Saturday Evening Post: Branded

I grew up on Westerns. Wuh, wuh, wuh…you yunguns think you got it tough, do yeh? Wuh, when we wuz kids, all we had wuz THREE TV stations – IN BLACK AND WHITE! Yup. ‘N when we wuz watchin’ TV on Sateedy, most o’ the time, all we could get wuz reruns o’ old Westerns. And we LIKED it like that. Them Westerns taught us a lot. How to shoot from yer hip. Good guys never miss, and bad guys usually do. Silver bullets ain’t just fer werewolves ‘n such. One o’ them Westerns we usta love was Branded, with the late, great Chuck Connors. Now ol’ Chuck, see, when he wuzin modelin’ for that Great Stone Face monumint thing, he was a great Western movie star. Only most of his starrin’ was on TeeVee. But the thing that wuz coolest about Branded was it’s theme song. And like all great theme songs, we kids, well, we changed up them words a might. But that’s a story fer a diffrint time. Now you young whippersnappers go and let grandpappy here get sum sleep. Dagnabbit. Now where’s lil’ Luke?