The Creator of Red Ryder Is Recognized
From a piece by Mark Yost at OpinionJournal.com:
If the umpteen showings of "A Christmas Story" and a new 20th-anniversary, two-disc DVD set aren't enough to sate your appetite for Ralphie Parker and his tortured quest for a Red Ryder BB gun, then you need to head to this little town in the southwest corner of Colorado. It's home to the Fred Harman Art Museum.
Who's Fred Harman, you ask? He's the cartoonist who created Ralphie's hero, Red Ryder, and his Indian sidekick, Little Beaver. But his love of the frontier West didn't stop with the world-renowned series that first appeared in the Chicago Sun on Nov. 6, 1938. In his final 18 years, Harman produced 350 oils, pen-and-ink drawings, and bronzes of rodeos, cowpokes and other rustic scenes, a handful of which are on display here.
Not long after the strip began, Harman signed up J.C. Penney Co. to carry a slew of Red Ryder merchandise, including Ralphie's long-sought BB gun. In 1939, Red Ryder No. 1, on display here, came off the Daisy production line in Plymouth, Mich., originally priced at $2.95.
But for all the Ralphies the world over--both fictional and real--this museum is a fitting tribute and well worth a visit.
Hmmmm...Maybe there was more to the visit to Colorado than we originally believed.
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