MEMENTOS: Old sweet possessions

I think she made this one - the letters WAC
 are embroidered with red-white-blue tatting
from the days wen she was in the Army
in World War II.

My mother was born in 1910, lived a life eroded into rigid vigorous strength of character as she worked fiercely to make a secure life for herself.  These are her cloth handkerchiefs; I found them wadded up and unpressed when she closed her home and moved to an assisted living facility. I kept very little, already feeling the shadow, but I had to have these.

I have hung them on a "clothesline", remembering the days when washday meant carrying heavy baskets to the line, worrying if they would freeze or be caught by a sudden rain.

I like to look at the hankies, and wonder what Mom wore with each, or what the day was like she had with the purple violet hanky.  Sometimes they were decorative; a flutter of color bursting from a shirt or dress pocket, secured with a brooch.

They are rather garish and cheaply printed, but enjoyably bright and gay as zinnias marigolds, the flowers she loved.

OLD MOVIES: The Cowboys, 1972 Boys 2 Men

Wayne was 65 in this film, dying 4 years later of lung cancer.  He wears a bad toupee, and his gut is thick and square.  He's tough and stiffened, the big man's atypical  graceful feet a memory.

The plot is a unrealistic fantasy: the ritual passage to manhood required by society is the opportunity to work a cattle drive.  A gold rush lost Adamson (Wayne the cattle rancher), his crew, so he tests and hires the eager local schoolboys. 

Bruce Dern, (I swear he had a nose job later on), is a sadistic rustler, rejected by Wayne for lying to him. 

Wayne is shot to death by Dern in a surprising plot twist in the middle of the film. The boys finish the drive without him,and take satisfying revenge on Dern and his 10 (10 adult!) buddies. 

The film was controversial at the time: it uses the N word (an elegantly spoken Roscoe Lee Brown plays his cook), a politically correct cast, tough-love discipline, including a cure for stuttering, and life lessons in the choice never to stand down stirred the pot.

In one scene, Wayne releases his string of horses from the corral to run free on the range, a beautiful and memorable image of tempered wisdom letting go when it's time.  

Cinematography is by Bruce Surtees, score by John Williams, shot around iconic Santa Fe, Wayne's iron integrity, an elegiac tone veil softening the merciless western code of revenge.

It's a memorable film. Tommy Lee Jones has scheduled a re-make, though there's no current Googlenews to report about it. 

I'm still OK with the way it was.