In a recent made for T.V. movie, "The Good Old Boys", Tommy Lee Jones
plays a cowboy named Hewey Calloway. He's living at the turn of the century when
the West was taking on the semblance of civilized behavior. Automobiles were
capturing our imagination and it was evident that the cowboy was soon to be a
thing of the past. Enter Hewey Calloway, he's a classic free spirit who wears
his heart on his sleeve. He reminds us a side of us that's been lost over the
last century. Our adventurous spirit has, in many ways, gone the way of the
cowboy, and we need it back.
Buried within us all is a spirit that wants to have settled the old West, wants to have discovered new mountain ranges, new jungles, and lost continents. There's a side that wants to know what's over there, what's around the next bend. And in the past we were able to take that curiosity, that primitive energy and channel it. "Go west" was the call, and we did.
On Sunday mornings, I, like millions of other Americans, find comfort in the ritual of reading the Sunday morning newspaper. I start at the beginning of the paper and work my way through, eventually coming to the Travel section. And there, in living color, on the front page, is the reason why I soon find myself staring out the window, dreaming of a time when . . . well, the adventure was alive. For example, on any given Sunday one might find a picture of a tribesman from New Guinea standing in front of his tour boat. A glance at the opening paragraph, and you'll see words like "wonderful" and "marvelous", "the shopping was fantastic", "the accommodations were charming, with a primitive motif" a "real find". What was once primitive, natural, untouched and undiscovered is now on every travel agent's map.
There was a time, as we saw in the movie "The Good Old Boys" when each day challenged us, not only physically, but also emotionally. The first settlers to come across plains took enormous chances, no Auto Club maps, hotels, or charge cards. And there were seemingly endless frontiers for the adventurer to explore. Times have changed. By the 1970's there were companies set up specifically for adventures, with names like "Adventure Tours". One phone call and your adventure is set, VISA or Mastercard?
We're approaching the end of a decade and the also the end of the century. The West has been conquered, and the adventures are, by in large, prepackaged. Space exploration has fizzled out and been put on the back burner. So the nation turns to the O.J. trial, and the myriad of tabloid news shows in an attempt to fill an inner longing. But from time to time we see characters like Hewey Calloway, and once again are reminded that there's something missing, something that humans desperately need. A new frontier that captures our imagination, a frontier that unleashes our adventurous spirit once again.
Copyright 1995 by Robert Ross
Robert Ross can be reached by E-mail at: SanDiegoRoss@Yahoo.com
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