Think It Through

I enjoy a good 'Western' movie. I often checkout the Saturday morning movie channels for those Western flicks. Just last Saturday, I watched the movie, 'Un-forgiven' and the week before I watched 'Rio Bravo' for the seventh time. Actually, I don't refer to these films as Westerns, I call them 'Cowboy movies.' As a kid growing up in East St. Louis, I would join a couple friends on Saturday mornings and go downtown on Collinsville Avenue to the Avenue Theater and watch a 'cowboy double-feature;' the cost in 1951, was nine cents.


There is a common 'honor-theme' in many cowboy movies: A fella must be armed and a willing participant in those street gun fights.    I am not positive about our present day cowboy engagement rules. Don't you think for a moment that we are NOT still cowboys. BET YOUR SPURS WE ARE!! We love our guns.


 My own State of Illinois has passed the conceal & carry law. This means that my wife and I can be certain that when we shop at the Mall, dine at any restaurant or attend the movies, somebody near us IS carrying a loaded gun. I just hope the bastard is having a good day and nobody crosses his path!


I wish our legislators would go the next step and enact laws requiring all gun confrontations to 'go outside' in the streets as was protocol in the Old West; damn it I wish to finish meals and watch the end of the movie without some idiot shooting another fella seated near me because the guy will not stop texting. Of course any gun-killing that happens in Florida these days finds the potential to receive a '
go by jail card based on the Sunshine State's "Stand Your Ground Law. I like the sound of that; sounds cowboy to me, 'Hey cowboy, STAND YOUR GROUND!'


I recall sitting in the Avenue Theater, back in 1951and imaging what it might have been like, living in the old gun-slinging West; I believe that I will soon find out.