Think You Used Enough Dynamite There, Butch?

This is the prototypical good news/bad news story. The bad news is Robert Redford died. What an actor! He looked like the Sundance Kid in that terrific historical movie he made with Paul Newman. He talked like the Sundance Kid. He walked like the Sundance Kid. He could shoot better than the Sundance Kid. I THOUGHT he was the Sundance Kid!
The good news is, I got my wife back.
As one could gather by the opening here, I’m a Robert Redford fan. My wife took it to a whole ’nother level.
We had known each other for years but did not start dating until she graduated from college. The storied university added a certain maturity and assurance to her that did not always work in my favor. And living in the big city (Nashville) could easily sway anyone away from their down-home West Tennessee upbringing.
From any logical slant I put on it, it just seemed as natural as rainwater bouncing off a henhouse tin roof that her expectations of what life held for her had skyrocketed based on her higher educational experiences. I needed to up my game.
I let my hair grow out. Hopefully, it would give me a decidedly cosmopolitan look. I rubbed in a little dab of Brylcreem for bounce and containment. I ran my fingers through my hair a few times, lowered my head so she could get a better look at the Brylcreem sheen lighting up each individual hair follicle, and asked, “What do you think?”
“It’s OK. But if you were going for the Robert Redford look, you missed by a country mile….and then some!”
Ouch!
When I finally got around to asking her to marry me, she readily agreed, but added, “Let’s put the wedding off for six months in case Robert calls.”
Listen, I had an epic size crush on Hayley Mills back when I was thirteen. I would imagine her “just happening by” Mr. Archie Moore’s Pond on many’a lazy summer afternoons. We’d wade out and pet the cows. I’d show her where me and Bobby Brewer buried the horseshoes. Her beauty, charm, and British accent would enthrall my little heart….
But it never one, single, solitary time crossed my mind to marry the blooming girl!
Suffice it to say Cathy and I have seen a lot of Robert Redford over the years. Sometimes at the movies, but mostly on TV reruns. She leans toward “Out of Africa” and “Barefoot in the Park.” Give me “The Great Waldo Pepper” and “Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here.”
And some, like “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” are classics. There can’t be a scene in a movie any better than when Newman and Redford are peering back down their trail at the persistent posse who won’t quit, asking, “Who are those guys?”
Unless it’s the scene where they are trapped on the high cliff by the same posse and their only way out is to jump into the raging river a mile or so below ... and Sundance admits that he can’t swim….
If “Jeremiah Johnson” isn’t your all-time favorite movie, something is wrong with you. You can’t beat a story of a young fellow fed up with “life below” so he heads up into the Rocky Mountains to trap beaver in the 1840s. It is exactly what I would have done if I had been lucky enough to have lived back then.
Plus, Redford wore that huge bearskin hat to ward off the subzero weather in most of the movie. You couldn’t see his hair at all.
“The Natural” was an instant classic. Let me tell you, nobody could hit a baseball like Roy Hobbs! Unless it was Robert Redford’s real life baseball hero, Ted Williams. Redford was a lifetime Boston Red Sox fan.
I have never held that against him.
One of his later movies, “An Unfinished Life” costarring Morgan Freeman, is a hidden gem. “The Electric Horseman” was an excellent movie. I even broke my “never watch a movie with Jane Fonda in it” vow to see this one. “The Sting,” with Paul Newman again, was another great adventure.
I could go on and on, but certainly you have some of the same memories. My wife is not the only person who was in love with Robert Redford.
Our collective hearts are saddened by his loss. But he was 89 years old. And what a full life he had lived!
I am not sure Robert Redford and I were ever on the same wavelength when it came to politics, personal beliefs, who’s on first, etc. That was never the point, or an issue. He was an actor who gave us so much wonderful entertainment. He allowed us to escape for a moment and be carried along in whatever grand escapade he was flashing at us from across the big screen.
Much like Gary Cooper, Clark Cable, Steve McQueen, and Lash LaRue did before him.
Our lives have been enriched by his cinematic touch. And oh, how the joy lingers of riding along with him and Butch as they robbed banks, trains, and anybody else they could…. from Colorado all the way down to Bolivia….
Respectfully,
Kes
kesley45@aol.com