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Last Updated: Aug 28, 2009 - 10:45:21 AM |
Not too many years ago, Sharon and I attended a western memorabilia fair in Atlanta. I got to meet one of my childhood heroes, Jock Mahoney. Aside from being recognized as one of the single greatest stunt performers who ever lived, he was a quite decent actor, good looking and well-spoken. He’d stunt-doubled Errol Flynn, played Tarzan on the big screen, was television’s “Yancy Derringer “ and was Sally Field’s step-father.
As a young boy in Chicago, at first watching on a television screen that was smaller than a comic book, I was a faithful follower of “The Range Rider.” Jock Mahoney and Dick Jones played the “Range Rider” and young “Dick West” and there was some terrific action and stunt work – and some humor. When I met Jock Mahoney – I stood in line and got him to sign a black & white photograph I purchased with him wearing his “Range Rider” buckskins and sixgun. This was near the end of his life; and, for a while, he’d picked up weight. But, when I saw him, he’d dropped that weight and he really looked great, to my eyes just as I’d remembered him from my boyhood.
I liked his character of the “Range Rider” so much that I dressed like him – keep in mind, I was maybe six or seven, okay? – when my mom and dad would take me to what used to be called the “Oak Lawn Roundup.” It was a frontier days celebration in a Chicago suburb that even had some board sidewalks, just like in the old west. A lot of the adults and all of the kids dressed up in cowboy gear, six-shooter cap pistols and all. I wore my buckskin jacket and my cowboy hat and my cap pistol and tried really hard to look like “The Rider.”
Oak Lawn was to play an important part in my life, beyond indulging my youthful cowboy fantasies. Sharon and her parents attended church in Oak Lawn. She was going to study nursing in Oak Lawn, but the school’s rules would have precluded us seeing one another every day and neither of us could have lived with that. I was hospitalized in Oak Lawn to have a cyst removed from the base of my spine. Sharon and I were married at her church in Oak Lawn. My dad was taken to the hospital in Oak Lawn to be officially pronounced dead after his first and last heart attack. Our son was Baptized in Oak Lawn. Two years later, our daughter was Baptized there, too.
I found out this morning that Oak Lawn may, one day, figure prominently in my life once again. The Hilton in Oak Lawn, Illinois, is hosting a July 19th conference, the title of which is “The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Islam.” Hizb ut-Tahrir, not on the State Department terror group list, but banned by many nations, is hosting the event, aimed at recruiting youths between the ages of nine and eighteen, presumably for indoctrination in jihadism.
From what I’ve been able to discern, it appears that anything that is non-Moslem to jihadists is fair game for death and destruction as they perceive to require it.
If you’re thinking of attending, I understand there will be refreshments and no-charge baby-sitting. Bring the kids and have some fun.
Oak Lawn may figure into my life once again. Who knows? The suicide bomber jihadist who may try, someday, to kill some of my family may have found his or her muse there!
www.jerryahern.com
© Copyright 2009 by DOWN RANGE TV
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