By Gini Rainey
My dad was quite the jokester. It seems like he was either pulling off a prank or thinking up one to do. I remember one time, when I was about 4 or 5, my mom had some of her friends over to play bridge and dad decided it was time to trim my bangs. So, dad takes the trimmings, glues them to my chest and sends me downstairs to say “hi” to my mom’s friends, who were completely taken by surprise at a little girl with hair on her chest. Of course, my mom was mortified and promptly hustled me out of the room. With that in mind, I have often wondered exactly who it was that my dad introduced me to as Hopalong Cassidy when I was around 8 years old.
I was pretty much a tom boy growing up and was madly in love with anything that had to do with cowboys and horses. My favorite TV shows were Fury, Rin Tin Tin, The Rifleman, The Lone Ranger, and of course, Hopalong Cassidy. I remember my dad coming home one day, picking me up and the two of us going to the Moorhead Country Club to meet Hopalong Cassidy (whose real name was William Boyd) and his beautiful white stallion, Topper.
If I remember correctly, dad said that Hoppy had moved to Moorhead and was a friend of his. Now, the internet rabbit hole I have traveled down trying to figure this one out has provided me with only one connection of Hoppie to Moorhead. Seems there was a disc jockey at a local radio station (KVOX) named Arlyn Lang who used the air name of Hopalong Cassidy for the 25 years he was on the air, 
beginning in 1984 – the math doesn’t work into this quotient. So, the question remains: Did I meet the real Hopalong Cassidy that warm day back when I was a kid? Or was it just another one of dad’s pranks? I guess I’ll never know for sure. Too bad it wasn’t the Lone Ranger, then I could be saying “Just who was that masked man?”
All of that to say, I picked up a really neat cookbook recently, named “The All-American Cowboy Cookbook: Home Cooking on the Range.” Written by Ken Beck and Jim Clark and published in 1994 by Rutledge Hill Press, this book is filled with over 300 recipes from the “World’s Greatest Cowboys,” and one of them just happens to be, you guessed it, Hopalong Cassidy. If you are a lover of anything cowboy, you will definitely enjoy this book that is loaded with a ton of trivia and black and white photos. In fact, it’s so full of fun facts and photos, you might almost skim past the recipes.
Since nature is reminding us today that winter is not done with us east Texans, it just seems like a Chili kind of day, and this book has several versions of that hearty soup. Ernest Borgnine, who was in several westerns before he joined “McHale’s Navy,” shared his “Ernie’s Tex Chili.” In a large pot, brown 3 pounds of ground sirloin or ground round in 1 stick of butter. Pour off ½ cup liquid from the meat and use it to sauté 3 chopped green bell peppers, 3 chopped onions, and 3 minced garlic cloves in a separate skillet until tender. Add to the meat mixture and stir in ¼ cup chili powder, 2 tablespoons salt, 1 ½ teaspoon pepper, 3 teaspoons cumin, and ½ tablespoon cayenne pepper. Add 3 1-pound cans of chopped tomatoes, including liquid. Simmer covered for 1 hour, remove lid and simmer for at least 30 more minutes. Topped with chopped onions and grated cheese, this makes great meal for the wild bunch!
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