I don’t know where Hopalong Cassidy was born. I don’t even know if his creator, Clarence E. Mulford, ever gave Hoppy a past that included parents. But I do know that William Boyd, who portrayed the fictional cowboy in movies and on both TV and radio, was born in Hendrysburg, Ohio, and that once a year, the folks in nearby Cambridge, hold a festival bearing his name. This year, I was paying more attention than usual and managed to attend the festival for the first time.
One of the festival’s big attractions is the collectors exhibit. Virtually everything displayed is for sale but, as is typical, there is a lot more looking than buying. Movie posters, games and other toys, and just about everything else ever associated with the cowboy heroes of the middle third of the last century is in there somewhere.
Cowboy and girl look-alikes are another major attraction. They spent a good deal of time behind tables signing photographs but they could also be seen just walking around the festival. It was easy to imagine a rancher’s wife turning to her husband and asking “Who were those masked men?”
I was there on Saturday which was contest day. First up was the Little Buckaroo Contest. All four participants managed to win a trophy but most of the crowd would have probably been happy if every prize in the place had been awarded to the shy fellow in the second picture.
The look-alike contest was a little more serious but not much. When I saw the phrase “look alikes” on the festival schedule, I envisioned a town full of Hopalong Cassidys. That wasn’t the case at all and I believe that the only real duplication was two Lash Larues. This is a well organized and coordinated activity. There were two John Waynes but one was the eye-patch wearing Rooster Cogburn and the other represented Wayne from an earlier era. Two Lone Rangers marked a changing of the guard. The “blue” Ranger is retiring this year and was introducing the “red” Ranger who, in the future, will be the lone Lone Ranger. In my opinion, anyone who cannot identify the three hombres in the pictures had best stay away from festivals of this sort.
Getting all the contestants in a single picture wasn’t easy. That is an impressive line-up for sure. A panel of judges selected Lash Larue, Tonto, and the Lone Ranger as finalists then audience applause was used to select the winner. Maybe. All three rounds of applause sounded about the same to me and it’s just possible that first place was awarded to the Ranger partly for sentimental reasons. As I mentioned earlier, this is his last appearance and, although he promised he would be back at the festival next year, he will conceal his identity by not wearing a mask.
A third festival draw is this bevy of stars. That’s John Provost of Lassie, Roberta Shore and Don Quine of The Virginian, and Don Collier of High Chaparral in the group picture. Edd Byrnes of 77 Sunset Strip arrived shortly after the picture was taken. That’s John and Edd in the individual shots. Edd’s scheduled appearance got the most discussion when the festival came up a week or so ago. Friends wondered if the former Kookie still owned or needed a comb. I just take the pictures and leave it to others to decide if that hair is eighty years old and/or its natural color.
I don’t recall ever seeing a Hopalong Cassidy moving picture show in the theater but I was a big fan of the TV show. I remember having a Hopalong cap pistol and holster but my prized possession was a belt. It just now occurred to me that the belt and holster may have originally been a set but my memories are far too dim to say. The belt was black with a script “Hopalong Cassidy” and men on horses in white. I suspect that part of my belt focused favoritism was due to my being able to wear it full time whereas there were Mom defined limits on where I could tote a gun. The name and figures were merely printed on the black leather and were eventually rubbed away so the only a few flecks, none of which resembled a letter or a horse or much of anything else, were left. It was impossible to tell by looking that I accessorized my garb to honor Hoppy but I knew.
The belt’s buckle was stamped out of thin metal to imitate perfectly (I was certain) solid silver. It was always on my left side. Dad worked in a factory and wore his belt buckle on the side to keep it away from his work. I did the same for years and can’t remember when I stopped. I do remember one unintended result. On a visit to the big city (Greenville, Ohio, 2012 population 13,105), probably while Mom tended to my younger sister, I checked the light, looked both ways, and darted into the path of a turning car. It was moving slowly and stopped immediately but I was knocked to the ground. Mom, the driver, and everyone else in the area quickly clustered around me. A thorough examination revealed that my only “injury” was a red and slightly sore impression of the belt buckle on my side. Hopalong Cassidy saved my life.
My search for a picture with the belt came up empty so the best I can do is the shot of me with some sort of cowboy scene on my jacket. I’m not sure Hoppy would approve of the gaudy fringe but I know he would have liked the color.
Not only did I graduate from high school smack dab in in the middle of the ’60s, it was smack dab in the middle of the Henkalines, too. There were four of them; a girl and three boys. The girl was a few years older than the boys. The oldest boy graduated a year before me and the next a year after. Though I was most familiar with the two boys closest to me in age, I knew them all. It was a small school in a small town in rural Ohio. Everybody knew everybody.
Why in the world would a couple of newly weds buy a ten year old British sports car in the middle of winter? I am, at present, as baffled as anyone though I apparently once knew the answer to that question. A month or so after our 1966 Boxing Day wedding, my bride and I purchased a 1957 Austin-Healey 100-6. The one pictured is a 1958 model but looks pretty much like our ’57. This was not a play car to park next to a dependable sedan. This was our only car.
The 1959 Plymouth Fury at left is a dead ringer for the one I passed up to get the Austin-Healey. A rather spiffy ride, don’t you think? On one snowy night, my new wife and I were out with a friend in my borrowed car. The snow was not deep but the big Plymouth was not doing well on the slick streets. At one point, as we attempted to climb a slight incline, the friend and I got out to push while my wife took over driving. It did not take much to get the car moving but stopping to let us back in would have left the car stuck once again. Instead, my friend and I each grabbed a fin and “skied” alongside the Plymouth to the top of the hill.
On this day fifty years ago I was a high school junior. I do not even remember most of the day and some that I do remember is foggy and questionable. I remember some very small pieces all too well. I remember going to my chemistry class and taking a seat in the second or third row. It was the rightmost seat facing the teacher’s desk and the wall of blackboards. My memory is that the principal, Mr Pawlowski, entered before class actually started and gave us the news though it might have come from Mr Conrad, the instructor. In my memory, Mr Pawlowski quickly moved on to personally deliver his message in other classrooms so that every student heard the same version. It is logical and might indicate how important he thought the message — and its uniform delivery — was but I cannot be certain that my memory is accurate. The message was, of course, “The President has been shot.”
President John F Kennedy was officially pronounced dead at 1:00 PM CST; The same time as the posting of this article. The scan at left is of an introductory page of my high school’s 1964 yearbook. I imagine something similar appeared in the yearbooks of thousands of schools across the country. I believe the picture is a closely cropped version, with the background removed, of the official one at the beginning of this article.
Everyone loves a winner and, in 1794, the United States Army finally became one. In his earlier work, 
John A. Cozad, a.k.a. Frank Southern, eventually went back to his real first name and became, as Dr. John Southern, a well respected physician in Philadelphia. Robert Henry Cozad retained a slightly modified version of his Atlantic City alias and went on to great fame as an artist. His childhood home in the second town his dad founded is now the