Starting to Look Up

My friend, Lane, sends occasional texts with links to cool things, and the latest was an episode of the Joe Rogan podcast. Lane shared his caveat on Rogan himself but called this particular interviewee “fascinating,” so you can imagine my surprise when discovering that it was my favorite professor way back in 1990 at the University of Arkansas!

Dr. Elliott West is a retired history professor and is 78 years old now, which meant that he must have been around 45 when I sat mesmerized by his lectures in a course titled, History of the American Indian. I have told three Dr. West stories many times since: First, he would interject ridiculous things in his lectures to make sure we were paying attention but said that he stopped doing that with freshmen the day he was going on about how President Lincoln would wear a negligee in public, waiting for someone to interrupt, when one freshman finally raised his hand and asked, “How do you spell negligee?” Second, the day he brought the wrong lecture notes to class, shrugged his shoulders, then proceeded to deliver a seamless, fascinating lecture without missing a beat, which had quite an impact on a future educator. And, finally, and most memorably, the time I arrived to class to discover a note on the door that class was canceled that day—and was disappointed—which immediately signaled that to disappoint a 20-year-old by canceling a history lecture is the sign of an uncommon professor.

I spent two hours last Thursday evening listening to Joe Rogan interview Dr. West, and it was a beautiful trip down memory lane. Dr. West is known as one of the greatest historians of the American West and has recently published a 700+ page book titled, Continental Reckoning (that I will be purchasing and devouring), so you can imagine that there was plenty of interview material. I’ll just touch on one part toward the end—the movies known as “the Westerns.”

Dr. West explained to Rogan that Westerns aren’t really about the West: instead, much like what you see on the movie screen is actually something that is projected from a contraption behind you, the Westerns as we came to know them are projections, too—much more an idea than a reality. When you think in simple North-South-East-West terms from the perspective of the United States as it existed at the time of westward expansion, North-South were areas engaged in terrible conflict, the East represented where the young nation had been, so the West became a unifying and romanticized idea as to where the nation might could go. It became both an exciting, dramatic, hope-filled idea and, tragically, an opportunity to create a shared villain in the native inhabitants. The Western on the big screen projected all that and more.

On Saturday morning, Jody and I spent a few hours hiking in Wildwood Regional Park in Thousand Oaks, where many classic movies and television shows were filmed, including a crazy number of Westerns such as The Rifleman, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, just to name a few. Well, maybe I’ll name one more just for the name: the epic movie titled, How the West Was Won. As we hiked the hills, picturing stagecoach robbery scenes, I kept hearing Dr. West’s voice explaining what the West was really like, and “how the West was (really) won,” and remembering how fortunate I was to have had the chance to learn directly from him. I’m glad that he is still teaching, and I’m glad that others have the opportunity to listen.