eerily relevant today.

There is very little violence in the movie, which is based on tension and suspense as the clock ticks. The movie unfolds in real time as small-town Marshall Will Kane (Gary Cooper) attempts to round up support to defend the town from released prisoner Frank Miller and his gang. Miller has vowed to kill Kane. Kane has just wed his beautiful wife, played by Grace Kelly. Miller is due to arrive in town on the train at high noon.

The townfolk act cowardly unwilling to help the Marshall. Actor John Wayne reportedly turned down the lead role because it seemed weak and unmanly, even un-American. Screenwriter Carl Foreman was  unable to find work following HUAC hearings led by Sen. Joseph McCarthy. The film explores themes of duty and courage and standing up for justice rather than succumbing to safety and convenience. We see the same behavior in today's Republican Party with members voting for their own self-preservation rather than the good of their greater communities. 

The political critics viewed the film as socialistic, emphasizing strength in community rather than the iconic individual Western hero. Produced by Stanley Kramer, known for socially conscious films like Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, High Noon won seven Oscars, including Best Actor, Best Screenplay, Best Director and Best Original Score: Do Not Forsake Me, written by Dimitri Tiomkin, sung by Tex Ritter, a favorite song of mine since I was very young.

"When [Marshall Kane] dies," says one character in the film, "the town dies too."