Art is… by Bev Jackson Cotter

Gene Autry was my favorite cowboy and Champion was my favorite horse. My friends and I spent hours at the Rivoli Theater on Saturday afternoons watching and cheering as Gene outwitted the bad guys with their black hats and scowls on their faces. Later I’d climb up in my favorite apple tree, straddle my branch horse and with my jump rope for reins, Gene and I would ride off into a new adventure.

My best friend rode her apple tree branch with Roy Rogers, but I knew that Gene was a real cowboy, not an eastern actor like Roy who was born in Ohio. I needed authenticity.

Gene’s movies had names like “The Old Corral,” “Yodelin’ Kid From Pine Ridge” and “The Old Barn Dance.” How wonderful and exciting the Old West was.

It was years later when I discovered that those exciting and adventurous days were only a myth manufactured by writers and moviemakers who were creating American heroes for us. I did not want to believe it. A college professor, trying to make a writing class more exciting, worked hard to dispel the myths created by Hollywood. He almost succeeded.

I even laughed at my cousin Jurgen who had enjoyed our Old West movies on German television. When we traveled together to Colorado, he was thrilled to see rodeo posters and people wearing cowboy hats. I thought his interest was funny.

Then I met Rowdy. He was lean and tan, a real cowboy. He worked on an eastern Montana ranch and rode his horse out onto the barren landscape, meeting us by a dried up riverbed.  We could see miles of open range. With his wonderful drawl, he told us about his life and his family and his love of Montana. He called me “Ma’am” and tipped his hat. And I fell in love.

It was Gene Autry and Champion all over again.

How much of our image of the past is real?  In “Don’t Know Much About History,” Kenneth C. Davis states that throughout his days as Abilene’s peacekeeper, the adventurous Wild Bill Hickok shot only two people, one of them another policeman. So much for a wild and dangerous lifestyle.

Why do we hang on so tight to the myths of the Old West? Why do we hang on to legends?

Why do tourists from around the world climb to the top of Irish castle ruins to kiss the Blarney Stone? Why do we rub the snout of the statue of a big hog in Florence, Italy?  And why do people rub the Juliet statue’s right breast in Verona, Italy, or throw coins in the Trevi Fountain in Rome? Why do we need to take our picture by the Jolly Green Giant in Blue Earth or put stocking caps on Albert Lea’s mermaid statue?

Maybe that kiss or that coin can bring a little luck. Maybe it’s because we are all still kids at heart. Maybe we don’t want to completely grow up. Maybe it’s because we still need heroes.

Maybe it’s because we still believe we can “think outside the box” and find a little magic there. Sometimes reality hits us too hard and we need to escape, if just for a little while.

Maybe, even if we don’t think it’s so, we all have a bit of creativity inside that needs to express itself, and we are all looking for a way to make it happen.

 

Bev Jackson Cotter is a member of the Albert Lea Art Center where the show “Envision the Impressionist,” a local perspective on this late 19th century art, will be on display from July 27 to Sept. 27.