A little fun.

OK I know things have been pretty heavy the last day or so, but I want to introduce a little levity.

Everybody knows I'm as big a John Ford fan as Troop and I saw an old silent movie going back to 1924 (happy centenary), The Iron Horse. It's on YouTube, so, if you want to see a real Western, knock yourself out.

Now I'd seen it before and I remembered how the North Brothers' battalion of Pawnee scouts and an infantry detachment on flatcars saved the end of track from massacre, but what I didn't remember, now in my dotage, was the best part. Since the infantry detachment at the main camp was relatively small and the tarriers weren't going because they hadn't been paid in a while, there weren't enough men volunteering to go. So who saves the day?

THE HOOKERS!!!!!

No Hell On Wheels was complete without some lusty ladies willing to risk hide and hair to give the Micks a little relaxation after a hard day on the ties (at reasonable rates, of course), so, when enough men weren't willing, the ladies of the line, led by their madam (who is the girlfriend of our hero), picked up rifles and climbed on the flatcars.

The movie is done very well for its time (what he could have done with Technicolor and surround sound) and a lot more realistic than anything made in the last 50 years, Ford being a consummate student of the West, but it got me thinking about Ford's take on Western women, of which I have written before. He views The Girls They Left Behind (commissioned and enlisted) with tenderness and affection, and no small amount of pride, but it's the ladies of the line for whom he has a real soft spot.

Just as Fort Apache tells the story of the Army wives, so does Stagecoach tell the story of the soiled doves through the eyes of Dallas. Ringo thinks he knows her from somewhere, but she can't imagine where. She'd love to get out of the business (her brief glimpse of her being orphaned tells how she got started), but she's sure it's a forlorn hope. Many of her compadres left the farm out of boredom or seeing Ma dead at 40 from overwork. Some had no skills. A few were widows or divorcees who missed that roll in the hay or laundresses with kids who needed the odd spare buck.

As I noted earlier, the ones who found a man, usually a regular, were the lucky ones. Death came all too soon to the rest, as Ford doubtless knew. Some did find redemption in such situations as Indian attacks or epidemics. Some madams led their girls to church every Sunday. A little like the Civil War with its Rebs and Yanks exchanging canned goods or playing baseball, the West made its own respectability as it went along.

I can see Ford's Irish heart going out to them.