The Day I Met John Wayne

I feel I need to preface this by explaining that my father was a preacher. The preacher's residence was always next door to the church building and always about the size of a cracker box. It was not uncommon to be awakened during the night by total strangers seeking refuge for themselves or their children. Folks migrating from the "dust bowl" of Oklahoma and Texas would come to our house needing money or food, desperate enough for assistance they would sell any of their goods they treasured enough to pack for the journey. Others sought us out for Daddy to help seal the bond of marriage of an eloping couple. Mostly, these people were strangers to us...people we met only once in this life. This description of my family life has little to do with John Wayne except to introduce you to my father. Now, on with the purpose of this tale. The names have been altered to protect the forgiven guilty parties.

We were living in Tucson, and it was the middle of the night when the phone call came. It was Mrs. Jones, a single mom struggling to launch her attractive teenage daughter Rhoda into life with the fewest number of scars. There were six or eight "thick as thieves" teenage girls in our congregation. For the most part, we were a screaming, talkative '50's pack, crammed into one car, all talking at the same time. Rhoda was a couple of years older than most of the group and the only word I can think of to describe her is voluptuous

Rhoda had gone to a party that night and returned home well beyond the limitations of curfew and rip-roaring drunk. Her mother called my father first, then the police. By the time my parents arrived on the scene, the police were already there. Mainly, the police put Rhoda in one room and her mother in another while they tried to calm both. One of the responding officers moonlighted as a security guard at Old Tucson, a tourist attraction in the desert, used mainly for making cowboy movies. Once the hysteria was calmed, that officer assured Mrs. Jones that her daughter was not a bad person, and after they had time to get a good night's sleep, they would need a day of good memories to overcome this night. If they would come to Old Tucson the next day to a certain gate, he would introduce her to John Wayne and Ricky Nelson. My parents were invited to join them, and "Certainly...bring your daughter, too."

At the appointed time, we picked up Mrs. Jones and Rhoda and drove through the countryside to Old Tucson. The guard was at his station. He took a break to accompany us to the setting for the bar. There, seated around a rickety table was John Wayne, Ricky Nelson, and Dean Martin. The female lead walked through, and I remember not wanting her autograph because she was an unknown -- her name was Angie Dickenson.

We watched them film a shootout scene. It took hours to get it right. When the movie came out, the portion we watched in the making equaled about 20 seconds of the actual movie. We posed for photos and gathered autographs and "dust from Ricky Nelson's feet." What I remember about John Wayne was that he was bigger than life with enormous hands. He and Ricky talked to each other during the photo session, discussing their upcoming scene.

The photos snapped that day never made it back from the drugstore developer. We always expected them to show up in some movie magazine; but if that was the case, we missed it. "What happened to the autograph?" you might inquire. I sold it to a man at an antique show for $150. Now, this blog is all I have to show for it.

Can you guess the name of the movie?