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About This Author
My name is Joy, and I love to write.
Why poetry, here? Because poetry uplifts its writer, and if she is lucky enough, her readers, too. Around us, so many objects abound to write about. Once a poet starts with a smallest, most trivial object, he shall discover that his pen will spill out what is most delicate or most majestic hidden inside him. Since the classics sometimes dealt with lofty subjects with a lofty language, a person with poetry in his soul may incline to emulate that. That is understandable. Poetry does that to a person: it enlarges the soul and gives it wings. Yet, to really soar, a poet needs to take off from the ground.
 
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Daily Cascade #1097227 added September 12, 2025 at 3:00pm
Restrictions: None
No Such Thing as Yours Truly and the Westerns
Prompt:
"After nearly 40 years of riding across millions of American TV and movie screens, the cowboy actor William Boyd, best known for his role as Hopalong Cassidy, dies on September 12, 1972 at the age of 77. By 1959, seven of the top-10 shows on national television were westerns like The Rifleman, Rawhide, and Maverick. The golden era of the TV western would finally come to an end in 1975 when the long-running Gunsmoke left the air, three years after Boyd rode off into his last sunset."
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/september-12/hopalong-cassidy-rides-...
Prompt: Are your familiar with Hopalong Cassidy? If not, what westerns have you seen or read? Have you tried your hand at writing westerns?
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How could I have tried my hand at writing westerns when I did not like westerns in the first place!
Having said that, however, not all westerns are full of big talk, thrashy plots, and womanizing self-important men. There were a few I ended up watching because I am old and there was no escape from them in my earlier years, and also, my mother was a fan of the westerns.
My mother loved Clark Gable. Well, who didn't! She loved especially the movie Boom Town (1940). I still remember her talking about Spencer Tracy, Claudette Colbert, and Hedy Lamarr. Of those three artists, I can only remember and admire Spencer Tracy's work, but not necessarily in westerns. Then, Clark Gable also was in Lone Star with Ava Gardner, and I did like Ava Gardner, too. I can't remember Clark's third one, The Tall Men, although I can almost swear I must have seen it, maybe even several times. For, in those days, it was the movie theaters only, which showed these things and my mother did go to the matinees with her friends or my aunt when I was in school, but she also took me to several of those during the weekends.
To this day, I can't believe she could watch the same thing over and over and over. But then, she was a romantic with her head in the clouds. And for her, there was Humphrey Bogart, too, with the Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I liked Bogart in other movies but I can't remember if I watched the Sierra Madre movie, though I must have.
As to Hopalong Cassidy, I can only recall a tiny bit of those shows. I am not too sure if they were on the radio or movie theaters. I know he wore black and had a horse, Topper, and his image was on the lunchbox of a schoolfriend or two. Maybe I even saw him on a few cartoons, much later, but I am not so sure. He was supposed to be a clean-living cowboy who fought for justice.
Oh, I almost forgot. I liked Clint Eastwood in Once Upon a Time in the West. At the time, I was pregnant with our older son. Then, in those days, was the series on TV “Lonesome Dove,” which neither my husband nor I watched but we heard friends talk about it to no end.
As to, Once Upon a Time in the West I found this note on the internet:
"This isn’t your classic Leone-Eastwood Spaghetti Western. A quirky, fast-paced style is swapped for something slower and more somber. The results are spectacular. When other filmmakers try to parody Western films, they often mimic this film. Turns out mimicry is a form of flattery. Watch “Once Upon a Time in The West” if you’re looking for tension, action, and some grade-A cowboy bad boys."
For this movie, the year was 1978 and I had two small rambunctious boys, then, and I could pay no attention to cowboys and the movies about them. I had my own two wild ones to run after.
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