Here's the opening for The Rifleman; it's very rifle-y:
On Sunday afternoon after church, I had my parents over for lunch. Usually they host Sunday dinner at the homestead for all local family members, but covid swept through a lot of the households last week stemming from a cousin sleepover on March break, and much of the family was quarantined. As the 'vid skipped both myself and my parents, I invited them to my place which is fine for a number of visitors but not my entire horde of a family. After the meal was over, they were hanging around for a while so I told Dad to pick something he wanted to watch, which is how we ended up viewing a couple of episodes of The Rifleman; my father is a big fan of classic western movies and shows. The Rifleman was on air from 1958 to 1963 and can now be found on Amazon Prime. It stars Chuck Connors as Lucas McCain, a Civil War veteran who buys a ranch in New Mexico and moves there with his young son Mark after the death of his wife. McCain has a reputation for being fast and deadly with his Winchester rifle- hence the name of the show- which he's modified with a trigger that allows for repeated rapid firing. Although wanting a quiet life for himself and his son, trouble often finds McCain who, over the five year run of the show, shoots some 120 men, according to Wikipedia. The Rifleman, indeed. While not a western aficionado by any means, I have seen a fair number of older western movies- hard not to, growing up around my Dad. And there are a number of them I really enjoy, such as The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, High Noon, Winchester '73, etc. I haven't seen a lot of the old western television shows; I gave Dad a set of the three seasons of Steve McQueen's Wanted: Dead or Alive a few years back, but haven't watched any of it myself. I have seen an occasional episode of The Rifleman, generally when I've been down home while Dad's watching it. And, from what little I've seen, it's actually not that bad; I've definitely watched far worse- after all, my sisters made me sit through a couple of Hallmark movies. Incidentally, before Chuck Connors became an actor, he played both professional basketball and baseball. Connors (who was 6'6'' tall) played 53 games for the Boston Celtics in the NBA. He also played baseball for the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Chicago Cubs. His name- Chuck- was actually given to him during his baseball career, from how he frequently yelled to the pitcher to "chuck" him the ball (his real name was Kevin). Oh, and he enlisted in the army during World War II though he never went overseas; he taught tank warfare at Fort Campbell and West Point. Then, after all of that, he got into acting. Talk about your overachievers. Also, the creators of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (my favourite ST series after TOS) which ran during the 1990's, credited The Rifleman for giving them much of the premise for the show: a widowed man with a young son arrives at the back end of nowhere and has to start cleaning up the town- or space station- and disposing of baddies. Interestingly, Gene Rodenberry had cited the western show Wagon Train as the inspiration for his original show Star Trek: The Original Series. Obviously tales of the old west continue to inspire and influence modern fiction to this day (Firefly, anyone?). Here's the opening for The Rifleman; it's very rifle-y:
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