The morons at PicApp didn’t have a picture of Fess Parker, so I had to settle for this. My Davy Crockett cap was way better than this one.



This is a big one in my odd little universe. I achieved sentience just about the time the Davy Crockett craze hit America, and (although it’s embarrassing for a Christian to admit), ol’ Davy (as portrayed by Fess Parker, who died today at 85) loomed about as large as Jesus there, for a while.

And in my obsessive way, I’ve remained not entirely unfaithful to the Crockett cult. I’ve read a couple books on his life, and checked out the web sites. I once visited a house “Colonel” Crockett built and lived in, near Rutherford, Tennessee. I met a guy who’d played tennis with Fess Parker once, and he could have borrowed money from me if he’d wanted to.

It always irked me that I didn’t have an ancestor at the Alamo. That was actually one of the things that bonded me with Erling Skjalgsson, hero of my novels. I hope it’s not too much of a spoiler (anybody who’s read Heimskringla knows about it) to say that Erling died a death not dissimilar to Davy’s. Because generations of my ancestors lived in Erling’s neighborhood, it’s a statistical impossibility that I didn’t have an ancestor or two who fell with Erling (I might even be a descendant of Erling himself).

So without Davy Crockett, I might have never written the books I’ve written. (“And what a loss that would have been to the world,” he whispered to himself, very quietly.)

In any case, rest in peace, Fess Parker.