I got a bunch of grass from the backyard and made believe it was hay. I brushed Silver's long mane and hindquarters and made sure that I talked to him low and soft because I wanted him to relax. “A calm horse was better at riding than a nervous one,” my father said.
When there were bad guys to catch, I whistled for Tonto, who had his own horse, and I hopped on Silver and yelled: “Hi-Yo Silver! The Lone Ranger rides again!”
Tonto and I caught cattle rustlers, bank robbers, and the guys who were on the Most Wanted posters and put them all in jail. They were no match for Tonto and I because we knew how to draw our guns faster than any bad man in town.
After a long day of chasing bad guys, Tonto and I would relax by the campfire and roast some weenies, heat up some beans and eat all the grub with our fingers, something that my mother disliked.
Sometimes when I rode Silver, my dad used to sing “I’m an Old Cowhand” and make believe he was John Wayne just to get my goat. He would call me a “pilgrim” and act like he was a tougher cowboy than me. Once I got mad at him for mocking Tonto and me, and I shot him a couple times with a six-shooter.
“Ya got me,” dad said, holding his heart and falling backward. He dropped right on our green shag carpet and stayed down for a while to make like he was really dead. Of course, he’d get up later when mom asked him to take out the trash.
I shot a lot of bad guys back when I was the Lone Ranger, but the one thing that I didn’t do was shoot Indians because my mom told me that I had to respect all kinds of people and not just good cowboys.