(Settle back. Relax. This is a long one…)

Remember him?

The wagon master on WAGON TRAIN.

Brawny, barrel-chested, wise, jovial…

everybody’s Grand Daddy,

a kindly, mobile mountain of a man.

Ward Bond was the actors name.

Came up in the John Wayne

masculine-muscle age of Hollywood.

But even he needed John Wayne to be Horatio to.

John Wayne’s sergeant major…

John Wayne’s Irish Catholic priest

who bet on Wayne To Win

the fist-fight brawl

against Victor Macloughlyn

in THE QUIET MAN.

And once Wayne rode off into the sunset,

forever,

as Davy Crockett at The Alamo

with a Mexican spear in his gut,

or as the tough Marine Sargent in The Sands of Iwo Jima,

Bond went on to lead wagon trains in a TV Western

and train-up his ram-rod, Clint McCullah

played by Robert Horton,

who always got to kiss the girl

and, after, mount – his horse

and Bond would yell, “Wagons Ho!”

and off they’d go,

Westward to somewhere’s else….

But the oxygen was seeping away as Wayne was aging.

He couldn’t even beat-up William Holden

in THE HORSE SOLGIERS,

(So-long, section hand!)

although Wayne got to kiss Constance Tower’s

Southern Belle,

blonde, buxom and pliable…

and leave her behind,

believing he’d be back

after he’d won the Civil War.

And it seems we’ve all been waiting.

Well,

at least some 50-plus-percent of us’ve been waiting,

Ward Bond,

Maureen O’Hara, (Wayne’s Irish spit-fire-wife in THE QUIET MAN),

Robert Horton

and millions of voter-viewers,

watching the show,

all waiting to sniff the scent

of gun powder, testosterone and napalm in the morning

in A MAN (!)

who will takes up the whole sidewalk,

shove aside or slap leather with the bad guys

he meets on the trail

so he can swagger his way into the next dust-up

with a Winchester strapped to his saddle,

a Colt 45 in his holster,

a pretty lady hanging on his arm

and a posse of believers

movin’-on- West with him…

So,

we had an election yesterday.

A modern-version-reincarnation of John Wayne

won

and all us wanna-be’s

wagon masters, southern-belle’s and ram-rods

Hip-Hip-Hurrahed him into the White House

again

and circled the wagons,

ready for the next immigrant attack.

So.

I guess it’s gonna take a little longer

to remember that John Wayne died,

finally,

as Rooster Cogburne did,

holding the reins in his teeth

in a blaze of gunfire, gore and glory.

And for all of us to remember

a myth is a myth because it’s a

MYTH

that defined us – long ago

The Way We Were,

and that,

sooner or later,

must change

and that

sooner or later

it’s going to be

“MADAM PRESIDENT…”

and, Oh! Yes!

Her Husband!

When the wagon train is far beyond the horizon,

too far gone to mean anything more to us

than a B-rated movie on a Saturday night.

To mean anything to us,

at all!

Those dusty old conestoga’s

lost in the pink clouds

of a fading Western sunset.