Jewells of Thought

Saturday night I began feeling a bit off and I thought a good night’s sleep would help. However, I woke up feeling a bit worse. So I ended up staying home from church laying in my chair most of the morning. Then during the afternoon, I began watching the Grit channel. One of the major iconic classic movie actors of the 20th Century was in fact John Wayne and I once again got sucked into his world for a few hours.

When I got to this channel it was his movie ‘North to Alaska’ then the next movie was ‘The Undefeated’ I think I had seen both of these before, but it had been a while. I needed this refresher on both of them though. I was also reminded that Grandma Rosie loved to say she saw Rock Hudson with Elizabeth Taylor when she was on a school trip to Washington D.C. In this second movie Hudson was older he played a defeated Confederate Colonel who didn’t want to live in a world where the Yankee Army won the Civil War.

Does this sentiment sound familiar? How many Americans have said they would leave this country when Trump first won in 2016? I don’t remember actually seeing those Liberal actors leave. Did you?

In ‘The Undefeated’ John Wayne was also a Colonel on the opposing side. He was one of those Yankees. The look on his face shows how dismayed he is when he is just given the information that the war is over and yet he finds out the South already knew coming into this battle that the war was over. Why is it that one side still wants to hold on to their anger long after the war is long gone or mere days in this case? Hudson had already been in talks with the Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico for his family and large group to move to Mexico.

Like I said, who has actually moved from here during the years Trump was president? We can’t name anyone because he helped our country flourish and why would citizens leave when the economy was booming? Yet after the Civil War things were not quite booming. Even as the Colonel wanted to flee south trouble still caught up to him on the journey. Who, of course, but their most recent enemy would come and be amenable to helping them though? The Yankees had shedded their uniforms and were moving on with their lives after the war while this Southerner Colonel just couldn’t completely give up his title and uniform as of yet. For one it was still needed going into Mexico for at least to show off, but he had said he was either stubborn or hard-headed. Both are good words for him.

When you listen to Trump’s Rallies all across this country. What do you hear about them? Do they kick people out of them? The Vice President Kamala says people get bored and leave; apparently she has never been to one or watched it through a Livestream. They are electric and the people are some of the happiest people you will ever meet. John Wayne’s character in this movie is gracious, respectable, nonjudgmental and simply fair-minded. Both Colonels have led well in battle over the years and are evenly stacked against each other for this adventure. No one questions their resumes just their obvious outlooks on life after the war.

Watching this movie again was eye opening. Hudson’s character has a young daughter who has an admirer in one of his Lieutenants. However, sparks went off when she met Wayne’s adopted son, an Indian, who had served under him in war as well. Then to add more intrigue the Mexicans the Southern Colonel had been in talks with takes his family hostage. Again he didn’t believe Wayne would come to aid. Friendship is amazing when experiences show you who a person is and at that time in the movie they had gotten to know each other and their men fairly well.

It would almost seem fitting to say the star-crossed lovers were like the couple in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. However, that would not be accurate. The families had apparent disdain for each other. That disdain was not evident in both sides of this North and South family. I would say the South was overtly cautious, but the facts of the Yankee Colonel’s experience with the party trying to overtake the Southerner’s group and willingness to put his life on the line to save their women and children spoke volumes within less than 24 hours of their first meeting.

Why do we choose to see the bad in people first instead of the obvious ideas that would bring us together? It could very well be the sin nature we are born with, but are there other reasons? Could we be afraid of having to make changes in our thinking? Why was the Yankee Colonel so open and ready to put his life on the line for this Southern family? What was so horrible about Abraham Lincoln’s want for slavery to be abolished that it made them flee the country? Was it worth them becoming hostage in another country and under threat of death?

The poignancy of this movie hung in the air. Some of it seemed distant for me and yet the very last bit seemed to bring it come back to me as I watched it unfold. The young lady had somehow taken scissors to the Indian’s long black hair. Wayne said something like he wasn’t afraid of what he was going to do to her, but what she’s already done to him. Their hearts were already bound together. For her, he cut his long hair to the length of the other young men.

This is what love and understanding can do; unite hearts. What hearts can you help to unite for the good of this American Country.