Sunday, September 24, 2017

Baxter Black: Stress

Let's say a busload of Brazillian soccer players came by your place one fine fall afternoon unexpected and took you on a three-day road trip. You didn't have time to pack your toothpaste or your own saddle! They made you play two games a day and pinochle every night! By the time they dropped you off down by the mailbox you wouldn't have enough energy to crawl to the house!

You would be suffering from that deadly menace, the Darth Vader of Disease: STRESS!

Now put yourself in the place of the 500 pound suckin' calf this fall. You spend all summer with your mamma drinkin' cool spring water, eatin' good green grass and mother's milk. You got up when you wanted, slept when you felt like it and ate when you were hungry. Suddenly, over the rim come five mounted riders! The boss, his wife, the neighbor, the banker, the brother-in-law and eighteen dogs! Elbows flyin', hats wavin' and chaps flappin'. Scary? You bet your bippy! You take off to find mamma with the dogs nippin' at yer heels. Mamma's way down the trail. You catch up and travel five miles in her dust, chokin' and coughin'. That night you spend in a trap with 240 other cows and calves. Next mornin' here comes Custer's Army again! Back on the trail, still scared, hungry and tired. All day you walk behind the bunch, walkin' eye level with the dust. That night you're put in a big corral. Mamma's uneasy. You don't get much to drink.

Sunup, the Third Infantry Battalion rides through the corral and pushes you out into the alley with your brothers and sisters. They push you up a little chute. They want you to jump into this big aluminum egg crate. Next thing you know the ground is moving. Three hours down the road you suggest pulling off at a rest stop. NO DICE! (I don't know how many of you readers have tried to tinkle out the back of a moving pickup, but it's no easy thing!)

That evening you get unloaded into a feedyard with strange tasting water and something in the bunk that smells like old lawn clippings. Next morning Bobby Benson and the B Bar B Riders drive you and your siblings to a processing area. You're too tired to care. (Imagine, if you will, getting down on your hands and knees with your barber behind you and your cattle buyer in front. Everybody's lined up nose to wallet! Every time you back up to breathe some fresh air, somebody jabs you! Then they trap you in this big noisy contraption, give you an injection (for your own good), stick things in your mouth, your nose and your ears.




Not familiar with Bobby Benson & the B Bar B Riders? Well I can assure you Jerry Schickedanz is. Check this info out:

Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders is an old-time radio juvenile Western adventure program in the United States, one of the first juvenile radio programs.[1] It was broadcast on CBS October 17, 1932 - December 11, 1936, and on Mutual June 21, 1949 - June 17, 1955.  

Bobby Benson was created by Herbert C. Rice, who had already originated "dozens of local drama series" as a director at a radio station in Buffalo, New York.[1] In 1932, representatives of the Hecker H-O Company of Buffalo sought to develop a children's radio program for the company's cereal products. Rice associated the "H-O" name with a cattle brand and soon developed a concept about an orphan named Bobby Benson and his guardian, Sunny Jim (an icon used to represent H-O cereals).[1] The program was called The H-Bar-O Rangers while it was sponsored by Hecker.[2]Format After his parents' deaths, 12-year-old Bobby Benson inherited the B-Bar-B Ranch in Big Bend, Texas. That development paved the way for adventures as, week after week, outlaws and other bad people tried to cause problems for the ranch and its people. Young Bobby was helped by Tex Mason, his foreman.[3] Jim Cox, in his book Radio Crime Fighters: More Than 300 Programs from the Golden Age, described the program as
capturing the imagination of little tykes and older adolescents as Bobby and his ranch hands stumbled upon exploits well beyond an ordinary youngster's reach. Most of Benson's escapades involved the pursuit and capture of contingents of bandits and desperadoes of diverse sorts. Rustlers, smugglers, bank and stagecoach robbers dotted the scripts like cactus spread across the Western plains.[4]
Relief from the show's drama and suspense came in the form of songs sung around a campfire and humorous tall tales told by handyman Windy Wales.[4] In a column in the May 15, 1938, issue of the trade publication Broadcasting, writer Pete Dixon noted that inclusion of comedy segments boosted the show's popularity: "Bobby Benson & the H-Bar-O Rangers was just another juvenile western until ... comedy characters were introduced in the script. Comedy situations were alternated with melodrama. Within a year the Bobby Benson show jumped from tenth place among juvenile favorites to first place. Comedy accounted for the climb."[5]

In 1949, a reviewer for the trade publication Billboard wrote, "Kids still go for good old-fashioned Western adventure, and this show is loaded with fast action and fancy gun play, yet wholesome enough to please the most exacting parent."[6]

And below is one of the radio programs and a couple examples of the comic book 

https://youtu.be/IHfIQh3H6zA

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I have a Bobby Benson and the Lost Herd book and a cap gun. I listened to Bobby Benson on the radio after school as a kid.
Jerry Schickedanz

แอล said...
This comment has been removed by the author.