We lost a good friend recently. The actor, Fess Parker, passed away at the age of 85. I remember Sunday nights watching the Walt Disney show on television. Once in a great while I would get lucky and it would be an episode about Davy Crockett. Fess Parker was Davy Crockett.

They made a movie about Davy Crockett, and then later Fess Parker took on the role of Daniel Boone on the television show, “Daniel Boone.” It was on NBC from 1964 to 1970.

There was many a day my friends and I would don our “buckskins” and our “coonskin caps” and play frontiersmen in the back yard. Maybe we would go hunting for bear in the woods, or “injun fighting,” or any number of things we had seen Fess Parker do as Davy Crockett, or Daniel Boone.

We would use hand signals, try our best to sneak through the wilderness and sneak up on whoever, or whatever we were hunting. We knew better than to step on a twig, we paid attention to which way the wind blew and tried to stay downwind of our prey. I will never forget the great times we had on the pine straw paths of the deep woods surrounding Forest Hills subdivision in Garner.

There were bushes of honeysuckle, blackberry, blueberries, wild strawberries and plenty of poison ivy if you weren’t careful. We knew where to find the best watermelons and how to relieve the owner of a small one occasionally, the places to hide, and ride our banana seat bicycles with the high-rise handlebars. I still get tickled thinking about using a stick as my flintlock rifle and calling it “Bessie” just like Davy Crockett. I always wet the sights right before I aimed too!

Fess Parker retired from acting in the ‘70s to concentrate on running a popular resort hotel on the Santa Barbara waterfront and a central California winery bearing his name. He was very successful and lived a full life. I truly regret that all these years I never once attempted to contact him and let him know how influential he had been to a 10-year-old boy’s imagination.

I still get excited hearing the theme music to “Davy Crockett.” I know Mr. Parker went to his reward peacefully, after a long and rewarding life. But to me and many others, he will always be seen as Davy Crockett, swinging ole’ Bessie and defending the Alamo.

Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier. I’ll be right back.

You can reach Joe Lee at clevelandtidbits@yahoo.com.