Movies

As I was hurrying through the wide aisles of our local Wal-Mart looking for my wife, who as usual was far ahead of me [ I had stopped to look at the fishing gear], I came upon a large wire bin full of DVDs at very low prices. As I hurried past one in particular caught my eye. It was a two disc package of eight westerns for $5.50, now how could I resist a bargain like that. It was a little tough to get to because it was about five layers down in the jumble of discs and when your riding one of the stores' electric scooters it's a little hard to get to anything that isn't readily available. I was on the scooter because I can no longer walk very far without feeling tremendous pain from a bad hip and Peripheral Arterial Disease [PAD]. Nethertheless almost anything is possible when the goal is something to be treasured.

And for a person my age, who watched western movies almost every Saturday at the local movie theater [a little over one block from my house] when I was a kid, eight westerns in one package is indeed a treasure. The movies in this package are: SAVAGE GUNS, THE SUNDOWNERS, THE GATLING GUN, THE BUSHWACKERS, WHITE COMANCHE, KENTUCKY RIFLES, BELLS OF SAN ANGELO and GREAT AMERICAN WEST-DOCUMENTARY.Actually, all of these movies except one were made after I was sixteen years old and it starred Roy Rogers. Which one of the eight starred Roy Rogers? You guessed it, BELLS OF SAN ANGELO. Which one was the movie I watched first? You guessed it, the one starring Roy Rogers, made in 1947. It is a typical Rogers formula movie and I enjoyed every minute of the 75 miutes it took to watch it.

As I began writing this, it occured to me that western movies aren't the only type no longer found in today's movie theaters. One other type that's missing is the romantic comedy, Mr. and Mrs. North and the Thin Man come to mind. Nor are there many Pivate Eye movies to be seen today. Musicals also seem to be missing. Why have all these types disappeared? It can't be because of Television which gets blamed for just about everything, because few TV shows cover these subject matters.

Perhaps one other type that's missing, except for a few, can be blamed on television, the war movie. During World War II there were hundreds of movies set in the war that only lasted four years.The so-called war on terror and now the war in Iraq have lasted somewhat longer and very few movies have featured the war in Iraq. Of course most of the TV coverage of the war in Iraq is fiction, so who needs movies. Beyond that, I think that the American public doesn't want to legitimize an illegal war by paying to see something that it abhors and that the Congress that it recently elected seems to be too timid to stop.

I started out to write an article for the Life_Arts_Science category and it got away from me and I ended up with an OpEd piece because this illegal war so dominates our everyday life. Can you go an hour or two without thinking about it? I can't. I, like just about everyone else, support our troops and want them brought home safely, now.