What is it with old guys and old Western movies?

 

Answer: We like 'em.

Back in the day with John Wayne, Alan Ladd, Robert Taylor, Kirk Douglas, Henry Fonda, and James Stewart...well, you get the idea. For my young readers (surprisingly, there may be a few) the silver screen was full of good guys with white hats and bad guys with black hats. The cowboy heroes roamed the western trail and kept us wide-eyed and bushy-tailed for the better part of two hours.

None better than Alan Ladd as Shane. The movie was released in 1953. I was eight years old and just returned home from Tombstone, Arizona with my parents. It was quite a day. Somehow I had left my parents in the dust that day and moseyed into a saloon on the streets of Tombstone. I banged my head on one of the saloon doors but continued on. At the bar was a gunslinger dressed in black. He turned. I turned. He drew first and I escaped through the saloon doors and ran as fast as I could in search of my parents.

Alan Ladd made it look so easy.