In the realm of action heroes and tough guys, Indiana Jones – back in theatres after a long absence – ranks with the best of them, a consummate ladies’ man capable of disabling evildoers with the sharp snap of a slender whip or a single shot from his revolver.
A brimmed hat lends Jones an undeniable authority when dealing with the scoundrels that inevitably come between him and caves teeming with precious treasure.
I can relate.
My childhood closet held a Superman cape, and I regularly toured the neighbourhood in a Spider-Man outfit stitched together by my mother.
“It gives me confidence,” I told an inquiring grownup who wanted to know why it was that I dressed as a comic book character when Halloween was still months away.
Costumes allow a skinny-legged boy to do battle with Dr. Doom, the Riddler or any of the other villains that are certain to be lurking behind the next hedge.
Afternoon showings of the television classic Bonanza found me riveted to the TV screen, leather cowboy boots on my feet and toy pistols with faux ivory handles holstered at my waist.
A black straw Stetson completed the look.
The Second Coming could have been happening outside our front door and I wouldn’t have known it, so long as we had do-gooding Ben Cartwright and his sons Adam, Little Joe and Hoss – a gap-toothed bear of a man immortalized by Dan Blocker.
When I learned that a bartending relative of mine from Detroit had often served drinks to Hoss in one of the Motor City’s ritzier downtown hotels, I was dumbfounded.
Uncle Charlie, as we called him, had served U.S. presidents, too, but that news ran a distant second to the knowledge that he was on a first-name basis with the husky actor who presumably did not wear his 10-gallon hat and tan leather vest in public.
Hoss also did not live on the Sierra Nevada ranch known as the Ponderosa, the one thick with towering pines, wild animals and an endless stream of thieves, hustlers and shifty-eyed visitors armed with six shooters and bad intentions.
“And then there was the time President Eisenhower was here,” Uncle Charlie might say as I imagined Hoss wrenching Eisenhower from his stool with a lasso as he sidled up to the polished hotel bar for his favourite beverage, which I imagined to be something along the lines of a sarsaparilla soda, but was more likely a beer or whiskey.
“Kennedy, now there was a customer,” he might have added with little effect, as I wondered what it must have been like to have rubbed shoulders with the stout actor whose tough but lovable character possessed an undeniable sense of right and wrong.
Like Hoss’s television persona, Uncle Charlie wore a hat, too.
It was the sort of straw porkpie hat that only men of a certain age can pull off without drawing snickers, the kind with the jaunty felt band above the brim.
Give me a few years, and I’ll try one on for size.
If anyone asks, I’ll tell them it gives me confidence.
