Watching "Longmire"

As a kid growing up born just after the war in 1945, Westerns on radio and in the movies ruled the day. I can remember hearing episodes of "Gunsmoke" on my Grandmothers huge old vacuum tube radio. It sat in the dining room but it could be heard throughout the house. It was a grand old radio, 4 ft. high, that I wish I had today. It had huge vacuum tubes and I can remember going with my grandfather to buy new ones. Boy, have times changed! The Western, designed, if you will, brought new fare for a victorious America using Westerns as a metaphor for the defeat of the Germans, Italians and Japanese ... and sadly Native Americans.

Deputies Ferguson, Victoria, Sheriff Longmire and Deputy Branch

      We had one of the first TV's in our neighborhood and Saturday mornings were spent watching, serials, "The Lone Ranger," "Sky King" a cowboy who flew a plane, and during the week "Have Gun Will Travel," "Gunsmoke," Bonanza," and "Paladin," all cowboy serials that ran on TV for years.

     My friends and I all sported cowboy chaps, hats, and holstered toy pistols that fired caps. The cowboy character in TOY STORY is dressed exactly the way we dressed after school or on weekends. We all knew bad cowboys wore black hats, the good cowboys wore white. In fact my mother adored the actor Alan Ladd famous for the movie SHANE and that is where I got my name, Alan.

     Then came the 60's and 70's and space, peace and love and silly comedies ruled the airways. Westerns generally disappeared though maybe there would be a breakthrough but as a popular TV fare cowboys "bit the dust!" When STAR WARS came out in 1977 many noted that cowboy clothes had been replaced with space suits ... different garb but the same plots; good vs. evil.

     Now in the 21st Century it seems that what was old is new again. "Magnum P.I.," "Roseanne,' 'Will & Grace,""Dynasty," the list goes on and on. There is even another A STAR IS BORN!

     Ironically, a Gay movie, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, a short story by Anne Proulx may have kickstarted an interest in Westerns. BROKEBACK was one of a series of stories in her two short story books, CLOSE RANGE and BAD DIRT, that chronicled the lives of those living, working and visiting Wyoming in the late 20th century. One story followed another as you met and would meet again the lives of farmers, truck stop waitresses, Easterners trying to live a western dream and ranch hands struggling to live in a beautiful yet desolate land. Here the old West met the new and whites had to contend with the Indians they displaced.

     I spent several weeks a few summers ago literally driving around Wyoming and was struck at how big it was, how beautiful and how empty.

     It was while catching up on the Netflix series "Gracie & Frankie" that Frankie in breaking up with her new beau asked if he and the new woman he was seeing were binge watching "Longmire?" He said he had been watching it with her but was lonely as he wanted to live in Santa Fe and she wanted to stay in California. Not knowing what "Longmire" was I decided to look it up.

At the Red Pony Saloon

     All it took was one episode of "Longmire" to realize I was hooked. Based on the stories of Craig Johnson, memories of my childhood "westerns" returned, memories of good and evil where good won was now transformed into todays Wyoming I had read about and seen and it's struggling sheriff and its inhabitants with conflicts that mirrored our own as a nation in crisis.

     It starts with a grieving sheriff whose wife died a year ago, the conflict with the neighboring Indian Reservation where the white sheriff arrested the Indian Sheriff for corruption and both sides are estranged from each other. Of course they must work together but this conflict mirrors so many of the conflicts we see in local, state, and federal governments. To add to the tension one of the deputies is challenging the sheriff in an election while they both have to work together.

Acting Reservation Chief Mathias

   In "Longmire" we clearly see the conflicts between shall we say the Wyoming County of Absaroka and the Cheyanne nation next door. There are other Indian reservations as well. One source of conflict is the new Indian Casino trying to be built.

     There is no love lost between the sides. Cheyennes came from the east coast having tried to assimilate their heritage to the new European model. However, their land was too valuable to plantation owners and they were evicted by President Jackson to the west during the infamous "Trail of Tears" nearly 200 years ago. Indians angry at how the federal government has treated them for centuries with whites still hungering and wanting more. Wyoming, even today, is a mirror of old cowboy days.

    So the stage is set. Even in the hinterlands you have greed, corruption, oil drilling, gambling, drunks, rustling, PTSD, anti-government whites, and more. You meet, as Clint Eastwood did in his spaghetti Westerns, the good, the bad and the ugly.

     Sheriff Longmire is the kind of hero we all want ... wise, calm, amazingly well read, able to delegate and both sooth and accuse when the situation demands. We soon discover there is no clearcut right and wrong. The guilty often escape and it is only through Native American enforcers that the Cheyenne feel vindicated. You see the best and the worse in both sides.

Rainier Beer! The Sheriff's only beer fit to drink!

The question remains however, what is right, what is wrong. Taking a life is wrong ... is wrong unless it addresses a wrong. Or does it? Whose sense of justice is right? Is fair?

     History is written by the winners. It has been since the beginning of time. However, during the past 20 or so years, historians have been studying the records of both the winners and the losers and what they see is often different than what we were taught as children. I remember being told the Americas were nearly empty and ripe for the plucking of the Europeans. Now we realize the Americas were home to 50 - 75 million people; maybe more than all of Europe. They were decimated by diseases they had no immunity to brought by the explorers. What is now Mexico City was a huge civilized city filled with over 1 million citizens that even the Spanish explorers admitted was finer than any city in Europe.

     The same can be said for much of the world the Europeans discovered. They brought with them disease that killed millions. The Black Death of the 1300's which decimated 30 -50% of Europe with disease brought from Asia can be considered just revenge. However, no one understood the cause while entire regions were stripped of all human life.

     "Longmire" is good escapist fare but with closer inspection has been designed to inspire closer contemplation. Who is right? Who is wrong? Can both sides learn and benefit from the lessons they can teach each other? Only time will tell us the answer but I am glad that I have watched this and can consider the questions it raises. This is script writing at its best.

Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where my emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed! 

Be sure to check my ETSY store ... KrugsStudio.etsy.com. I am adding many new and exciting, collectible birdhouses and craft items. Many of the items talked about here will be for sale there!