Rio Lobo

June 5, 2020

As a rule, I don’t watch movies a second time. What’s the point? I already know how it’s going to turn out, and unless it is really compelling, once is enough. Tonight, I may make an exception. 

Most of the time, were you to ask me what I was doing on a particular date, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. The melodramatic courtroom scene where the prosecutor asks, “Where were you on the night of May 21st?” would have me completely stumped. I might as well say, “Lock me up; I have no alibi.” I have a hard time telling you what I did yesterday, let alone a week or a month ago. 

But I can tell you exactly where I was and what I was doing this evening fifty years ago. I was stretched out on the living room floor of my soon-to-be brother and sister in law, watching John Wayne and Dean Martin in the Western “Rio Lobo.” It was a typical John Wayne movie; lots of bravado, shooting, and the good guys winning in the end. It even had a cowboy song sung by Dean Martin himself. 

The reason I know all this is because the next day, I was getting married. The rehearsal was over, and now it was just waiting it out. The movie was nothing; the wedding was something; the marriage is everything. Maybe I’ll watch it again tonight, this time with Linda by my side instead of my best friend Tom Walker. I doubt that she will enjoy it as much as we did, but who knows? After fifty years, I’m still learning things about her. It would be something if after all this time, I find out she’s a secret admirer of John Wayne.