The Meaning of Friendship, Part III

Running back to retrieve their clothes after a refreshing dip in the ocean, Avram and Tommy were fired upon by the gang who held a grudge at being embarrassingly shown up earlier at the Red Dog Saloon. They aimed to settle the score. Bullets flew as the boys ran for cover still barefoot and dressed in only their soggy long underwear. Rabbi Avram found himself caught in a showdown with the meanest desperado.

Could Avram shoot the gunman and the others before he was shot himself? Could he save the Torah he had carried all the way from Poland to help him start a new snyagogue? 

Tommy sustained a bullet wound to the chest as the boys shoot, dispensing with the murderous outlaws! 

Will the wounded Tommy live to ride again? Would he be in any shape to get to San Francisco after all his travails? Could Avram continue as a Rabbi after shooting and killing a man? How to reconcile his faith with the wild American west that had caused him to take another life. For now though, Avram runs to rescue and comfort the wounded Tommy.

Don't fail to check out the movie, “The Frisco Kid.” There you will find answers to crucial questions raised in these pages.

Thanks to Warner Brothers' and their 1979 film, "The Frisco Kid"

                                                  The Meaning of Friendship, Part II 

Despite his numerous misadventures in "The Frisco Kid," Rabbi Avram, persevered in the pursuit of his assigned destination. He was befriended along the way by a rough and tumble, gunslinging cowboy, Tommy Lillard, played by Harrison Ford. Tommy became his reluctant yet ultimately close friend. He saved Avram a number of times, threatening to leave him on several occasions but never quite abandoning him.

In one scene, Tommy rescued Avram from being further accosted in a saloon where they had stopped for refreshment. Apparently, having just begun relations with an attractive woman upstairs, he descends the stairs in his union suit with gun drawn. Humiliating the bad guys, he first threatens then chases them out and away from his new, naive friend. This sets up a future run-in with the outlaws who later take advantage of the two unlikely buddies, taking them unawares in their underwear.

By the way, this is the same saloon, where I featured a drunk who had been escorted out the front door in just his hat and long underwear. (See my postings of September 16 and 22, 2020.)

Making their way finally to the Pacific Ocean but short of arriving in San Francisco, the boys stopped to cool off. Having stripped down to their union suits they excitedly frolicked in the surf and sand like a couple of little boys. Their hard luck destination was in sight!

To Be Continued ......

                                                           The Meaning of Friendship

In the Warner Brothers' 1979 film, The Frisco Kid, starring Gene Wilder, Rabbi Avram is hijacked and waylaid as he makes his way warely across mid-America to San Francisco in the 1800's. The movie was billed as “The greatest cowboy ever to ride into the Wild West! From Poland." 

Dimwitted Avram had been dispatched from Poland to lead a California synagogue. Unfortunately, he hooked-up with a couple of unscrupulous men, having not his, but their own best interests in mind. Obtaining a covered wagon and a team of horses, and securing an agreement with these men, the unsuspecting Avram believed he was safely on the road to his destination. 

He was on the road alright, literally, face down...in his union suit underwear. You see, before he and his companions had gone very far, he was attacked and beaten by one of bullies in the back of his wagon. He was undressed down to his long underwear and, unceremoniously, thrown out the back.

Landing in the middle of a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, left barefoot and in his union suit, he picked himself up. Dazed but undeterred....

....the abandoned Rabbi limped down the road to retrieve his discarded clothes and boots.

What's to become of our beaten and stripped, underwear clad Rabbi?!?!

TO BE CONTINUED......

Fun and Fun-Loving in any Language