When I was in middle school I got hooked on reading Westerns. Max Brand’s Silvertip series of novels was my favorite. Every two weeks after I got my allowance, I’d walk several miles to the Waldenbook Store at the Allegheny Center Mall. I’d buy the latest Silvertip paperback then go to Wendy’s to feast on a burger, fries and chili while immersing myself into a Western adventure for hours. r
Silvertip was a gunslinger who traveled the Wild West. He had a trusty horse that came when he whistled. Sometimes a lone wolf he rescued from a trap would accompany them. He lived on the periphery of society – sleeping in the wilderness, braving the elements and occasionally visiting society to right injustices. He was self-sufficient, autonomous and courageous.
In every novel, he was drawn into an adventure to help an underdog who was being taken advantage of in a mining dispute, over farm rights, cattle rustling or other scam by q bigger and stronger bad guy. Silvertip would fight the bad guys, save the day and then fade off into the sunset.
Silvertip was my role model. I wanted to be like him.
Too bad I was born 150 years years too late, never had a horse, only lasted two months on my Wild West adventure and spent my entire life in towns and cities.
When I googled Max Brand today, I learned that he wrote the Silvertip series in the 1930s and 40s. Max Brand was a pseudonym for Frederick Schiller Faust, who died in 1944 on the Italian front.
Imagine that – one of my key influencers and role models came from a writer who died 25 years before I was born and wrote dime store novels set 100 years earlier.
I got to thinking about my other role models as a kid. Many came from TV shows:
- The Brady Bunch showed me what a “good family” was like.
- Star Trek taught me about science, genius and odd strength like the Vulcan neck pinch.
- Happy Days made me nostalgic for the 50s (decades before I was born)
- Superman, filmed in the 50s, exemplified the values of the Greatest Generation
- Kung Fu, traveled the Wild West alone fighting injustice in the desert
When I got older, I stopped believing in TV so much. Movie heroes, detectives from novels and business CEOs became my role models. I wanted to be invulnerable, wealthy, strong and admired.
Now that I’m a grown up, my heroes are ordinary people who face real-life situations with grace and aplomb. They aren’t fighting crime, gunning down criminals or making millions. They are people like the Birdwatcher, the parents of the autistic kid and the doctor who cried when she told us my wife’s cancer had spread to her spine.
I want to be like them – strong, courageous and kind.
But, I’d be lying to you if I didn’t admit, a piece of me still wants to be the man who rides in on his trusty horse, outdraws the bad guy, saves the day and then fades off into the sunset accompanied by his wolf.
I’ll have to settle for being a loner hermit in the burbs with two 10lb dogs, driving the Orangemobile and solving problems that are mostly of my own concern.