Pa! Pa!

I love old TV westerns. Maverick, Wanted: Dead or Alive, Gunsmoke, Have Gun / Will Travel, The Big Valley, Laredo, Wagon Train, Bonanza, Lawman. I'm a sucker for a classic TV western. But there was one series that was always my favorite, bar none... The Rifleman.

I never knew it was Sam Peckenpah's baby when I started watching The Rifleman in the 60's on Channel 11's Saturday night western lineup. I just knew it was a show about a father and son struggling in the old west depending on each other to survive. I may have never tried to emulate James Colburn's knife throwing cowboy in The Wild Bunch, but I broke more than one finger trying to duplicate Lucas McCain's rifle spin with my old lever action .22 (and so did about 99% of my friends) .

Two words that will be forever etched into my brain, even on my Alzheimer's riddled deathbed are "Pa! Pa!" You could also depend on the soundtrack to tell you the story even if you happened to lose track of what's going on when you ran to the fridge for a brew.. The show had to be ultra low budget because there were only about a half dozen music tracks used during the entire series and almost all revolved around the theme song. The rest were shootout/stressful scenes that also happened to have a theme song flavor. A change in speed or chord was all that was needed to indicated the mood/disposition of the scene. I hope that songwriter got his fair share of the residuals.

It really messed with my head when Chuck Connor's played a hippie sympathizer mad bomber in "The Mad Bomber" and the hip/shady bodyguard in Soylent Green. Lucas McCain would have never done that because Mark would have been disappointed in him.

You can get your weekly Rifleman fix Saturday mornings on AMC.

BTW, he fires 11 shots then reloads.  Or did he????