John Wayne and Grandpa

 I was always fascinated by John Wayne. I’m not sure if it was his self confidence, his perceived ability to control his environment or the shear fact that when you watched him on the big screen, he seemed invincible, He was ten feet tall, when I went to see him at the Saturday matinee, at 11 years old. John didn’t need super powers, phasers or steroids to make this boy admire him, he had “swagger”, The dictionary defines swagger as to “walk with a defiant or insolent air”, That was John Wayne, but I think even more important than all that, was his commitment to his personal values, and it showed on screen. Now I’m not sure how much of his screen persona and his personal life collided, but I do feel qualified to comment on how a regular guy’s public and private life collides from time to time. As a man you’re told, “never let’ em see you sweat”, you hardly ever saw Big John sweat, even when facing gangs of assorted gun slingers, hell I sweat waiting to see my restaurant tab.

   There was another person that gave me that same feeling of self confidence, that control over my environment and destiny, that swagger if you will. He wasn’t tall like John Wayne, he didn’t have Mr. Wayne’s distinctive “dog walk”, and in fact he was of average height, slim build, relatively soft spoken, and had kind of an Errol Flynn thing going, mustache and all. Some of the things I admired were, like Mr. Wayne, he took shit from no one and lived by his own personal code. A personal program that some men of an earlier time developed and honed, a lifestyle that I don’t see much of today. Work hard, make your own rules when possible, take care of your own, and my favorite, “play hard”. And play he did. He was infamous for his female dalliances in the small town where he lived, even the minister alluded to it, at his eulogy. Hell he died at eighty nine years old; no one was left to get pissed off or bring up the past, concubine, jilted husband or lover alike, he outlived them all. I remember him telling me wild tales of his exploits, never once doubting them as being gospel; he taught me how to hunt, fish and set an example for living my life on my own terms. Sometimes I feel badly that my sons never knew him. I didn’t agree with everything he stood for, but I smile whenever a John Wayne movie comes on because I knew a John Wayne that wasn’t an actor.