It was back in the days when every little boy in America owned a toy six-gun and our national character was formed in half-hour TV episodes featuring taciturn deadly loners who spent most of their lives riding horses from one dusty cowtown to another and never saw a problem that couldn’t be solved with a little high velocity lead-poisoning.
I was just five or six years old, with two older brothers. We watched all the TV Westerns.
But our favorite Western, mine and my brothers, was Gunsmoke, featuring James Arness as Marshal Matt Dillon.
Marshal Dillon’s signature in the teaser for every show was the shoot-out in the street– the fast-draw duel at high noon– something that probably never happened in the historical Old West.
When I was a kid, just like Marshal Dillon, each of us boys carried a six-shooter– a “Fanner Fifty,” so named because you could fan the hammer with your left hand while firing with your right, just like Marshal Dillon did on TV.
That day we were playing Rustler and Marshal. I was the rustler, and my brothers, Matt Dillon and his sidekick, had captured me red-handed on the open range, unstrapped my gunbelt, and, in the interests of frontier justice, were about to lynch me. They herded me at gunpoint into the backyard, where my mom had strung her clothesline between four metal posts concreted into the ground. One of them grabbed a picnic bench and set it under the pole.
My other brother unlooped the spare clothesline and fashioned a hangman’s noose (to this day I have no idea where he learned to tie one—surely not in Sister Marie Michael’s third grade class). I stepped up onto the bench, manfully resigned to my fate. I was a dirty scoundrel, a rustling outlaw and a dry-gulcher, a tin-horn and a big galoot.
They looped the noose over my neck and tightened it.
At some level, I must have understood that it was a real rope knotted around my neck, that once I was flailing around, a couple of feet off the ground, it would strangle the life out of me, and my brothers would not be strong enough to lift my body high enough to save me. But it didn’t seem real, you know? The way the Fanner Fifties didn’t seem quite real. It was TV stuff. We knew the actors didn’t really die each week. Sometimes the same bad guy would show up episode after episode, each time playing a different part.
I stood on the picnic bench, the clothesline noose tightly knotted around my throat, and my brothers asked me if I had any last words. Just as they were about to kick over the bench and set me swinging, I heard a scream from next door– Mrs. Watson. We all froze in place. She came flying out her back door and ran to my side, quickly undid the rope and helped me down. “Don’t you boys know better than to hang your brother?” she asked, or words to that effect. Probably she was screeching incoherently, like my mother would have had she seen our little horse opera unfolding. I just remember she was angry and utterly unnerved, while we really didn’t see what all the fuss was about.
As one of my brothers explained, “It’s okay– it was my turn next.”
—
Philip Gerard is the author of three novels, four books of creative nonfiction, and numerous essays, short stories, and documentary scripts. His book of essays The Patron Saint of Dreams is forthcoming from Hub City Press in March 2012, and in Fall 2012 his long narrative River Run: Adventuring through History, Nature, and Politics Down the Cape Fear to the Sea will be published by UNC Press. He chairs the Department of Creative Writing at UNC Wilmington.
Photo by Maria Romasco-Moore
1 comment
Rejean jackson says:
Sep 17, 2019
In the first story salvation three main points i wanna point out is how in the beginning it was langston first time in a church he was escorted to the front of the church on the front row and he was placed on the mourners bench with all the other young sinner children who it was there first time in church sat. langston aunt told him that when he get saved he is going to see a light and something happend to you that you fell change and that you will fill jesus in your soul langston believed her because he heard lots of old people say it so he believed her even though it was a lie
MY SECOND point is that his aunt told him that he would see jesus so he sat in the church waiting to see jesus the preacher preached a wonderful rhythmical sermon all moans and shouts and lonely cries and dire pictures of hell the preacher should have took his time and try to gain there trust work with them and talk to them about god but not to scare theme off because they might not come back or go to another church again all because of there experience from the last church.
MY THIRD POINT is a lamb left out in the cold then he said wont you come and he healed out his arm to all the young sinners there on the mourners bench and the little girls started to cry and some of them jumped up and went right away langston and westly where sitting on the front row and they where souronded by men and women praying for them and westly said to langston damn im tired of sitting here lets get up and get saved than it just left langston alone and every one prayed for him alone than he got saved.that night his aunt heard him crying and told his uncle that he is crying because he have the holy gost and that he seen god but he was really crying about how he lied to the by saying he seen jesus.
point one of hang em high they were like any other little kids they wanted to be like TV Westerns and play with toy six-gun like all the other kids I was just five or six years old, with two older brothers. We watched all the TV Westerns.
But our favorite Western, mine and my brothers, was Gunsmoke, featuring James Arness as Marshal Matt Dillon.
Marshal Dillon’s signature in the teaser for every show was the shoot-out in the street– the fast-draw duel at high noon– something that probably never happened in the historical Old West.
they loved the old west
point two just like Marshal Dillon, each of us boys carried a six-shooter– a “Fanner Fifty,” so named because you could fan the hammer with your left hand while firing with your right, just like Marshal Dillon did on TV thay just wanted to be cool and kids so they played like they were the people they seen on tv
point three I stood on the picnic bench, the clothesline noose tightly knotted around my throat, and my brothers asked me if I had any last words. Just as they were about to kick over the bench and set me swinging, I heard a scream from next door– Mrs. Watson. We all froze in place. She came flying out her back door and ran to my side, quickly undid the rope and helped me down. “Don’t you boys know better than to hang your brother?” she asked, or words to that effect. Probably she was screeching incoherently, like my mother would have had she seen our little horse opera unfolding. I just remember she was angry and utterly unnerved, while we really didn’t see what all the fuss was about.As one of my brothers explained, “It’s okay– it was my turn next.”
why did the other boy say he was next to get hanged and im glad the lady helped them from next door