Toughest marshal in the West

How did I know that J. Rooster Cogburn, a “fearless one-eyed marshal who never knew a dry day in his life,� was going to ride on the silver screen, guns blazing, when I was gol’ dang sure writing a story about him was just a waste of paper?

Rooster Cogburn, you say? Name doesn’t ring a bell? Keep your eye on the TV commercials and then mosey down to the nearest movin’ picture house to see a reprise of “True Grit,� already being touted as “the best movie of 2010.�

It’s a doggone interesting story, I reckon, so stay with me and imagine that in the ’60s you were paying a visit to London.

That’s where I was, way back in those days when I was travel editor of the New York Herald Tribune and was prone, about once a month or so, to go on a junket. On this trip I had been gamboling around East Anglia, the eastern most part of England, whence came a more than substantial number of English settlers to New England.

My last stop was London, where the Herald Tribune’s bureau chief invited me to dinner.

Charlie Portis was a young man in his late 20s, and I was fulsome in telling him how lucky he was to be chief of one the paper’s most important bureaus.

“I’m leaving,� he said.

“You’re what?

“Leaving. Quitting. Going back home. I find British politicians irritating. The Parliament is the most boring collection of men I’ve ever seen.�

I didn’t know what to say for a moment, but then I caught my wits and asked: “What are you going to do back home? Got a job as editor of a big paper?�

“Write a novel,� he replied.

“But … but … but …� I stuttered. “I don’t want to discourage you, but first-time novel writers are lucky if their books sell 5,000 copies. And it’s such a chore to find a publisher, and then to get the book all put together, typed, printed and bound.�

“I know,� said Charlie Portis, “but that’s what I’m going to do.�

And he did. And guess what, his first novel was nothing to write home about.

“Ha,� quoth I to anyone who would listen. “I warned Charlie in London but he wouldn’t pay any attention.�

So then he wrote another novel, “True Grit,� about a teenage girl who hires deputy marshal J. Rooster Cogburn, who boasted he had killed 23 men, to track down the killers of her father.

“True Grit� became a bestseller and then went before the cameras. The actor who played J. Rooster Cogburn won his only Oscar and an honorary award for years of shooting up the Wild West. Yes, Cogburn was John Wayne at his rip-snorting best, chasing the murderers with both guns blazing.

Now, wouldn’t you know it? J. Rooster Cogburn rides again. Jeff Bridges, with a fearsome beard and that menacing eye patch, has been hired once again by a teenage girl to chase the bad guys through the trees and up and down the  fields shooting his Colt revolvers like there was no tomorrow.

 And by gosh and by golly, that will be me, sitting halfway back in the Deluxe Cinema, digging into my bag of popcorn and cheering on the “toughest gun in the West.â€�

Funny how what goes around comes around again. If I could track down Charlie Portis I’d congratulate him for not taking my advice so many years ago in Londontown.

Freelance writer Barnett Laschever, the curmudgeon of Goshen, was first published in his Weaver High School graduation book in 1941. He’s now working on a new play.