Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier

If any of you who were born before 1950 want to do yourself a disservice, go to Youtube and play one of the versions of the “Ballad of Davy Crockett”. Without a doubt, you will find yourself singing this infectious song to yourself for weeks afterward! Three Disneyland “Davy Crockett” episodes were broadcast on television in early 1955. According to historians Randy Roberts and James Olson, "by the end of the three shows, Fess Parker would be very well known, the power of television would be fully recognized, and Davy Crockett would be the most famous frontiersman in American history."

We didn’t have a television of our own until 1956, when Mother and Dad rented one so they could watch the national political conventions of that year. But we watched Disneyland at our neighbors. After the third episode, in which Davy Crockett is among the defenders of the Alamo, my 9-year-old self wrote “The kids [in school] said Davy was killed today, but he wasn’t.” His death wasn’t shown in the episode, of course.

The hyperbolic speeches and sayings attributed to Davy Crockett assured his place in legend as well as history. In Congress, he opposed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which resulted in most of the Native Americans from southeastern states following the “trail of tears and death” to lands in the west. He could not have been a bigger hero to us, and was effectively played by the great Fess Parker. “Raised in the woods so he knew every tree, Kil’t him a ba’r when he was only three.”

Every age group of kids has their heroes. The “Star Wars” characters were to my nephew Peter and niece Tara, and Harry Potter was to my stepson Jesse, what Davy Crockett was to us. His story fueled by the sales of coonskin caps, buckskins and toy rifles, as well as that insidious ballad, Davy Crockett was the first of the universally known mega-heroes. As much hype went into his creation as goes into any of them, but I am glad that he was a real person with some fact that can be found at the bottom of the fiction.