Side Roads: A ‘Bonanza’ of daisies

I always hated it when one of the Cartwright boys fell in love. It always ended badly, especially for the girl.

Each week, as the familiar theme from “Bonanza” played and Ben, Hoss, Adam and Little Joe raced their horses right up to the cameraman, folks across the nation got ready for another hour of drama, comedy or both. Sometimes, the Ponderosa would nearly be lost to scoundrels, thieves or conniving women. At other times, the Cartwrights had to shoot it out to save the town or some innocent young lovely’s honor.

They took turns being beaten, dragged, deceived and taunted, and that was just the three boys fighting among themselves.

But the worst times revolved around love, sweet love. All the men of the Ponderosa found love at one time or another, and for the first 55 minutes of the show, it was great. You could practically smell the roses and hear the bluebirds chirping.

That’s all well and fine for one show, but what about next week? If one of the characters is already taken, he’s out of the lineup for the next show requiring a little romance.

Marry all of them off, and the show would have to revolve around settling into marriage, raising kids, fighting over the bills.

If people wanted to watch that, they’d film themselves. Some successful sit-coms centered on family life have flourished, but the whole concept of the Western rests on being wild and free.

What to do? The obvious, of course — kill off the girl.

Everything would be sunshine and flowers, except for the last five minutes of the show, which would feature Ben/Hoss/ Adam/Little Joe cradling a dying sweetheart — or even a wife — in their arms.

They had women pushing up daisies all over that ranch, especially Little Joe.

Today, men with that kind of record of dead sweethearts would do more than raise eyebrows. Some enterprising soul would probably go to the authorities and demand an investigation, and the next thing you know, “CSI” would be featuring one of those “ripped from the headlines” shows.

On occasion, one of the women would escape such a fate. The Cartwright man of the hour would put her best interests ahead of his broken heart. He would put her on the stage to go back east to complete finishing school, or follow her heart to the convent, or make peace with her rich family. Sometimes, they turned out to be wicked women who were bent on snaring the Cartwright money. In the last five minutes of those shows, those women, too, were put on stages out of town, but without quite the same sendoff as the others.

Watching those programs, 55 minutes seemed a long time for the boys to figure out what was going on.

In real life, 55 minutes would be the bargain of all time.

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Persinger is community editor for The Tribune. She may be reached at (812) 523-7063 or jpersinger@tribtown.com.