GUNSMOKE REVISITED

GUNSMOKE REVISITED

It's funny what things stick in your mind from childhood. The images lie undiscovered, like mementos in an old trunk, until someone or something triggers the mechanism that opens the trunk and sheds light on the old memories that have been stored there these many years.

I don't remember how many times I watched James Arness, in the guise of Marshall Matt Dillon, walk down the streets of 19th century Dodge City and draw his six shooter to gun down an evil varmint. It seems like he out drew half the population of the old west during his weekly visits to our living room on Seneca Parkside Street in South Buffalo, N.Y.

Then, he and Amanda Blake, as Longbranch saloon owner "Kitty, would have their weekly conversation either before or after someone got beat up or shot in the saloon.

Milburn Stone, as "Doc, would be summoned by a limping "Chester,who always seemed to be in a hurry to get someplace or do something. When he wasn't running for the Doc, or working as a blacksmith,Chester was urgently seeking the Marshall to deal with some serious problem or malfactor.In a series of plaintive wails, Chester would call out "Mister Dillon, "Mister Dillon!. Dennis Weaver never really shed the "Chester image until much later in his career, when he assumed the "McQuaid persona in another television series.Folks just naturally wanted him to be the "Chester that they let into their living rooms every week. Why would Dennis ever want to be "McQuaid when he was the Chester that they had known for so many years? Ditto for the rest of the cast.

The plots,when there was one, were never very complicated. The good guy shot the bad guy and then won the girl or the horse, in a classic "oater that was to become part of our American folklore.

I have glimpsed, on occasion, the "gunsmoke series on a cable channel that carries old syndicated television series from time to time. Matt Dillon,Kitty,Doc and Chester still play out their roles, just as I remember them from so long ago. The streets of Dodge City seem a little smaller and the dialogue a little simpler than I remember them. But, the series still has the same elemental appeal that attracted me so many years ago. The good guy shoots the bad guy and get the girl or the horse. If only real life were so simple and the outcome so predictable.

Joseph X. Martin