Janis Joplin (1943-1970), from her famous song “Piece of my Heart”
I was saddened to see the headline of Fess Parker’s death yesterday. I was a fan of his Daniel Boone television series Thursday nights on NBC. It was sort a family hour for us. My father would watch the show with us, peel apples and cut them into slices for handing a piece in alternating order to my brother and me as Boone tricked the British and attempted to deal with the Indians fairly in Kentucky and around Boonesborough.We felt a connection to the frontiersman because our father was from Kentucky. As a youngster I had every intention of moving to Kentucky someday. I also recall reading some lame biography of Daniel Boone from the elementary school library. Do public elementary schools have libraries today? Still, I have an interest in Daniel Boone as I purchased the 2007 biography “Boone, A Biography” by Robert Morgan.
Parker’s Davy Crockett days were a bit before my time, but once Daniel Boone became a hit Crockett was rerun occasionally on “The Wonderful World of Walt Disney” on Sunday nights and I was able to catch up on a craze that was a hit before I was born. Crockett had an influence on Boone because the Kentuckian never wore a coonskin cap.
Time marches on and as family members and TV icons leave their mortal coils, I have an even greater appreciation of our relatively brief and temporary time allotted to us.
