He was born on a mountain top in Tennessee, he was
raised in the woods so he knew every tree, he was king of the wild frontier and
to a much younger version of myself he was a hero, before I had an idea of what
a hero was. Walt Disney had a hand in creating this phase of hero worship I
encountered. In the mid 1950’s, Walt made sure that every young boy in America
knew about Davy Crockett.
I was not exempt from the craze that swept the country
in 1955. Of course, my parents have to share some of the blame in this mania.
Hey, I didn’t go out and buy Davy Crockett coloring books or that little yellow
plastic record with that song that I played over and over again. I wasn’t a
hard sell though, I was all in, lock, stock and Ol’ Betsy’s barrel.
You would have thought that a character that made such
an impression on me would have been someone I would have learned much more
about. No, it didn’t happen that way. Actually, I have to admit that it wasn’t
too long after the craze that Davy was replaced by Zorro!
But, just like a lot of kids during that fling, I ate
and slept everything to do with Davy Crockett. My parents had a friend who
apparently knew of little Jimmy’s fondness for the frontiersman. He came to the
house one day with a complete Davy Crockett outfit. I say complete and it was,
it included the coon skin cap, faux buckskin clothes and, this was the cool
part, a plastic replica of Davy’s famous rifle Ol’ Betsy. Family lore has it
that young James wore that outfit that whole summer. Decades later my mother
would recall how the sweat would cascade down my face, but that coon skin cap
wouldn’t leave my head.
Recently though, I decided to give Davy a little more
attention. I picked up a couple of books about the hero from the Alamo. It was
fun to read up on a lot of the stuff Walt Disney left out. First of all, it was
never Davy. Everywhere he wrote his name it was always David Crockett. And, it
was said that people always referred to him as David. However, Uncle Walt knew
that Davy would sound better to all us kids.
The books painted a picture of a quiet unassuming guy,
closer to a Fess Parker than the John Wayne portrayal. Apparently his main attribute was that David Crockett could tell a good yarn. This trait got him into politics, first local and then the United States Congress. The stories he told while campaigning is what made him a legend in his own time. Others went on to embellish his stories. In fact, short stories and plays were written about him to the point he became quite a celebrity around the young country. And, he wasn’t much of a
fighter. He was in the Indian wars with Andrew Jackson, but his duties were
mostly filled with hunting down food to feed Jackson’s army. In fact, Crockett
would much rather hunt than most anything else. Also, when he took off to
Texas, he really had no intentions of going to fight. He was hoping to find a
new homestead. He was looking for land and hoping he didn’t have to pay any
government taxes for it.
He did fall in with the Texans believing they could
replicate the revolution of 1776. He just found himself in a rough situation,
defending an outpost that really didn’t matter in the outcome of the Texas
revolution. The men of the Alamo did hold out but the odds were against them.
They all died defending the mission. Crockett’s death may have been heroic as
Walt Disney would have us believe. However, evidence does exist that states
Davy Crockett may have been part of a handful of Texans who surrendered but
were then executed.
It was never about how he died, not to us little kids in the 1950's. No for us it was about his adventures. His keel boat races with Mike Fink, his tomahawk duel to save his buddy George, his exploits in the Creek War along with Andrew Jackson and, yes, his trip to the Alamo! These adventures as portrayed in the Disney stories is what made Davy a hero to thousands of young boys. The adolescent medium of television made David Crockett the first TV hero to many baby boomers. Many more would follow, I told you about Zorro didn't I. However, I must say, it was fun to go back and spend some time with "The King of the Wild Frontier".
