The sun is setting on the Lone Ranger Fan Club

There comes a time at the end of the trail when every cowboy must ride off into the sunset.
I’m afraid I’ve hit that point with the Lone Ranger Fan Club. For the last eight years I’ve been riding the range with my faithful companion, Tonto (a.k.a. Sandy), bringing back the thrilling days of yesteryear to fans young and old. I’m afraid I’ve reached a season in life where it’s time to take off the mask, send Silver out to pasture (I’m keeping Tonto!) and let someone else chase down the bad guys for a while.
Actually, I never came across any bad guys. Lone Ranger fans are some of the most enjoyable, fun-loving people I’ve ever known. It’s been a real thrill to get to know so many of them, even if it’s only been by correspondence. I will always treasure my time in the saddle. To understand why I’m giving it up, you must first know what got me into it.
Back several years ago I got the notion into my head that I wanted to write a novel. At first I wanted to do a Star Trek novel, but that field was crowded and the storyline I had in mind played out one evening on my television set. Realizing that I was not going to be sending the Enterprise and her gallant crew on any missions against the Klingons, I took stock of other heroes that were still beloved but not necessarily in the mainstream. That led me to one of my childhood favorites, the Lone Ranger.
As much as I liked the character, I didn’t know much about him. At least it wasn’t fresh in my mind. I began doing research, looking for any information I could. I found an address for Clayton Moore and wrote him a letter requesting a phone interview. I also included a photo for him to sign. He signed and returned the photo, but I missed his call. A few months later he was gone.
As my research continued, I found a contact for John Hart, the actor who took over the role for a season. I did a phone interview with him and wrote a feature story for the newspaper I was working for at the time. Not long after that, I came across a website for a Lone Ranger newsletter called “The Silver Bullet.” I was sure that would be a treasure trove of information, so I subscribed.
I was right. It was loaded with all kinds of information about the masked man. A few issues into my subscription, the writer/publisher, a guy from Washington State named Terry Klepey, wrote that he was losing interest since Moore’s death and was ready to let someone else take the reigns. As a professional journalist and now a Lone Ranger enthusiast, I felt it was something I could do very easily. I talked it over with my wife and gave Terry a call.
A short time later I was running the newsletter. It’s a quarterly publication and was printed on a copier and stapled together in the top left-hand corner. I did it that way for a while, but felt it deserved more, so I upgraded it to a booklet. At the same time, I began to hear from some of the old-timers who lamented that there wasn’t a club they could belong to like they did when they were kids. That got me to thinking, why not?
So in 2003 the Lone Ranger Fan Club was formed and The Silver Bullet became its official publication. I contacted the trademark owners of the character and got their seal of approval for what I was doing. They were thrilled to have free publicity for their character. At the time there were plans announced for a major motion picture to be made, a television pilot was being filmed and several other major projects were in the works. My timing couldn’t have been better.
I got a website up (www.lonerangerfanclub.com) and the club began to grow. So did my family. I now had four kids and became the Cubmaster of a Pack we started at church. On top of that, we started a home-based business printing T-shirts, mugs and things. Then, my world fell apart. The movie was dropped. The television pilot became a movie of the week and it bombed big time.
I left my job at the newspaper to focus on my business at home, but it tanked. In the span of a few months I fell off my lofty perch atop my world and hit rock bottom with a thud. We moved to Amarillo to seek a new start in life. Through all the chaos, the fan club continued to thrive. But with an active church life and another son going into Scouts, it became a struggle to meet the publication schedule.
In 2008 we held a convention in honor of the 75th anniversary of The Lone Ranger. It was a mild success. We barely broke even, but had a ball in the process. I got to meet a lot of people I only knew via e-mail and phone calls.
About that time I took a job that was an hour away from home. The commute really took its toll on me and further hindered my ability to do the newsletter. Yet the fan club continued to grow. Disney announced that super-producer Jerry Bruckheimer was going to make a Lone Ranger movie and membership began to skyrocket.
Then came the move to the Houston area. We moved into Sandy’s grandfather’s house in Rosenberg and I accepted this job in Waller County. Almost two years later and my family is pretty entrenched in Rosenberg. We now have three boys in Scouts and a hyperactive church life. My commute is still about an hour and it’s wearing me and my car out. The demands on my time here at the paper and at home with my family have me burning my candle at both ends and melting in the middle. Something has to give.
Now, as we are just months away from the movie being filmed, it is time to let go. I’ve put the fan club up for sale. Someone else can bask in the bright lights of Hollywood. I’ve carried this ball to the goal line. Someone else can score the touchdown. I have a family that needs me. I need my sanity back. My boys need a Scout leader and a dad who will play catch, ride bikes and go fishing.
While giving up the fan club won’t shorten my commute, it will take off a lot of my stress at home. There is still a big part of me that wants to keep going with it and maybe I’ll find a way to keep my hand in it. But I have to accept the fact that I am first a family man and that’s the role I need to play. No mask required. It’s time for me to ride off into the sunset before the sun sets on me. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll find time to write my book.
If you’re interested in doing this gig, e-mail me at lonerangerfanclub@sbcglobal.net. Hi-Yo Silver, Awaayyyy!

Now for some totally random thoughts

Hello, here we are once again. I’m writing to you from the business end of a blank page.
That tends to happen from time to time in the life of a newspaper columnist, especially as deadline draws near. There comes that time when I have to put a string of complete sentences together in an order that both makes sense and has some important and/or entertaining value to it.
This is where I part lines with the rules and reality. I have a lot of topics in mind to write about, but nothing that really stands out as a good column idea. So, as my teenage son would say, here is a collection of some “totally random” thoughts.

How ’bout them Texans!
OK, so two wins does not a season make. But hey, you gotta love seeing the Texans start the season at 2-0. To sweeten the pot, they’ve done it at the expense of two pretty good teams, the Colts and the Redskins. I just hope they can keep the momentum going for the next few games.
I would love to see the Texans crush the 0-2 Cowboys (emphasis on the 0-2), followed by the Raiders and the Giants. As a die hard Broncos fan, I have a strong dislike for the Raiders and any team that has beaten the Broncos in the Super Bowl, which includes the Redskins, Cowboys and Giants. A 5-0 start for the Texans would make me a very happy man – and a very enthused Texans fan.

Speaking of football …
I went to Royal High last week for the big game between the Falcons and the Hempstead Bobcats. I was pleased to see so much fan support on both sides of the field. Though I could only stay through the start of the second half, I was surprised to see the 32-14 final score in favor of the home team. I was anticipating either a defensive struggle or a shootout, since both teams have stingy defenses and high-powered offenses.
Royal’s running back Brandon Williams appears to be the real deal. He’s got a great combination of speed and power. You don’t see too many players of his caliber at this level.

Teen transformation
Just a couple weeks ago, my son, Wesley, had really long, stringy hair and a mouth full of braces. He looked about as teen-geek as they come. This year he entered B.F. Terry High School as a freshman and joined the Junior ROTC. Off came the hair. And last week, after about four years, off came the braces. My how quickly my young man has grown up! If you looked at before and after pictures side-by-side, you could hardly tell they were the same person.
The transformation is also at work on the inside. Between JROTC and the Boy Scouts, he is really improving his character. The training and discipline are doing him a world of good. I am so proud of him!

Why?
Have you ever noticed in those corny credit card commercials that the big, tough Viking characters all speak with a decidedly British accent? What’s up with that? And speaking of Vikings, the hit movie last spring, “How to Train Your Dragon,” had Vikings with a Scottish brogue. Doesn’t anyone remember that Vikings were Scandinavian? And why do Scotts and the Irish get brogues while the rest of us are stuck with accents?

How do they do that?
You can’t live in cattle country for very long before you learn about modern facts of life. When I was a kid back in Colorado, we had a cow. One day my dad had a vet come over and – going up to his elbow in a place where the sun don’t shine – artificially inseminate the cow. If you don’t know what artificial insemination is, please don’t ask me to explain. That’s why God made Google.
After a number of years I learned to understand and accept this unnatural practice as a way of doing business in the world of modern cowboys. What I failed to consider then, and am a bit squeamish about finding out now, is one of those profound mysteries of life. How do they get the semen from the bull? Worse yet, whose job is it to extract it?
Somehow I don’t think the process involves a secluded stall, a glass of wine and a copy of Cowboy Magazine. That, after all, would be udder-ly ridiculous.

Looking for God in all the wrong places

Where is God?
In biblical times, men assumed God lived in the sky, somewhere amid the clouds.
As man learned to fly, God was pushed to outer space. When man went to space, he was again moved to someplace in the universe. Now, as Hubble and other space-borne telescopes gaze through the heavens (kind of ironic calling them that), they see no sign of God. All that can be seen is his creation.
Now we have the likes of Stephen Hawking and others trying to prove that creation could happen without God.
As we search the stars are we failing to see the forest (maker) for the trees (creation)? The question remains, where is God?
As a Christian, I know God to be in my heart in the form of the Holy Spirit. Lately I’ve been reading some books that have me thinking anew about the nature of God. We try to visualize and restrict God to what we can see and experience for ourselves. To me, that is like trying to understand an artist by looking at his painting. It doesn’t tell you much of anything about the artist, the equipment he used to paint with, his viewpoint and ideas about his subject or anything else about his world.
All we can discern is what we see on the canvas. The picture is beautiful, even as we muddy it up with our destructive way of life. To us, that canvas is all that there is. There is nothing beyond the frame. To me, that way of thinking is incredibly ignorant and small-minded. We theorize and assume there must be no painter (creator) because he is not visibly reflected in our limited picture.
We do not see him and we do not see his other works of art nor the world in which he lives. Therefore, we must have evolved and appeared naturally with the painting. After all, everything we see and know can be found in this painting.
I submit to you that God is much more than the painting. I think some of what he is has been reflected in his masterpiece that is creation, but that there is infinitely more to him than that which we know and see.
Consider for a moment that God is eternal – no beginning and no end. Eternity is not limited by the linear concept of time as we understand it. God, being an eternal being, can move forward and backward in time. I believe he also goes above, below and through it. Because he can be at any point in time, he certainly knows everything there is to know about what he has created.
One of the books that I’ve just finished reading is “The Shack” by William P. Young. While it is a work of fiction, it wrestles with some very deep concepts about God and why bad things happen in this life. It opened my eyes to the fact that what happens in this life is not about us, but about him and our relationship with him.
In the book, the protagonist is bitterly angry when his young daughter is kidnapped and killed. He is angry at the killer and at God for allowing it to happen. While I don’t want to ruin the story for those who want to read it, suffice it to say that it says a lot about forgiveness and looking at situations from a perspective not our own. It places a huge emphasis on God’s love for us and his desire for a relationship with each person – even those who do evil.
The concepts of forgiveness and relationship have been reinforced in the book I am currently reading called “Pagan Christianity” by Frank Viola and George Barna. That book takes a startling and, dare I say, shocking look at how modern Christianity in all its forms have been to prevalently influenced by paganism. I am amazed at how much stuff we call “church” is anything but scriptural.
What is scriptural is the call for Christians to be in fellowship with and to minister to one another. We are to be in a continual relationship with God. He’s not some distant being who serves as our go-to guy when we need a prayer answered or when we attend church. We are indwelt by him in the form of the Holy Spirit and he expects us to act like it. I plan to have more to say on this book after I have read it and delved into the follow-up books.
In the meantime, I am learning to look within myself and in the hearts of others as I seek God. I know he is not hiding someplace in the cosmos waiting to be found by prying eyes with majestic telescopes. He’s right here, with you and me – where he wants to be and has been all along. By looking within we can see beyond the canvas of creation and see the artist.

Finding meaning in a meaningless game

It will go down in the annals of history as just another meaningless pre-season football game between Tampa Bay and Houston which saw the Buccaneers overcome the home team 24-17.
That game was played on a Thursday night, featured the second string as starters and left more empty seats than fans in the stands of Reliant Stadium. At least that’s the way it looked from the field. As the game wore on the stands slowly filled, but it was far from being a sell-out.
As meaningless as the game may seem, there are some people to whom it was priceless. One of them, to be sure, is Neal Rackers, who gave Chris Brown, the last original Texan, the boot in the contest for the kicking job. There are a few other players who are still suiting up based on their performance in that game. There are still others who are not. To each of them, the game was not meaningless.
The game was also special for a friend of mine, Bryan Borden, who took his 3-year-old son, Bryce, to his first professional football game.
“I think the atmosphere of the great fans and the big stadium really had him in awe,” Bryan said. “He loved watching the great hits and asked a lot of questions. We had a great time. I think his favorite parts of the night were yelling at the players, eating ice cream, and the train ride (park and ride).”
The game was certainly not meaningless to me. I had the privilege of photographing the game from the sidelines. It’s the third time I’ve photographed an NFL game and the fifth time I’ve shot a pro game. The first non-NFL game was the Denver Gold vs. the New Jersey Generals in the USFL and the other was the Raleigh-Durham Skyhawks vs. the New York/New Jersey Knights of the World League of American Football. The other NFL games I did were the Denver Broncos vs. the Arizona Cardinals and the Minnesota Vikings vs. the Miami Dolphins.
Being on the sidelines of an NFL game – even a pre-season game – is a unique experience. It’s easy to be in awe of being up-close with big name superstars of the game. I’ve been around enough celebrities in my day that, while I still get a little tingle about it, I really don’t get starstruck anymore.
This was the first professional game since before 9/11 that I’ve done and I must say that I wasn’t prepared for the increased security. In addition to showing my ID to get my press credentials and having my bag thoroughly searched, I also had to sign in again inside the stadium and was then issued a red photo vest.
Inside there is a room just for still and video photographers that is well guarded and equipped with computer ports, outlets, televisions, and a nice spread of food and drink. Annie Green was one of the Texans people assigned to assist us and I have to give her kudos for being very kind and able to anticipate our needs before we were even aware of them.
Out on the field, the sidelines were crowded. After the pre-game VIPs were sent upstairs we got a little breathing room, but there were still an awful lot of press people interested in a “meaningless” pre-season game. Aside from all us media folks, players and coaches, you have a ton of other team officials, game officials, mascot, cheerleaders and others whose business I could not discern who were all vying for precious space to view the game.
I was there to observe the sidelines as much as the game. At least, that was my premise for being there. Thanks to Vince Yokom and the loan of his camera and zoom lenses, coupled with my company-issued Canon, I had two cameras to shoot with and ended up getting more than 300 shots. You sure couldn’t do that in the days of film cameras.
There is nothing like being at an event live to really get a feel for what is going on. The difference is like listening to your favorite group on your iPod versus having front-row seats at their concert.
As enjoyable as this experience was, I was still very disappointed that the starters sat out the game. It was like watching the junior varsity play after you’ve been conditioned to enjoy varsity ball. Still, when you’ve got guys battling for a spot on the team, you tend to get a lot of colorful action as they put it all out on the line.
These are the guys, like me and my friend Bryan, for whom the game was anything but meaningless – even if the wrong team won.

Ignoring the moon is just plain lunacy

I guess you could say I’m going through the moon phase of life. I’ve always had a love for NASA and space exploration. Lately though, I’ve been enthralled by the Apollo missions to the moon.
I’ve recently read Neil Armstrong’s biography, “First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong” and have previously read Buzz Aldrin’s “Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon.” (That’s “read” as in listened to the audio books.) Years ago I read Jim Lovell’s book upon which the movie “Apollo 13” was based.
One thing that has always puzzled me is the lack of national interest in the great feat that was the Apollo program. Sending men to the moon and returning them safely is mankind’s crowning achievement to date. Yet we celebrate it with a collective yawn.
Every five years NASA trots out Neil and Buzz for a big anniversary soiree. There’s no national holiday in honor of the occasion and most people couldn’t tell you the date of the first lunar landing. (It was July 20, 1969, by the way.)
There were 24 men who have flown to the moon and 12 who have walked on the lunar surface. How many of the dozen moonwalkers can you name? Most people can’t get past Armstrong and Aldrin. After them, in order are Pete Conrad, Alan Bean, Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell, David Scott, James Irwin, John Young, Charles Duke, Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt. (And just to be honest, I had to use a cheat sheet to keep them in order.)
Of the 12 moon men, three have passed on – Conrad, Shepard and Irwin. The remaining nine – with the exception of Armstrong and Aldrin and perhaps Cernan (the last man to walk on the moon) – are hardly recognized in public. One would think, given what they have accomplished, that their likenesses would be as well known in public as, say, the Beatles.
I bet if you asked someone on the street who Harrison Schmitt is or what Edgar Mitchell is famous for, you would not get the correct answer nine times out of 10, even in Houston, home of NASA.
The most famous of those who went to the moon without reaching the surface would have to be Jim Lovell, who went there on Apollo 8 and then returned on the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission. People might recognize the names but not the faces of his crewmates on Apollo 13 – Fred Haise and Jack Swigert. Michael Collins would be a close second to Lovell as the command module pilot of the Apollo 11 mission.
Frank Borman, Bill Anders, Tom Stafford, Dick Gordon, Stuart Roosa, Al Worden, Ken Mattingly and Ronald Evans also went to the moon without walking on it.
Aside from Lovell, can you name the other astronauts who have made two trips to the moon? They are Young and Cernan, both of whom flew on Apollo 10 and later on Apollos 16 and 17 respectively.
I’m still dumbfounded that the nation would so quickly lose interest in the moon landings that the last three Apollo missions would get scrapped. What gets me even more is how there is little support for going back to the moon and onto Mars. That just 40 years after the first moon landing we could have an American president attempt to kill the manned spaceflight program is absurd.
Ending manned spaceflight is not going to solve the nation’s social ills. On the contrary, it will be a setback in the science that is going on in space that will lead to cures for diseases, technological advances and increased understanding of our world and its place in the universe. We cannot take a step forward by taking a giant leap backward.
One has to ask, where will we find the next generation of astronauts – or will we even need them? Is space travel something once accomplished and forever obtained? Or is space travel our future?
If you ask me, aside from maintaining the International Space Station, we should leave development of low-earth orbit exploration to commercial ventures and focus our national resources on the moon, Mars and beyond. Only when we explore what’s out there will we learn the things we need to better understand what we have back here.
Men have gazed as the moon for millennia, wondering what it’s like up there. Only a dozen have looked back at Earth from the moon. I think it’s high time this nation went back into a moon phase and let someone else discover what lies beyond the pull of Earth’s gravity.