Quicksand, Daddy! Quicksand!!! 60 years between trips to Badlands National Park

When I was 8 or 9 years old I went with my family to Badlands National Park (at the time it was Badlands National Monument).  I remember the trip vividly, even though it was some 60 years ago.

This is a video of the 8mm my father took of that trip.  You can see Kathy and me running around, with me carrying my trusty toy rifle:

My most vivid memory of that trip was of a frontier fort somewhere near the Badlands.  I don’t recall the name, and my parents are both dead so I can’t ask them.  From my search on the internet, my best guess is Fort Phil Kearney.  It is the only Fort that appears to be like the ones that were so common in 1950s westerns—made of sharpened logs set into the ground.

Fort Phil Kearney:

Here is a shot from our 8mm movie of the fort.  Not easy to make out--cameras in those days had no automatic exposure meters on them, so it was usually guesswork about the lighting.  And the films have degraded of the years, plus the transfer to DVD resulted in some lost clarity:

During this trip I carried (for protection, even though I didn’t have a Concealed Carry license) my Hubley Old Betsy rifle.  It was a sort-of replica of Davy Crockett’s Old Betsy, as Davy Crockett was the Harry Potter of its day.  All boys had Old Betsys and wore coonskin caps and were Kings of the Wild Frontier in our backyards.

Another staple of TV and movie westerns of that era was quicksand.  In these shows, if you stepped into quicksand, it quickly covered you up—sometimes forever.  However, quicksand isn’t really like that, but what it is really like isn’t very much fun.

Here is a great example of 1950's TV's depiction of quicksand, one I found on Youtube.  It is from The Rifleman series.  It is a lot of fun to see it now.

Sinking up to your head in quicksand:  Every 1950s boy's nightmare

While at the fort, I thought it would be fun to sneak up on it. So I handed my father Old Betsy and told him I would be an “Indian’ attacking the fort, and he was to shoot me as I approached it.  He gamely agreed, and waited at one of the windows to get me.

I ran out of the fort and into a pool of water that was hidden because grasses were growing in it.  About ankle deep.  I immediately panicked and thought back to all of my westerns for guidance and yelled ‘Quicksand, Daddy!!!  Quicksand!”

Then I walked out of the pool.

But I never walked out of the all-in-fun ribbing about it.  For the rest of my parents' lives I heard about it.  What I wouldn't give to be running out of that fort once again, attacking my father who stood guard with Old Betsy.  Or to hear him tell the story once again.