Under the Watchful Eye of John Wayne

During my few hours in Tombstone, I began to notice what would become a theme of this part of my trip through Arizona---there seemed to be images of John Wayne everywhere I looked. In Sierra Vista, I'd even seen a red-white-and-blue bumper sticker on the back of an SUV: "God Bless John Wayne."

Being a fan of the Duke, was born only a few miles from where I was, I didn't have any problem with the sentiment per se, but it somewhat puzzled me. Why so much of him?

That evening, after checking into the Super 8 by I-10 in the little cowtown of Willcox, I went out to dinner at BBQ restaurant inside an old railroad car and saw more images of Wayne on the wall by the cash register. The next day, after heading up through the mining town of Clifton and spending most of the daylight hours navigating the remote mountains through the national forest, I arrived in Springerville, I saw even more pictures of him. That evening in the old steakhouse, where the railing next to my table was covered with actual saddles, there were pictures of him on nearly every wall. The place seemed like a John Wayne shrine.

After a while it began to make sense to me. Many of Wayne's westerns were set in this part of Arizona, during the days of the Indian wars against the Apaches. For example, Springerville was only a few miles from Fort Apache, which is the name of one of Wayne's most famous movies (imdb), in which he plays a U.S. Calvary officer sympathetic to the Indians, but who is forced to betray his honor when ordered to do so by an intolerant and bigoted commander played by Henry Fonda.

It's one of my favorite westerns, partly because of the kind of Greek tragedy situation into which Wayne's character is thrust by this conflict.

But the reason I didn't readily associate Wayne with this area was because although many of these movies, especially the ones directed by John Ford, were set in this area of Arizona, they were actually shot elsewhere, either further north in Monument Valley, or up in Moab, Utah. Those are the places I personally associate with John Wayne.

But that's a bit of movie history not important to the locals in this part of Arizona. It became clear after a few days that Wayne was essentially a white counterpart to the ubiquity of the Native American imagery of this part of Arizona. It gave them someone to rally around, in a cultural sense. Personally I'm fine with that. Most of Wayne's movie characters had the kind of democratic nobility of personal honor that American male heroes were supposed to have back in the mid 20th Century, at least according to Hollywood.

I know people who would be fine wiping out the whole cultural segment of America that still admires Wayne. He is often reviled by liberals as a notorious stereotypical conservative throwback, with the insinuation that he must have been racist because of that. But of course in real life he was one of the most racially tolerant and accepting people of his day. I'm proud to be a fellow native Iowan.

Now I wonder where I can get one of those bumper stickers?