Telling Time with Roy and Dale

Any American kid raised during the 1950s knows about Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. It's probably one reason some of us hold a secret love for westerns and horses.

analog clock showing four o'clock

The Western Heritage Days in Genoa, NV started about a decade ago as the Genoa Cowboy Poetry Festival, featuring poets and musicians, art and food vendors, historical re-enactments, demonstrations of ranch skills, and a pavilion dedicated to Nevada's tribes: Shoshone, Washoe, and Paiute.

Many of these activities have been dropped from the schedule. This year's leaner festival drew smaller crowds, but that made for a more enjoyable and manageable event. It was more casual, friendlier, and chattier with people visiting each other instead of jostling at food vendors and cramming the art booths. Even the parking lots in cow meadows have disappeared.

My husband and I, our daughter and her two youngsters arrived about an hour before the Horse Parade. We found hay bales along the parade route that I really appreciated. One empty bale sat right next to a booth where Roy Rogers and Dale Evans' granddaughter, Julie Rogers Pomilia, set up her book-signing table. Huge photo banners of Roy and Dale provided a bit of shade behind the hay bale.

While Jeff and Val went off in search of drinks, Robby and I sat watching the people and waiting for the horses to pass. I couldn't help but hear some of the stories people told Julie and her husband, Dino, about how much her grandparents impacted their lives. At last, I couldn't resist telling her how their TV show taught me how to tell time.

"Oh, did you have one of those little watches?"

"No, their show came on TV every Sunday at 4 p.m. and I learned how to tell time by that." The big hand was on the twelve and the little hand was on the four. Those were analog times. Julie had a good giggle about that.

photo from Pinterest

I went on to describe my Dale Evans cowgirl outfit with the red vest and skirt with white fringe, red cowgirl boots, white hat, a red stick pony, and of course the "silver" cap pistol that fit in a holster on a belt that held wooden bullets. What's more, I said that storyteller Gay Ducey performed a story about Dale and that whole little cowgirl thing at the Sierra Nevada Storytelling Festival several decades ago. Sadly, any video of Ducey telling her story is non-existent.

Seventy-year-old memories are fuzzy at best, but for a brief time, I was a little cowgirl just like Dale, riding my stick pony around the yard, shooting my cap gun and ridin' the range even if it took me down cement sidewalks. As Gay Ducey said when describing her own cowgirl outfit and its little silver gun, "those were different times, ladies and gentlemen." That was back in the late 1980s. Even in Nevada, I don't think I could give my granddaughter such an outfit these days. Then again, those were also times when adults taught kids how to use guns safely and conscientiously.

People's stories of that TV show were brief, mostly snippets of those fuzzy old memories. Every kid in America watched Roy and Dale in the 1950s, and remembers their song at the end of the show. Happy trails to you until we meet again.

We all wanted ponies, palominos who could do fancy tricks like Trigger if possible, and to ride the wide-open ranges. Such were the dreams of city kids. Hounding Dad to get me a pony, I couldn't understand why our expanse of lawn on our quarter-acre lot, what Dad called the North Forty, couldn't accommodate it.

Beyond the fascination with blond horses, we all learned how to be good little cowboys and cowgirls from Roy and Dale. What astounded Julie was the generations who have enjoyed their show over the years.

Julie had her own story, too. Grandpa Roy would gather all his grands around the TV to watch those episodes. When they weren't climbing all over grandpa, the kids were cheering for him to "git the bad guy." Those bad guys ranged anywhere from bank robbers to suburban developers. Even as children, we were feeling the squeeze of urban sprawl before the term entered the language.

Wide-open spaces were disappearing fast. Roy and Dale's horsey lifestyle even included a comic sidekick, Pat Brady, who drove a Jeep named Nelliebelle, with his trusty German shepherd, Bullet. Seeing a Jeep in that western milieu jarred us a bit along with the modern suits and other non-cowboy clothes many of the characters wore. And some of those villains drove cars!

It was all very exciting as well as a tad disconcerting. As for Julie, the lines between her reality and fantasy blurred quite a bit. Julie believed that everybody's grandfather had his own TV show where he vanquished villains and rode a beautiful horse alongside a lovely companion.

If only ….

This is the way she signed my copy of her book, Your Heroes, My Grandparents: A Granddaughter's Love.

If you enjoyed this essay, feel free to check out other essays, stories, and poems in the Ring Around the Basin Archive.