New Little Joe Cartwright Art

Being Little Joe

Okay, the dream of this fan girl (as a child) was to be Little Joe.  I had an older brother, so it was not so much about wanting to date Joe or kiss him (silly me!), it was about being that young cowboy in that wonderful family.

Well, this last week I got my chance.

If you check out my other blog - marlaandsonyagowest@blogspot.com, you will see the progression of our trip to visit the Ponderosa II in Mesa AZ  where we spent three wonderful days in Lorne Greene's weekend retreat home that was constructed to look exactly like the set where Bonanza was filmed.  We were there with app. 40 other fans.  The hosts, Tom and Louise Swann, opened their home to us and told us to go just about anywhere and do just about anything we wanted.

So, I imitated Little Joe!  .   

On the porch listening to Adam and Pa argue inside (if I'm Joe, I guess that makes Sonya, Hoss!).  

Sent out to fetch the wood

Going to talk to the hands in the bunkhouse

Enjoying an evening with the family in front of the great hearth and, yes, there are checkers on the table! 

And fruit too! 

Making Adam mad - sitting in his chair

Waiting to be tended by Hop Sing

In place at the dinner table

 

Joseph!  Get your feet off the table!

Yes, Pa.

There's that rug - the one Joe bled on so often.

 Riding Cochise

 Beside myself!

On the stair to nowhere - just me and my handsome shadow.  

I can die happy now! LOL

Young Michael Landon Walked Here

On our New Jersey trip our able guide, Abbe Effron, took us to the town of Collingswood to haunt some of Michael Landon's childhood haunts.  These included the school where he went to kindergarten, his high school, his soda shop hangout (now an Italian restaurant), and the movie house where his father worked and he ushered.  (More about that last one later.)  We had a great time talking and sharing - and shopping!  There's great British store there and that fed my inner Whovian. Those of you who know me, know that I am a great Doctor Who fan.  If you don't know just who the Doctor is, well, then, I pity you!  LOL  

Collingswood is a beautiful historic town in New Jersey with some impressive older buildings.  It actually reminded me of Troy, OH where I live.  Many of the buildings date to the last quarter of the 19th century  and the whole place had the charm of small downtown America.  As we walked, I could just imagine Michael hanging out on its streets in the past.

Our first 'Landon' oriented stop was actually the current Collingswood Middle School, which was Michael's high school back in the day. There was a basketball game taking place on Saturday so we were able to go inside and wander.  No one questioned us, so we took an extensive tour.  Again, I could just see that skinny, slightly big-eared, curly-headed, charming and handsome kid hanging out by the lockers, talking to friends, and pursuing his after-school sports activities.  We made a stop at the auditorium and stood on the stage.  It was cool to think of how Michael's acting career was not uppermost when he was there.  Sports, he thought, was his ticket out.  In the end, of course, writing and creating emotional heartfelt stories through acting and drama ended up being his life's mission and legacy to the world.  

The gate to the stadium at the high school. 

Views of the bleachers. 

The stadium sign.

Michael's famous javelin throw, done in the stadium yard.  (Look at that body, will you?!!)

The gym where Michael would have trained. 

Abbe, Jessie, and me outside of what is now the Collingswood Middle school.

The auditorium

Live long and prosper! 

The halls of the high school.  

And yes, this is Jessie dreaming of finding Michael's locker.  <G>

From the school, we went downtown and visited a number of other local spots.  The first was Michael's kindergarten building.  That's where this cute little kidder would have attended.  What a beautiful little boy!  

The building that housed the kindergarten.

Abbe and me inside the front door. 

Our visit downtown took us a couple of other great places.  One was the corner establishment that was known as 'The Triangle' back in Michael's day.  Abbe said it was something of a soda shop/hangout at the time. The floors and doors, etc. were still original and again we had visions of our favorite guy hanging out there (especially when looking at the outside front door).  It is a wonderful Italian restaurant now.  We had lunch there and spent an hour or so soaking up the atmosphere. 

The restaurant and Abbe and Jessie pigging out.  

The original door of The Triangle 

The Triangle on the corner

For the 'capper' to our downtown trip check back soon for 'our adventures in a 1950s movie palace' or 'the tale of three crazy ladies from Ohio in the men's' restroom'.

Really!  LOL

  

  

A Man of Courage

A Man of Courage

Written in honor of Michael Landon's 80th birthday

A man of courage, a man of faith.

A man among men for any age.

Perfect, no.  Imperfect, yes.

And by both twice blessed.

Eighty years would have seen

A mighty pine tree, tall and green.

A pine with roots deeply anchored,

Its leafy top reaching Heavenward;

Battered and broken but unbowed.

All its wounds now made proud.

Actor, producer, writer, man.

Father, lover and best friend.

Voice for peace, for life, for love.

The height is reached.

Perfection found. 

Artwork - Little Joe

Will You Miss Me?

Will you miss me?

A tender question asked.  An answer sought.

Life as trial, bravely fought.

Hands of nurture, tortured mind.

Hands to protect, not to find.

Finding no one he chose himself,

To be and become something else.

Man of his making, man of choice.

I will not hurt, became his voice,

I will heal, I will help,

I will be love itself

To my children, to my friends,

To the world in the end.

Yes, I miss him.

Going back to where it all began

And I'm not talking about my Michael Landon addiction!  Still, I could be.  My love of Little Joe Cartwright started when I was in diapers watching Bonanza with my brother, who was seven years older than me.  I grew up on what the elementary age school-kids were watching, even though I was preschool age, mostly due to Mark's control of the television set!  Like all boys growing up in the 1950s, he loved Bonanza and all the other cowboys shows of the day.

Here's proof positive.  And yes, that's me in my Little Joe hat and rakishly cocked-on-the-hips gun belt!

But I digress....

This past weekend two dear friends and I took a trip to Michael Landon's hometown. Their names are Jessie and Sonya.

The trip was Jessie's idea, but Sonya and I eagerly jumped on the Conestoga band-wagon and headed off merrily to Collingswood, New Jersey, where the inimitable Michael Landon was born as Eugene Orowitz.  We left on Friday and drove over 500 miles to arrive at our hotel late that night. The next day we rose early, had breakfast, and then headed over to Cherry Hill, New Jersey where we picked up our wonderful tour guide, Abbe Effron, (and a better guide you could NOT find!).

Abbe holding a tribute she wrote to Michael

Abbe invited us into her house where we met her delightful pets.  We stayed for a bit, chatting, and then took off for Collingswood, which is only a few minutes from Cherry Hill.  Abbe did the driving (and thank you again, Abbe, for that!  We won't go into driving in New Jersey....Yikes!)  Due to that, there is NO WAY I am going to be able to keep the timeline of our visit straight.  But then this blog is not about what we saw first and last - but what we saw.  Today's post is going to focus on Michael's boyhood home.

Sonya and me

Those of you who are Michael Landon fans no doubt know of the horrific childhood this man had to overcome.  As I put it in a poem I wrote about Michael for his 80th birthday -

A tender question asked.  An answer sought.

Life as trial, bravely fought.

Hands of nurture, tortured mind.

Hands to protect, not to find.

Finding no one he chose himself,

To be and become something else.

Michael's mother was a mentally ill woman.  For reasons unfathomable to most of us, she simply hated her son.  It may have been due to his more Jewish appearance, to the fact that he was a boy (since she accepted and applauded his sister), or to something else.  Only she, God rest her soul, knows.  Needless to say she did everything she could do to let him know he was NOT acceptable and to shame him, including hanging his urine-soaked sheets out of the front window of the house for all of his friends to see. Michael was a bed-wetter, partially due no doubt to the constant stress he lived under.  I was a bed-wetter too.  Of course, now its known that the bladder of a child with this condition has simply not reached full maturity.  Back then, it could be a shameful thing.  Thank goodness my parents were supportive.  Michael's were not - neither his father or mother.  

Michael's boyhood home in Collingswood, NJ.

As we approached the house, it looked so peaceful, sitting as it does on a hill on a corner in a middle-income section of Collingswood. It faces Newton Lake where Michael fished and looks over the town where he lived, played, went to school, and made the determination that he would survive and succeed and make his life - and the lives of his own family and children - something different. 

Collingswood does not recognize or seemingly wish to acknowledge their famous son.  Abbe told us that the file on Michael at the public library is hidden away.  It is not front and center as it should be.  There were two groups of people who were prejudiced against when Michael lived in the town - Jews and Catholics.  He was both.  His father was Jewish and his mother, Irish Catholic.  Because Michael was honest about this - or at least, so it seems - he is not honored in his home town, even though he made visits back to Collingswood and held no ill-will toward the town as an adult.  Let us hope the current powers-that-be will step forward and acknowledge him in the way he deserves. 

The sheets were hung out of the window on the far left side, 

which was Michael's sister's bedroom. 

We parked out front of the house and got out of the car to look and take photos  It was a very poignant moment.  It was exciting and fun to see the place where the man I admire had lived as a child, but at the same time - to the artist and writer in me - it was hard, very hard.  I spend a lot of time getting 'into' characters heads when I write, so it was hard not to be 'in' Michael's while I was there.  All I could see was this young boy - within those walls - being terrorized by his mother and getting no support from his father.  I could see him running to the window to pull the dirty sheets in before anyone could see them, hiding out when he could in his room to escape, fleeing from the mad woman who took a knife to him on occasion - walking into the kitchen and finding that woman - his mother, who should have been the grounding force in his life - with her head in the oven attempting to kill herself. (She did this more than one time.)

It is only by the grace of God that this man - Michael Landon - did not end up a monster of the first degree

From my Bonanza/Star Trek Crossover fan fiction: The Curse of Bodie

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12125594/1/The-Curse-of-Bodie

"Michael didn't like being alone.  It left him too much time to think. Though the demons of his past had been imprisoned by the man he'd become, they still rattled at the bars of his childhood prison and shrieked to be set free."

Sonya and I outside of the rear of Michael's home.  His bedroom was where 

the small window is above the pediment triangles.

As I stood there at the back of the house - where Michael's bedroom was - I wondered how many times he'd opened that small window and dropped down and goneoff into the night to find some peace and forgetfulness.  I could see this lonely little boy needing to escape - to get away from it all.

Home should be a haven. His was nothing but Hell.

In the end, I was glad I went.  The story at Michael's childhood is ultimately not about tragedy but triumph.  That little boy who was so underappreciated and mistreated, molded the man Michael Landon was to become - a man who determined he would break the cycle of abuse and not visit upon the next generation the sins of his father and mother.  A man whose positive influence on our world is still being felt today in the literally millions of people, young and old, who watch his masterfully produced shows, and who find themselves confronted by a challenge to give grace, to offer compassion, and to help those who hurt them all in the name of a deep abiding faith in God and the ultimate hope that mankind can someday learn not only what is important, but what is right. 

One saving grace, I'm sure, for young Michael was the view out front of his childhood home.  There's nothing quite as good for the soul as time spent on a dock with a fishing pole, tossing the occasional stone and watching the ripples move across the water's placid surface; seeing the clouds reflected in a natural mirror as they roll by overhead - completely detached and unaffected by man.

More about that next time.