ROY WAS THE MORAL MAJORITY TO '50S KIDS.Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY Dennis McCarthy may refer to:
The consensus around my New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of neighborhood growing up was that Roy Rogers
Leonard Franklin Slye (November 5, 1911 – July 6, 1998), who became famous as Roy Rogers, was a singer and cowboy actor. was no Hopalong Cassidy
Hopalong Cassidy is a cowboy-hero, created in 1904 by Clarence E. Mulford and appearing in a series of popular stories and novels. , but he was still pretty cool for a TV cowboy. Great looking horse, pretty good looking wife, faithful dog, funny sidekick. A wonderful role model for all us Wonder Bread, bologna sandwich kids growing up in the lame, tame '50s. Roy never lost a fight, never fought dirty, never cussed or spit and was always respectful to women. In other words Adv. 1. in other words - otherwise stated; "in other words, we are broke" put differently , the exact opposite of today's TV role models. No wonder our parents didn't squawk much when we asked to leave the dinner table early Sunday nights to go watch his show in the living room - sitting cross-legged in front of our 13-inch black and white TV sets, our noses six inches from the screen. Roy was our moral majority before we knew we even had or needed one. In '54, when Swanson's introduced the greatest invention known to mankind - frozen TV dinners - Roy did more for sales than anything the Madison Avenue Madison Avenue, celebrated street of Manhattan, borough of New York City. It runs from Madison Square (23d St.) to the Madison Bridge over the Harlem River (138th St.). In the 1940s and 50s, some of the major U.S. ad whizzes could come up with to sell frozen turkey, mashed potatoes n. pl. 1. Potatoes which have been boiled and mashed to a pulpy consistency, usu. with sparing addition of milk, salt, butter, or other flavoring. It is a popular accompaniment to a meat course [U.S., 1900's], providing bulk and calories to a meal. and peas. Every kid in the country worth his spurs was sitting behind a TV tray in the living room Sunday night watching Roy, Trigger and Bullet chase the bad guys down the same dusty trail and around the same big rock week after week for six years. No, the only rap the guys in my neighborhood had against Roy was his singing. We thought it was, well, kind of lame. Maybe out in California it wasn't considered weird for a cowboy riding the trails to all of a sudden break into song with a full orchestra behind him, but in the Bronx it was thought to be a tad suspicious. Not until ``West Side Story'' came along in the '60s did we buy into the idea that a real man could fight, sing and dance all at the same time. In the '50s, it was still considered abnormal behavior. That's why the guys liked Hoppy more. Hoppy didn't ride down the trail singing after beating up the bad guys. He hit the nearest saloon for a sarsaparilla sarsaparilla (särs'pərĭl`ə, săs'–), common name for various plants belonging to two different classes and also for an extract from their roots, formerly much used in medicine and in beverages. . Until, of course, he got that milk commercial. Then, he had to switch to milk whenever kids were around. When they weren't, Hoppy went back to scotch. When Roy finally bumped Hoppy off NBC NBC in full National Broadcasting Co. Major U.S. commercial broadcasting company. It was formed in 1926 by RCA Corp., General Electric Co. (GE), and Westinghouse and was the first U.S. company to operate a broadcast network. on Sunday nights back in late 1951, all the kids in the neighborhood were pretty sore about it, but the grudge didn't last long. It couldn't. We didn't have a lot of available options to leave the dinner table early. It was either go watch Roy and his wholesome show, or sit and eat the Spam and peas. Before you knew it, Hoppy was a memory, and Roy was our guy - the new hero in town. We weren't thrilled with the idea that he had a wife, though, because Dale was cutting into the fight and shoot'em-up scenes with her bad singing. But Trigger and Bullet were cool. Pretty soon, our moms fell in line, and bought us the new Roy Rogers lunch pail and Thermos to take to school, but the writing was already on the wall. Things were changing. Mainly, our voices. A few years later, Roy's lunch pail wound up in the closet with Hoppy's gun belt and Davy Crockett's coonskin hat. The era of the TV cowboy was coming to an end as the '50s faded, and its biggest stars like Roy, Gene Autry and William Boyd (Hoppy) rode off into the sunset - millionaires. The little cowpokes they left behind in front of their TV sets moved on to the '60s to become flower children, reluctant soldiers, professional college students and draft dodgers. I don't know Don't know (DK, DKed) "Don't know the trade." A Street expression used whenever one party lacks knowledge of a trade or receives conflicting instructions from the other party. - maybe it was all those TV dinners. These days, most of us still kicking are into retirement planning, and our kids and grandkids are into things on TV that we don't understand, and scare the hell out of us. We haven't thought about old Roy for awhile, except maybe when we see Dale on one of those religious cable TV shows still singing and trying to lead us down the righteous path. Once in a while, she'd drag Roy along. A couple of years ago, on my way to Las Vegas, I was tempted to take a little side trip down Happy Trails, and stop by that museum Roy and Dale opened out in Victorville. The place is supposed to be loaded with memorabilia from their TV and movie westerns, but I wasn't in the mood to see Trigger, Bullet and Dale's old horse, Buttermilk buttermilk residual fluid after removal of fat from milk in butter manufacture; a protein-rich supplement fed to pigs. , stuffed and on display. Hoppy would never have done that to Topper Topper house he purchases is haunted by the young couple who owned it previously and their dog. [Am. Lit., Cin., TV: Topper in Halliwell, 718] See : Ghost Topper Hopalong Cassidy’s faithful horse. . You don't think now that Roy's gone, he'll be . . . Nah, no way. |
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