My wife quite frequently thinks i may have lost all of my marbles.

Tonight, she is totally convinced.

We watched the news i could stand to watch — pretty much the weather because all of the other news except some feel good features at the end of news programs, which, i guess, are supposed to make you feel better after all of the crap you just watched. We ate a marvelous dinner she prepared from one of her 2300 cookbooks.

And then i asked Sarah to help get back on to Starz on our streaming service. She did and i went to movies, scrolled down to “westerns” where there are at least 250 of that genre and spent about fifteen minutes scrolling through memories of the oaters i loved.

i finally stopped on something i probably saw sometime around 1954 unless i caught it earlier at the Capitol or Princess theaters a block off Lebanon’s square to the west and south respectively. 1954 was the year we got our first television set and Ruff ‘n Ready in his plaid cowboy shirt, stetson, and handlebar mustache would introduce the western of the day. For the record, it was a WSM program, but it doesn’t matter as WSM carried the only television station and selected the shows we could see from NBC, CBS, and ABC.

The movie was “The Cowboy and Senorita.” It’s a classic…at least in my mind. It was on screen in 1944. It was Roy and Dale’s first movie together before they married and met Bullet, Pat Brady, and Nellybelle (and if you don’t know who or what Nellybelle was, you have missed a big chunk of life).

You would immediately recognize this was a true “oater” when the opening credits showed Roy, and…not Dale, not Mary Lee who co-starred as “Chip,” not Guinn “Big Boy” Williams who was “Teddy Bear” and Roy’s sidekick, not Pat Nolan of the Sons of the Pioneers who sang and sang in the saddle. Oh no, not them or even John Hubbard, the villain. The lead photo for the credits were Roy and, of course, Trigger.

i watched the whole thing even though Maureen sat there reading or getting up and walking about, shaking her head in disbelief.

It was great. The acting was really bad. No one got shot with blood and gore in some insane attempt to be “realistic” or beyond. The stunts were slapstick. The plot was absurd. But i knew who the bad guys were from the start. i knew who the good guys were. i knew Dale was getting duped until the end when she realized Roy was the really nice guy and carried a big six shooter, no two big six shooters. i listened to some really old, honky music. i even watched the dance troupe in the finale do something that was supposed, i suppose, to be Spanish. i even recognized George McFarland, an older “Spanky” from Little Rascals as a brat in the opening scenes.

i loved it. i have spent the rest of the evening singing “The Cowboy and the Senorita.”

Hmm. i might skip the six or seven hours of insanity they call the Super Bowl, Sunday, and watch another oater.

i’ll bet i will feel better if i do.