Thursday, July 30, 2015

Grandpa Moses and The Lone Ranger; or Grandpa Moses, The Lone Ranger

Born in 1865 in Marash, Ancient Armenia,  Eastern Anatolia, Grandpa Moses was the oldest of 5 sons born to the Reverend Sarkis Bilezikjian:  Moses, Garabed, Arakel, Alexan, and (Rev.) Vartan.  Moses, however, was a loner.  As a young man, he would ride off  on his horse to join his Kurdish friends in daily forays throughout the mountains surrounding Marash.  And because they were his friends, they would never attack the sheep that he herded up there in the mountains, nor the travelers or  caravans for which he "rode shotgun" . . .  He was a wiry, quiet man when Marash Girl knew him, hardly speaking at all, sitting in the winged arm chair on the second floor, and (later in 1947, when television first came out), watching The Lone Ranger (was he watching himself?) as he protected the innocent.  

It was then, just as the Lone Ranger was in combat with evil, that Marash Martha, at the time only 5 years old, would decide to get up and change the channel.  Grandpa Moses would complain to his son Peter (Marash Martha's father), "That girl! She always turns the channel just at the height of the action!"  (Of course, that's not exactly what he said; he was speaking in Turkish, the language of his Marash.)  Oh, and by the way.  He spoke English with a Swedish accent.  More on that later.)

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