Happy Trails, Horsie

I already knew the fine art of tolerating lame jokes well before I was in high school. A tight smile, a slight eye-roll. Give the person enough that they don't feel totally stupid but not so much that they are tempted to repeat their joke.

And if I hadn't known it by the time I started as the Roy Rogers fast food hostess in the early eighties—that means I maintained the salad bar and was charged with being nice to customers in the dining room—I sure would have figured it out fast. Not a day went by without a clever customer smiling and asking for a Trigger-burger.

Yep, a Trigger-burger. Funny the first time? Maybe. I can't remember the first time I heard that. It was that long ago.

Sometimes, the extra-clever customer would wish me a Happy Trails on the way out. This wasn't so bad. They were just trying to get into the spirit of things.

The Other Marie and I went by the Roy Rogers Dale Evans Museum in Victorville, CA, in 1992. For some reason, I wore purple cut-off jeans. But that's not important. What's important is that I got to visit with Trigger, the stuffed horse who went for $266,000 at auction yesterday.

I wonder what they did with Bullet the dog.