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ROY ROGERS 4/2/2011 6:27:48 AM
I recently read somewhere that they closed the Roy Rogers Museum shortly after it moved to Branson, Missouri from California. Apparently, dwindling attendance was the culprit. They auctioned off most of Roy and Dale Evans’s memorabilia and netted well over a five million dollars. One item was Roy’s imitation silver toy cap pistol, circa 1938. It was price-tagged at $100. It sold for $125,000.
This brought to mind that I was visiting my grandparents in Kenton, Ohio the summer of 1938 — I about seven years old — and Roy Rogers was doing a Saturday matinee live, up close and in person, right after the showing of his first hit, UNDER WESTERN SKIES, in which he was credited as ‘Roy Rogers’ for the first time, rather than his real name: Leonard Slye.
I didn’t care what his name was. The sole cinema emporium in Kenton those days was the Kentonian on West Franklin Street, and for weeks they had been touting Rogers’s appearance: “BELIEVE IT OR NOT, ROY WILL BE GIVING AWAY — FOR FREE! — 500 AUTHENTIC ROY ROGERS CHROME-PLATED REPEATING REVOLVERS BY BALLANTYNE (caps not included)! AND IT HAS A GENUINE IMITATION PEARL HANDLE GRIP WITH ROY’S OFFICIAL SIGNATURE! THAT’S RIGHT! 500! SATURDAY JULY 16 ONLY!”
Owning a Roy Rogers authentic toy cap gun was, to me, tantamount to owning your own private aeroplane, even if you didn’t now how to fly it, which none of my playmates did. I lay restless and awake nights dreaming of it; nothing would keep me being one of the 500 lucky recipients — I didn’t know it then, but the Kentonian didn’t hold 500 theatergoers and consequently everyone in attendance was slated to receive one.
My Croatian grandfather (whose broken English did not include idiomatic synonyms for either ‘Roy Rogers’ or ‘Leonard Slye’) accompanied me that fateful Saturday. He loved cowboy movies, and to him, all Western heroes were ‘Shawny Mick Braun,’ especially in flicks shot in sepia tone.
We all waited in anxious anticipation for the handsome, athletic Rogers to stop singing and yakking about himself and his TruColor movies, and get down to the business of passing out the cap guns. At the very end of what seemed like ten hours, he finally announced the guns would be handed out as we left the theater.
There was a mad dash for the tiny lobby, which quickly overflowed to the outdoor marquee adjacent to West Franklin Street. I stood sweating in the Ohio heat until Roy Rogers suddenly appeared with a huge canvas bag I knew for certain was filled with authentic cap guns, handsomely boxed just like at F.W Woolworth’s!
“Tell ya what, boys and girls!” the Hollywood icon (born just down the road in Cincinnati) shouted above the din. “To make it fair, I’m gonna toss these guns up in the air! All you gotta do is catch one! — an’ it’s yours to own! — forever and ever! Ya ready? Here we go!”
For the next fifteen minutes, 499 guns flew up and into the eager hands of screaming, raucous kids, parents and grandparents — and not one even came close to me! That is, not until the very end.
Then it happened. The last box came out of the canvas bag, and Roy tossed it high in the air. Over and over it went, and lo and behold, it was coming down right at me! I reached up with both hands and caught it on the fly, grasp it tightly, so tightly it slipped through my fingers, slid between my sweaty palms — and clunked me smack on my head! — then fell awkwardly into the outstretched mitts of some sixteen year old, who pushed me aside and knocked me down, snarling through buckteeth, “Get outta my way, kid, this gun’s all mine!”
I lay there as the crowd dispersed. My grandfather found me and helped me up. We walked away, the knot on my head throbbing and growing larger, a perfect companion to the lump in my throat.
“Vee can git ise cream ya vant at Isley’s. Dey gots kones.”
We sat on the spindly chairs at the soda fountain, and Grandpa splurged for two waffle cones with double dips. “Dat guy Rod-gers dasant never throwed them guns atchew kids. Might haf killed halve a youse.” He licked his cone. “But hit vas eesay fer me, so I’m dat mush teller.”
With that, he pulled two — not one, but two! — authentic Roy Rogers cap guns, still in boxes, from under his suit coat. “Here yuh goes,” he said, “but ya dasant let on tuh you mudder.”
