>>>I always thought of myself as cool as Steve McQueen... yeah right.:)
>
>>Yeah, Steve McQueen and that sawed off hogleg Winchester. Great show. I think I remember hearing someplace that in 1958 14 of the top 20 TV shows were westerns. I have the DVDs of HGWT and the show holds up remarkably well. Considering that was the age of Leave it to Beaver etc, HGWT and Wanted were like The Shield and the Sopranos.
>
>Oh, there were bunch of them including Wagon Train, The Big Valley, Maverick, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Rawhide, The Rifleman, Wild Wild West and The High Chaparral.
>
>Yeah... where have all the cowboys gone?

I realized the other day that though I often forget where I put my car keys or the names of family members (okay, that may be deliberate) I can still sing all the theme songs of every Western on TV from 1950-1960. But then, how could one forget rhymes like :

And none can deny it
the legend of Wyatt
forever shall live on the trail

and my personal favorite

Texas John Slaughter
made 'em do what they oughter
because if they didn't
they died.

And the immortal line from Brett Maverick's ol' pappy :

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time - and those are pretty good odds.

(oh, yes, and thanks to Wild Bill Hickock I can still (much to my wife's annoyance) sing the Kellogs Sugar Corn Pops jingle ;-) shot with sugar, through and through