Things I Have Learned From Watching Old Westerns

[ladycat]

I love watching old Western shows- both the matinee series and the 50's TV shows. I watch them a LOT. They are quite informative.

Horses can gallop hard for 25 miles or more without ever slowing down or even breaking a sweat.

Mama cows and their calves don't know each other.

Chickens always stay in a tight little group pecking the ground in the middle until a wagon or horse and rider come flying through and scatter them.

Cattle are herded from one place to another with lassos.

6-guns have at least 20 bullets.

Cowboys don't know how to fight. Sometimes a single little tap knocks them out cold.

Despite the average wage in the mid to late 1800's being about $1 a day, your average working man has hundreds of dollars to lose in poker games.

If I sit here long enough, I would be able to think of lots more. Feel free to add your own observations.

 

[SouthCentralUS]

The good guys have beautiful teeth and the bad guys are missing their front teeth.

 

[The Innkeeper]

Black hats for bad guys and white hats for good guys. Wish it really was that simple. Mine is gray ... what does that mean

 

[TMT Tactical]

Black hats for bad guys and white hats for good guys. Wish it really was that simple. Mine is gray ... what does that mean

You get sot from both sides.

 

[angie_nrs]

You get sot from both sides.

Actually that reminds me of one. During an ambush, apparently the bad guys can be surrounded by good guys, yet the good guys can let them bullets fly and not have to worry about those bullets hitting their posse directly behind the bad guys. It's not just old westerns though.....saw the same technique used in Walking Dead a week or two ago too. Must be nice not to have to worry about what's behind your target. There must not be any stray bullets in Hollywood.

 

[BBQJoe]

Knives kill bad guys dead with one stab.
Good guys don't seem to bleed out or die.

One more.

As soon as the bullet is extracted, people get better immediately.

The doctor can heal a lot of people with just a black bag.

 

[Sentry18]

I learned that no matter what a bullet hits, other than people, it ricochets with "pa-ting" and "peewwww".

 

[ladycat]

Actually that reminds me of one. During an ambush, apparently the bad guys can be surrounded by good guys, yet the good guys can let them bullets fly and not have to worry about those bullets hitting their posse directly behind the bad guys.

That's one.

And in the same vein-

The bad guys get killed or seriously injured in a gun fight, while the good guys get no injuries, or at most, just slightly winged.

When everyone is hiding behind rocks or other obstacles, having a shootout, nobody aims at each other. They just randomly pop up, fire, and pop back down.

If you watch real close, you'll catch this oddity from time to time: when an individual or group is holed up inside a building shooting through the windows, sometimes the windows you see from the inside of the house or building, are not the same windows you see from outside. The windows will be a different size/shape/placement between the inside and outside, and if there are curtains, you might see different curtains from the outside view than from the inside. It doesn't happen that way very often, but when it does, it's somewhat unnerving.

 

[Amish Heart]

You can always tell when an ambush is about to happen. Just look at the scenery.
School marms always look nice and tidy. But you never actually see them teach anything.

 

[TMT Tactical]

Drives me crazy. Fighting off a passel of bad guys. You shoot one and then leave the bad guys guns, and ammo. Gee spare guns and ammo against the code of the west I guess.

 

[Cnsper]

What about the multi kill rifle? Or the horse that can leap off of cliffs? Let's not forget that you can outrun an Indian ambush in a stagecoach.

 

[BBQJoe]

Horses fall over when riders get shot.
I still wonder how they got horses to fall like that.

 

[BBQJoe]

Everyone carries dynamite.

 

[marlas1too]

or someone gets shot in the arm and dies

 

[The Lazy L]

Good guy chasing the bad guy, both are on horse back.
Bad guy shoots back at the good guy until the gun is empty then throws the empty gun at the good guy.
Good Guy leaps from his horse and knocks the bad guy of his horse.
They both roll down a hill and land in water.

Shooting at random without using the sights and never hitting a horse but knocking the rider off.

 

[ladycat]

Good guy chasing the bad guy, both are on horse back.
Bad guy shoots back at the good guy until the gun is empty then throws the empty gun at the good guy.
Good Guy leaps from his horse and knocks the bad guy of his horse.
They both roll down a hill and land in water.

I've seen that one a few hundred times!

 

[ladycat]

Have you ever noticed that horses in Westerns don't poop? Here we are, going down Main Street in a western town, horses going up and down the road, horses tied to hitching posts, and not a horse plop anywhere in sight.

Except recently in one episode I watched- a horse hitched to a wagon was drawn up on the side of the street in front of a building. And there it was - a pile of poop on the ground right beneath the horse's butt. It was very noticeable, since you never see that.

A few minutes later, the camera panned down the street and caught the same horse in the same spot, except this time, no poop!

Which makes me think of this:

Two guys meet in a bar. One asks the other, "What do you do for a living?"

Says the second guy, "I pick up horse poop off of movie sets".

 

[BBQJoe]

I also think window glass was cheap and plentiful back in the old west.
No one gives a second thought about breaking windows or throwing people through them.

I also wonder if saloon owners spend every morning on the roof fixing bullet holes.

 

[ladycat]

I also think window glass was cheap and plentiful back in the old west.
No one gives a second thought about breaking windows or throwing people through them.

I also wonder if saloon owners spend every morning on the roof fixing bullet holes.

I've wondered those same things!

But it suddenly occurs to me if there's a good reason that so many bars don't have any windows.

 

[Custos]

The chief of the Indian tribe always speaks English and about half the time is "friends" with the good guy.

Cowboys will cook meals on the trail that require staple food supplies and cast iron skillets. They ride away from the camp site with no saddle bags and no supply horse. Where on earth did they conjure up coffee, beans, flour, and that skillet?

 

[BBQJoe]

In some of the movies, there's so much shooting, I have to wonder where the boxes and boxes of bullets come from.
Or do these guys ride around with their pockets stuffed?
Also, I've never seen a cowboy removing bullets from their gun belt to reload.

 

[The Lazy L]

Indians riding circles around the Settler's wagon train. Indians getting picked off one at a time. Then just as the Settlers have given up all hope a bugle sounds and the U.S. Calvary charges in to save the day.

 

[The Innkeeper]

Horror of horrors ... are y,all suggesting that old dusters are not realistic

 

[The Innkeeper]

There is probably a good PhD level dissertation to be written on the classic western as a redemptive morality story. You know good guy turns bad due to circumstances finds redemption gets the girl and his good name back. I know I got a few good excursus notes worked into my seminary class papers on the subject from time to time.

 

[Cnsper]

Horror of horrors ... are y,all suggesting that old dusters are not realistic

Man you know tv is real.

I saw this one guy that looked younger when he died. Because the next movie that i saw him in he looked 30 years older but it had to be filmed before the one he died in.

Then you have Lee Majors. What a stroke of luck he had. Growing up on a nice big valley with his brothers and sister on the ranch. Then getting sold for 6 million dollars and getting robotic implants so he could escape. I think he was still mad at his mom and brothers for selling him.

 

[ladycat]

Speaking of ages, I was shocked to learn that the Cisco Kid's sidekick Pancho was 70 years old when the series started. He sure didn't look or act that age!

And to continue with Cisco Kid.... Cisco and Pancho were the first Hispanics to star in a TV series. Except Cisco wasn't actually Hispanic. He was born and raised in Romania!

 

[Redbeard]

Horses fall over when riders get shot.
I still wonder how they got horses to fall like that.

Training. We had a circus horse that would do that. Found out he did it the hard way. Nearly broke my leg.

 

[BBQJoe]

No one in the wild west was smart enough to design seatbelts for covered wagons and stage coaches.

 

[ladycat]

No one in the wild west was smart enough to design seatbelts for covered wagons and stage coaches.

Yeah, they really needed them for when the horses would panic and start running like mad.