Westerns

I do not watch westerns.

I am not a fan.

They were pure drudgery to endure back in the days before cable.  For as much as I hate to blame TV for the degradation of America, I can concede that when a crappy movie like a western was the only thing to watch I was clawing at the front door to run free like a dog needing to take a piss.  Lord help anyone in the vicinity if it was raining and I was stranded indoors.  Whine whine whine until I sought refuge in the pile of toys scattered on my bedroom floor.

And then I married the man from Oklahoma.

A man who likes westerns.

Especially John Wayne.

He's watched some of them so many damn times he can recite them.

Do you know what's worse than watching a movie you weren't interested in to begin with?  It's watching it with someone who can tell you the next line.  It makes one ponder the need to watch this movie yet again and maybe, perhaps, move on to greener pastures to movies not yet seen?

Surely I jest.

Now that I've seen ninety bajillion western movies in the past few years I've actually grown not to dismiss them quite so quickly.  They don't all suck.  They're not all formulaic.  And some, heaven forbid, are actually educational.

And then there was the one I watched yesterday, Drum Beat.  It piqued my interest somewhat from the opening credits as it claimed to be based on actual facts.  I watched it half-assed while playing on the computer like I do most everything (amazing my husband that I catch far more than you would expect - one of the most fantastic talents possessed by people with ADD) when I heard President Grant mention the Modocs.

Ahem

Modocs?  I know about Modoc Indians.  I grew up in Modoc country.  The arrowhead tucked deep in my jewelry box is surely Modoc.

Uh, that would be southern Oregon and very northern California.

Ooooh shit, now I have to pay attention.  So I google Modoc Indians because I still wasn't clear what  historical event this movie was portraying.  Well, my my my - there happened to be an actual "Modoc War" in 1873.  57 Indians against 1,000 calvary and it is the only Indian war where a general was killed in action.  WHO KNEW?

And I got to tell you, I've been through the Klamath County Museum plenty of times and do not remember a damn thing about the Modoc War.  Then again I was rather fascinated with the real live stage coaches and recreation of a one-room school house to be able to recount any of the wars detailed elsewhere in the facility.  The only Indian stuff that stands out in my memory were the scads of arrowheads.  By the way my awesome arrowhead did not come from the museum as I had not yet refined my kleptomania skillz (yo) at such a young age.  It actually came from a stream running through a ranch (an actual, up-and-running ranch with real live cows roaming around).  It is my firm opinion every child should go on a field trip to a ranch and get to grab up arrowheads as souveniers.  Stick that in your Gateway Arch and smoke it, St. Louis!

So eyes back on the TV screen.  Suddenly I turn into my mother who when watching any TV show filmed in the greater Los Angeles area (every damn one, by the way) would start to click off the street and intersection in question.  As a cruel joke my mosterous children should get me a GPS with my mother's voice.  Unfortunately I couldn't quite recite landmarks since they didn't film this Modoc War reenactment anywhere near the states of Oregon or Califor-NA-YAY.

See, the movie makers can get away with using one tiny plot of land for all of their wild west films because most audience members wouldn't know any different.  If you've seen one western landscape, you've seen 'em all.  And those of us who are actually from the area in question, well, hush, you're detracting from the movie when you point out that pile of dirt looks like it's from Arizona or Utah.  Who cares that it doesn't look like lava beds.

What the hell does a lava bed look like anyway?   OH MY GOD, DEFINITELY NOT LIKE THAT!

I'm pretty sure I'm the only kid on the face of the earth... well me and my brother... and then any poor sap that moved into the house after us... that had a "sand box" filled with jagged lava rocks.  RED jagged lava rocks.  I'm actually really sad I didn't keep one of the damn things - we brought them inside all the time only to get yelled at.  We would play in the rock box for hours trying to make roads, you know trying to use it like a sand box?  I'm sure it always ended up with us throwing rocks at each other.  We were loving like that.

But this fucked up childhood memory serves to make me an expert as to what a lava bed looks like.  And it is NOT smooth or sandy like what was portrayed in this Indian war as seen from the white perspective.   And you know what?  It had what is seen in every flipping movie of this genre - the same eroded rock steeples in the background.

Methinks a bigass studio owned or had rights to one certain plot of scenic desert.  I'll be stunned to discover if they also used the same sappy violin background music.