Below, a sweet song I may have heard when I was six and Vaughan Monroe's version hit the top 10. I loved the narrative - a story in song, a message in persisting through the desert. Keep a-movin' Dan. I'm not alone in liking it - a lot of people have recorded it. I landed on this version first, remembering Johnny Ray, and like it.
While in that area on YouTube, I saw this and listened to it and looked at it, remembering clearly the movie. Watching it, many stills from the well-done black-and-white film, I remembered the rigid gender roles in the culture I was born into; the patriarchy - the fundamental culture of the fifties.
I was probably about twelve when "High Noon" came to the Lyn Theatre half a mile from our house. I was never into "cowboy movies" and thought pretty much nothing happened in it, and it was boring; you could fit about ten of it into one episode of 24 Hours. But I stayed and watched it, of course. It was a long time until I learned you could walk out on a movie, and then it took me a while to do it. So there I sat, absorbing the world in which men were interesting and brave and important, and women were . . . pretty. The men did stuff and the women . . . waited. Sigh.
It's been a long, strange trip since then, and most of it hasn't gone as we feminists hoped it would. Keep a-moving, Jan. And Susan and Heather and Tiffany, all of us.
I had a second bad fall two weeks ago, and have seen three doctors since then and had an MRI of my brain. Ischemic events happening there, so now I'm scheduled for a neurologist. I'm tired. So I'm going to ask you readers to comment, or e-mail me if this strikes any chords with you. Or reminds you of the stories you grew up with.
