TV Guide August 14, 1971 by Carleton Stowers Article submitted by: a Bonanza World member

O’Donnell, Texas, a wind-swept cotton community which sits in the never ending flatland of West Texas, has yet to bend to the boastful trend of most rural towns and hamlets that have raised a Local Boy Made Good and sent him off into the bright lights and big cities.

After you turn off U.S. Highway 87 and reach the town limits, the only enlightenment you will receive is the fact that there were, at last count, 1356 people living in O’Donnell and that the Methodist Church is one block to the left.

No sandstone monument stands to honor some long since dead and buried Mr. O’Donnell. There are no neatly lettered signs bearing the trite slogans of the region (i.e., “Welcome to Happy, Texas—The Town Without a Frown”) and unlike near-by Muleshoe, which erected a bronze statue of a mule, there is little evidence that O’Donnell, Texas, has, indeed, made its contribution to America.

But the fact is that were it not for O’Donnell’s contribution, you might never have watched Hoss Cartwright gallop across the screen of your TV set on Sunday evenings.

When Hollywood gained a star, O’Donnell lost its best fighter and the only kid in town who could lift the rear end of a ’47 Plymouth singlehandedly. Which is to say, this is where Dan Blocker grew to manhood.

O’Donnell is one of those innumerable West Texas towns slowly passing on to that Great Rural Community Up Yonder. The Blocker Grocery & Market (“Where Ma Saves for Pa”) now stands empty in the heart of downtown. When “Shack” Blocker died in the early ’60s, his wife left the store for a cousin, J.D. Stewart, to operate, and moved to the West Coast to live with her famous son and his wife, Dolphia. (Finding the pace of Hollywood too far removed from that of rural Texas, she has since returned to her home state and how lives in DeKalb, a small town in East Texas.) Stewart managed the store until recently, then left for near-by Lubbock to become manager of one of the numerous Bonanza Steak Houses that are currently adding to Dan’s already handsome income.

“Dan made a guest appearance at a college rodeo here in Lubbock a while back,” says cousin Stewart, “and just as soon as the show was over we were in the car headed for O’Donnell. He just wanted to go down there and look around and visit a few folks.”

When Dan Blocker was stocking flour and sacking groceries for his dad during his early teen years, the only relationship the town felt with Hollywood and the fictional West came on Saturday afternoons when Hopalong Cassidy and Johnny Mack Brown and their horses would fill the silver screen of the Rex Theater, making the Western world a safer place for every resident of O’Donnell.

There was, however, little reason to assume that young Dan might one day ride the Ponderosa.

“We got him a horse and saddle one Christmas,” recalls his mother, Mrs. Mary Blocker, “and he just wouldn’t fool with it at all. His friends were far more interested in riding it than he was. We tried for a while to interest him in it, then finally gave up and sold the horse. Dan never really cared much for any kind of stock.”

Her only son was, in fact, a rather bookish youngster despite physical attributes which were to make him a stand-out tackle and field-goal kicker during his high school and collegiate days.

Wayne Carroll, who owns a farm on the outskirts of town, is still a bit puzzled by the role his friend plays on TV. “It’s still kinda hard for me to picture Dan on a ranch. Farming and ranching never much interested him as a boy.

“He was the guy we always went to for help with our lessons. Seems like he was always studying and reading.”

A graduate of Sul Ross, a small state college in Alpine, Texas, Dan owns a B.A. and M.A. and once aspired to teaching on the high school level, working in classrooms in Sonora, Texas, and Carlsbad, N.M., before yielding to his interests in the creative arts.

Except for a lost vacationer or a carload of travelers in search of refreshment or the type of relief provided in back of the Enco Station, there is no one to be found on the streets of O’Donnell between 8 and 9 on Sunday evenings. It is as if the entire population has suddenly left town.

In a manner of speaking, they have. At that particular hour they have removed themselves from the dusty plains of their birth and are riding alongside Hoss and Little Joe and Ben Cartwright across the sprawling Ponderosa. Any man in town who would dare not to have his TV tuned to Bonanza might well be judged as lacking some of his facilities, and certainly no longer fit for membership in the local Lions Club chapter.

One need only to sit in on the Monday morning revivals of the previous night’s episode to realize the pride the community feels toward Dan Blocker. That he turned over his fair share of outhouses during long-ago Halloween sprees, made regular trips to the principal’s office for throwing erasers at Bobby Clark, and once ran through the plate-glass window of a downtown merchant when unable to stop quickly enough after a particularly demanding sidewalk footrace, have been forgiven a thousand times over.

It is no longer counted against him that he sorely damaged the reputations of many of his elders in the amateur boxing matches that were held in a roped-off area on Main Street on Saturday nights.

“He would take on anyone who came to town,” remembers local attorney John Saleh, a life-long friend of the 42-year-old Blocker, who now handles a good deal of his star-friend’s legal work.

“Dan wasn’t a bully. In fact, he was always very careful around us kids because of his size. But he loved to box and the only fair matches he could get were with grown men. They would come to town for a dance or something and wind up trying Dan in the ring. I don’t ever recall him losing.

“One Saturday night a bunch of fellas from the county seat came over and got to teasing Dan about his size (at age 13 he stood 6 feet tall and weighed 200 pounds) and finally shoved their biggest boy into the ring. Dan flattened him in a hurry so the rest of them tried to gang up on him. He calmly wiped the whole bunch of them out.”

Blocker’s mother recalls a time when her husband decided to go a few rounds with his son. “They boxed around there for a while, having a good time, until Dan hit Dad a pretty good lick. I think it kinda stunned him. He just stood there for a minute, like he was thinking about something, then took off his gloves and got out of the ring. That was the last time they ever boxed with each other. I think Dan was always a little afraid he might hurt someone—and there’s not a mean bone in his body.”

“I don’t guess there’s a soul in O’Donnell who’s not proud of what Dan’s made of himself,” says boyhood friend Clark, who, unlike Blocker, has never entertained dreams that reached farther than the fence line of his 1300-acre farm. “Here, a while back, that movie with him and Frank Sinatra and what’s-her-name [Raquel Welch]—‘Lady in Cement’—was showing up in Lubbock, and after the first two nights I bet there weren’t a dozen people in O’Donnell who hadn’t seen it.”

That Blocker has divorced himself from the environs of his childhood is nothing more than the idea of some magazine writer who arrived in town some time back with a predetermined plan of attack. “No sirree,” insists Clark. “I hear from him every week or so. He just picks up the phone and calls   . . wants to know how things are back home and all and tells me what he’s doing out there.”

 “Dan likes it here,” says Saleh. “Anytime he gets in this part of the country he makes it a point to stop by. He makes appearances in Lubbock, Dallas, Fort Worth, El Paso—places like that—and usually manages to get home for a while.

“It’s getting harder for him to get away much any more, though,” Saleh says. “We see him here about once a year. We had some business we needed to work out a couple of months ago and he was going to come out here for a couple of days but we finally wound up meeting in Mexico City. He stays on the run.”

When Blocker does return, however, O’Donnell manages to stay calm. “Folks in this part of the world understand each other,” says banker Jimmy Forbes. “People respect Dan’s privacy when he comes home. Everyone is proud of him but they don’t make a big fuss over him when he’s around. He’s treated just like he was, back when we used to hang around the pool hall or go for a ride in one of our folks’ cars. I think that’s why he likes it so much.”

At a stage in his career when he can demand five-figure guarantees for personal appearances, Dan Blocker made a free appearance at the annual O’Donnell Rodeo two years ago. “Biggest crowd we ever had,” Clark recalls. “The stands were full and folks were standing all over the place.”

That Blocker’s stock has risen in his home town only since the long-enduring Bonanza series found its way into the ratings for good is another falsehood. O’Donnell residents will, in great detail, recall for you his role as the friendly bartender in a movie titled “Black Lace” or remind you of his parts in such TV series as Gunsmoke, Wagon Train and The Restless Gun.

Each fall there is a certain distinction heaped upon the O’Donnell High School student who, either by hook or crook, manages to have himself assigned the locker into which the home town hero carved his name years ago.

With the exception of cotton, conversation is O’Donnell’s main product. The easiest way for a stranger to secure a generous helping of the latter is to bring up the name of Dan Blocker. Or, if you wish, Hoss Cartwright.

People who, if the truth were known, couldn’t even remember Dan as he was growing up now invent stories of his boyhood escapades.

“He was a pretty fair hand with a guitar,” recalls one coffee drinker at the local café. Later, in the privacy of an automobile slowing winding through the unpaved residential section, Clark confided that the observation was totally fabricated. “Hell,” he noted, “Dan’s been an actor all his life but, so far as music goes, he never even could play a record player too hot.”

He judges such falsehoods—white lies, if you please—as a harmless means by which the townspeople identify with the man who left the solitude of their world to return weekly through the magic of electronics.  Those few who have moved to O’Donnell since Blocker left for college have heard stories of his earlier days enough to now recall them as if snatching them from their own memories.

“Dan hasn’t changed much,” says Clark, “except financially. Just a big, lovable guy. And a helluva lot smarter than most of his roles make him out to be. Everybody’s proud of him. And they know he hasn’t gotten too important for him not to remember the people back home.

“Why, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see him walk right into Brewer’s Café and order himself a cup of coffee and a couple of sweet rolls one of these mornings—if he ever gets any time off from the studio.”

Wouldn’t it be nice, though, when he comes home, for him to see a sign there at the turn-off on Highway 87 saying, “Welcome to O’Donnell, Texas—Home Town of Dan Blocker”?

“There was some talk about it once,” Clark remembers, “but the more we thought about it, the more we felt like Dan wouldn’t care much for the idea. He’s too regular a fella to care much about that sort of thing.

“But when he comes back, we’ll be waiting . . . and damn well betcha proud to see him.”  END