If you’re much younger than me, you might not recognize this cartoon character, Quick Draw McGraw, which ran on TV in 1959-1961. I used to watch it. Kids watched a lot of cartoons in those days.
As you can see, Quick Draw McGraw is a horse. That doesn’t stop him from riding a horse (Doh!) or riding in a stagecoach drawn by horses. I never questioned this at the time, although I did wonder why Goofy could talk and wear clothes, but Pluto couldn’t.
But what would the other horses think of having to lug around this gun-toting, hat-wearing, talking horse whose hooves functioned as hands? Is that quite fair?
Quick Draw was a sheriff (!). usually accompanied by his deputy, a burro named Babalooey who wore a sombrero and spoke with a Mexican accent. [Gasp! Break out the smelling salts!] Imagine getting arrested by a horse and a donkey. It would be even more unnerving if they talked.
Even more baffling, what has caused me to remember this? It’s not like I hear people going around saying, “Hey, remember Quick Draw McGraw?” I’ll bet I’ve gone at least 50 years without hearing his name mentioned even once.
Memory Lane is a street that always gets longer.
I have noticed that, too. Occasionally, I remember the evening when I was visiting a girlfriend and they had the radio on and we heard the announcement by president Roosevelt about the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Well, that was a world-shaking event–naturally you’d remember it. But to relieve it, as it were… that’s more than ordinary memory.
I remember Quicks Draw, as Babalooey would call him. Babalooey, IMHO, made that show. Quick Draw would be over the top, with something or another, and Babalooey would make a somewhat smart-Alec remark that would go right over Quick Draw’s head.
Cartoons, in those days, weren’t trying to send a message, but were pure entertainment. Many were very cleverly written, and chock full of satire and multi-layered humor. Bullwinkle and Rocky was like that, as well. I actually learned from the various features in the Bullwinkle show. They worked some history into the Mr. Peabody & Sherman cartoons. Quick Draw, Huckleberry and company were great too.
I always did enjoy Huckleberry Hound singing “Oh, Ma Darlin’ Clementine.”
I loved Quick Draw — and Huckleberry Hound too. Remember the Fractured Fairy Tales?
Fractured Fairy Tales was great!
Agreed.
I so loved all these cartoons when I was a kid.
I guess, brother Lee, you have a very well-seasoned readership. A bunch of old folks, like me, who do remember those cartoons from long long ago. And you are correct, about not hearing his name for decades; and I also had forgotten all about him, before I read your post.
How about something else very old; does anyone remember comic books staring Turok and Andar? Two Pre-Columbian Navajo warriors which accidentally fell into a valley full of dinosaurs and struggled to survive and find their way out. They were originally published by Dell Comics around 1954.
Oh boy do I . They were my favorites.
I do not remember “Fractured Fairy Tales.” I even looked it up. It was a TV Series which ran from 1959-1964. That is odd, for as a child I never watched that cartoon.
However, I did look up the numerous images for “Fractured Fairy Tales,” and I do remember seeing at least a few of them from somewhere. Yes, I guess I do recall, just faintly, those cartoons and stories.
My favorite was “Crusader Rabbit” and his tiger pal, Rags. It was hilarious because they never played the episodes in order – talk about a twilight zone experience.
I watched that, too! I had a Rags the Tiger hand puppet.
No, I don’t remember Crusader Rabbit. I looked it up, and it was a TV series that ran 1950-1957. I was born in 1953, and don’t know if we even had a TV at that time in my life.
When I was five or six years old, there still were a lot of people who didn’t have TV.
I remember watching Quickdraw – and I was born in ’68!
Most of my favourite shows from when I was a kid turned out to all be reruns. Of course, I had no idea at the them. They were all new to me!
Question for readers. Do you remember the name of the TV series (late 60s) and the name of the episode in which Edith Keeler must die? Hint, it involves time travel of three crew members of a ship, back to New York in the 1930s.
That sounds like a Star Trek episode.
It was definietely a Star Trek episode. I think it was called “City on the Edge of Forever” and it involved Kirk and Spock chasing through a time portal after McCoy, and all of them winding up in the USA of the 1930s.
I couldn’t remember the title. I can never remember episode titles.
Captain Kirk’s girlfriends always wound up dying. Why do screenwriters do that?
It used to be a joke that you never wanted to be one of Kirk’s girlfriends or someone in a red shirt as part of a landing party, because you’d be pretty sure to wind up dead.
It was also interesting that everyone on every alien planet spoke English, mostly American English but sometimes with a foreign (but still Terran) accent. I think somewhere in season 2 or 3 it was “explained” by showing that everyone on the Enterprise carried around a miniature Universal Translator. That didn’t explain the foreign accents — including Chekhov’s — but at least it acknowledged the plot problem.
There was no explanation of how all these different planets, in star systems separated by many light years, all had recognizeably human inhabitants. But that was old-fashioned, boilerplate science fiction–before they discovered that adding scenes of unconventional sex made a book sophisticated.
A silver star for brother Lee, and a gold star for Phoebe. Yes, its “The City on the Edge of Forever” from Star Trek. That episode and the “Trouble With Tribbles” are two of my favorites.
“A landing party from the Enterprise encounters the Guardian of Forever a glowing entity that is a doorway to any time and place. Dr. McCoy, had received a cordrazine overdose and is acting insane, as a result, runs through the Guardian and, apparently, to a different time. The result of McCoy’s trip back in time is that the Enterprise is no longer orbiting above them. In fact, McCoy’s time travel has changed the entire course of human history, and if Kirk and Spock aren’t able to go back in time to stop McCoy from altering the timeline, well, the Enterprise and the Federation and all the progress that humanity has made won’t exist.” – “The Prolific Trek”
What is a bit funny, I no longer believe there is life or aliens somewhere in outer space.
The aliens are here… in Washington.