|
richfed
Sachem
USA
Bumppo's Patron since [at least]:
May 13 2002
Status: offline
Administrator |
 Posted - September 28 2002 : 08:08:35 AM
|
Spring/Summer, 1993 excerpted from The Companion Guide
And so, I hope these few little morsels help to make the booklet just that much more complete. I have loved putting it together for you, have enjoyed the contacts - and encouragement - I’ve had with many of you via AOL and the Internet, and feel now that, finally, I can put it to rest.
It was with those closing words that I ended my first foray into writing a guide book to the locations used in the filming of The Last of the Mohicans. Ah well, so much for the best laid plans. Put to rest it wasn’t. Four years [now 5 and a half! ... R.F.], many interviews, a partnership with Eric Schweig, and a huge Web Site later ... we have this! What? Another book? There was a time, please understand, that The Last of the Mohicans was not the sole purpose of my existence. Dimly, I do remember a time before Mann.
My earliest recollection of anything related to The Last of the Mohicans is a fuzzy, black and white television image from the Phillip Dunne version of 1936. Just a hazy snippet of a memory ... moccasined feet tramping over the forest floor. That’s it. No required reading of the James Fenimore Cooper novel in school, no pretending to be Hawkeye as I ran through my childhood neighborhood on summer evenings with my friends ... no, my favorite hero was always Robin Hood in those days. There was a family trip up to Lake George one summer where we did visit Fort William Henry. I can’t even remember if I made the connection to The Last of the Mohicans while there.
My first real fascination with America’s frontier history came in 1960. I was eight years old. My dearly departed Father took me to see John Wayne’s The Alamo on the big screen. I was forever more hooked. I read on the subject, anything I could find. Eventually, years later, he recommended I watch They Died With Their Boots On. To the best of my recollection, I was in the seventh grade, which would make it about 1964 or ‘65. Setting my alarm clock for 2AM, I wiped the sleep from my eyes, went downstairs, turned on the TV set ... and became, to this day, a Little Bighorn buff. Like The Alamo, several years earlier, They Died With Their Boots On captured my imagination forever. For the rest of my life, the American frontier would be the subject that most ignited the juices in my heart & soul.
As I went through the usual adolescent changes, on my way to teenager-dom, and beyond, my keen interest was put on the back burner. I had bigger fish to fry. We won’t go into that story. Suffice it to say, the late 60’s - early 70’s were turbulent years in my life, as they were for much of America. As the unrest subsided, and my life was set upon the path that I am still following, I was fortunate enough to meet my wife, Elaine.
This remarkable lady, full of an acute wit, a sponge-like ability to absorb all knowledge, tremendous perceptional powers, was also, as fate would have it, fascinated with history. A stroke of good fortune for me! Then, in 1984, Son of the Morning Star was published. I read it, a birthday gift from my brother, and all the juices, that first poured forth in 1960, began flowing again. Big time. I read ... and I read ... and I read. Frontier America was at the forefront of my consciousness. We, Elaine and I, studied the history of the ground upon which we lived; we studied Indian ways & lore; took field trips to faraway places where important frontier events took place; we absorbed all we could.
Then, as the next chapter will explain in much greater detail, we moved to North Carolina. The year was 1991, the very year that a film was being shot there. Not only in North Carolina, but in the very part of the state that we were moving to. And
|
|
report to moderator
|
|
![The Mohican Board! [Bumppo's Redux!]](images/wwwboard.gif "The Mohican Board! [Bumppo's Redux!]")
On The Trail Of The Last Of The Mohicans
