An Eastern Authority on the West
The Ranger's heyday is conceived as somewhere between 1865 and 1890, so Striker has to guard against anochronisms. For instance, when blasting comes into the plot of one of his earlier stories he is careful to speak of blasting powder, not dynamite. Still, he has made other kinds of mistakes. In one of his scripts a man was trampled to death by a mad bull, which Striker described as getting up from the corpse forelegs-first. Two thousand letters hastened to correct him.
Last January, the Ranger's sixth anniversary, WXYZ repeated a few favorite old programs. In the first the Ranger and Tonto were together when they found Silver. In the second, the Ranger was riding Silver when he me Tonto. No one noticed the blunder. Another that slipped by was "Hark! I hear a white horse coming!" The oddest blunder of all seems to have startled the audience too much to question it: Slap in mid-program came the screech of an automobile siren. Tonto, resting between scenes, had put his feet up on a horn box used in the previous program.
Striker's correspondence includes not only taking care of complaints but answering questions and acknowledging the Ranger's personal mail. A candidate for an M.A. at U.C.L.A. asked for information about early stone houses in California; someone else made a bet about a certain Indian custom; a third person could not identify an early type of bridle; a fourth wanted a photograph of Judge Roy Bean. Striker's secretary does the research and his answers are painstaking.
Many letters testify to the completeness of the illusion the program has created. A Kansas man greeted the Ranger as a long-lost friend of his cowboy days, and offered to help him clean up the country. A Kentuckian invited him to look up his brother in Denver, next time he was out that way. One Christmas a lady sent him twenty-five dollars to buy food for needy Indians. Most such letters are from children, bringing their troubles to the Ranger and asking him for advice. When Striker writes them, he begins "Ta-i ke-mo sah-bee!" (Greetings, trusty scout!") and ends "The best of good luck always! The Lone Ranger."
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This article originally appeared in The Saturday Evening Post on October 14, 1939.