in
1956 I was 12 and living in Ellenton, Florida. The hero of the time
was Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier. But the West had an
even earlier attraction for us boys as we loved to play cowboys and
Indians. There was an exhilaration in the play, a sense of wild and
unrestrained freedom as we chased each other about with sticks for
guns and Tomahawks. Now, at 12, I felt a little detached from
earlier childhood games, but the attraction of the frontier remained.
The Ballad of Davy Crockett even then had a nascent sense of
nostalgia – a sense of earlier days, days of exuberant innocence.
Yet, at the advanced age of 12, I could still don a coonskin cap and
gaze into an expansive future that promised achievement and even
renown. Today I appreciate the inevitable shading of romance by
heavy and indelible applications of reality. But in 1956 romance was
pure and simple and entirely believable. The Ballad of Davy Crockett
spoke to my boyhood yearnings for a pure and joyous future that would
imitate an unadulterated and glorious past.
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