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68 Trigger Tries to Explain Aw, Dale, he didn’t mean it when he said I was the best thing that ever happened to him. If he even said it, chalk it up to the RKO publicity machine. I’m a horse, a dead one at that, mounted in the museum with glass eyes and looking a little ratty as the tubby former fans file by with their bewildered bored kids, who are thinking, Golden palomino, my ass, I can’t believe he brought us here instead of Disneyland, the boys looking like overgrown insects and the girls like prostitutes in their halter tops, jean short-shorts and platform sandals. It would have killed Roy to see them, being such a goody-goody, always Leonard Slye just beneath the skin with his Oklahoma homilies, making everyone feel safe and sound. Oh, sure the big bad Nazis were gone, but there were plenty of villains: on the left the Commies, on the right the McCarthyites. Poor Dale, you had a horse, too, what was her name? You were Queen of the West until you gained a hundred pounds on fried rashers, doughnuts, Wonder Bread, and bakery cakes. Okay, so it couldn’t last forever. Get over it, Trigger, I tell myself, television is fickle. Now it’s hospital shows, blood and angst 69 undercut with tawdry sex. I blame the French, frigging cinema verité. Where’s the story, the hero, the beautiful girl? Where’s the horse? The other dead horses say, Whoa, don’t get excited, Trigger. Nothing’s the way it was. That’s the truth. Ah, youth, I try not to be bitter, but sometimes I dream about Zorro, now there was a guy who could make a horse look good. ...

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