Only ever one Virginian in lost world of wonder

Country Living with Francis Farragher

Maybe it’s an escape valve from the gruesomeness of listening to daily doses of news programmes for decades but I have to admit that listening to Marty Whelan on Lyric FM does tend to whisk me away to a nicer mental place on the 40 minute journey to work.

There I was last Friday morning when he played the theme song from The Virginian TV western series of the 1960s (it just survived into the early ’70s I believe), and in that 60 seconds of the Percy Faith composition, there was a journey back to the days of black and white television when James Drury (The Virginian) and Doug McClure (Trampas) could solve all the problems of a seven or eight year old.

The only slight little difficulty in trying to keep track of The Virginian, Trampas and Sheriff Ryker lay in the fact that for most of us in early to mid 1960s, there were no televisions in the house, but no . . . oh no . . . that didn’t stop us from linking up with the gang from Shiloh Ranch, as we sought out ‘safe houses’ with black and white Bush or Pye televisions, where we’d be welcomed pretty warmly.

In hindsight, the prospect of three or four ‘second classers’ landing into your house to watch television was probably a tad on the forward side, but there was no cheek in our visits, and also there was no danger of anyone else trying to view different channels.

This was the world of single channel, glorious black and white television, where the only hitch might be the picture ‘slipping’ occasionally, a problem normally sorted by a gentle fist on top of ‘the box’ or the pressing of the on/off button.

Our little gang were in most ways perfect visitors to our neighbours’ houses as from the moment the theme tune sounded for The Virginian, you could hear a pin drop in the room, as James Drury, who played a character of impeccable morals steeped in honour and integrity, sorted out all the bad stuff that arrived on his doorstep at the ranch in Medicine Bow, Wyoming.

We never did get to know the real name of The Virginian – that must have been one of the little dramatic tricks of the series – but his trusted white horse, called Joe D, alongside Trampas’s buckskin, aptly named Buck, had in our eyes dust flying out through the TV screen, every time they set out on their mission to sort out the world.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.