Friday, July 19,2013.
Breakfast Foursome. The Lone Ranger.
It's one of those rare days in which not only is every member of our family in residence at the Cool Water Ranch, but everybody was up early enough that we would make it to breakfast before the eleven o'clock cut-off time for pancakes at Mattina Bella. This was especially surprising, given that all four of us were up very late last night for the big radio show anniversary dinner at Commander's Palace.
The reason for the early rising is clear. Two days ago, the upstairs air conditioning system went out. It has been raining so much that the house wasn't all that hot, but it was warm enough to make everybody but me complain. (I'm the only one who sleeps downstairs anymore.)
The Marys and Jude went off for the day, and I carried on with my usual routines of writing and radio. But Jude, who is flying back to Los Angeles tomorrow, has an idea for the two of us for this evening: to see the new Lone Ranger movie.
The Lone Ranger looms large in my consciousness--at least for a comparatively ancient character. He first appeared in the 1930s, and hasn't had a very high profile since the 1960s. But that was enough for me to have been an excited juvenile viewer of the black-and-white television show. And, many years later, when I began collecting old radio shows from the Golden Age of radio drama, I listened to hundreds of episodes of the Lone Ranger on my way home across the Causeway. A lot to listen to: the Lone Ranger was on the radio with a half-hour show three times a week for over twenty years. The timing was such that when I reached the north end of the Causeway, this inevitable conversation was almost always going on:
"Who was that masked man?"
"Why, don't you know? That was. . . the Lone Ranger!"
(From a distance) "Hi-yo Silver! Away!" (William Tell Overture up and over.)
That always sent a frisson of excitement up my spine. I still think of the Lone Ranger when I reach that spot on the bridge.
Jude was interested not only because he's in the movie business (and this was a very big production), but also because he had listened to many radio episodes of the Lone Ranger when he was a kid, and he and I were out and about.
If you have anything like a similar memory of the Lone Ranger, do not see this movie. It will infuriate you. In it, the Lone Ranger is portrayed for laughs, bungling up almost everything he touches. Worse, Tonto is played for a clown. The only whiff of the old legend of the Lone Ranger that made it past the misguided writers and directors was the William Tell Overture. This is not the Lone Ranger I knew. Not my kimosabe. Boooooo!
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