Kar Krash Karma

Abstract

sometimes life is not pretty. It was a shock for me when my boyhood Saturday movie matinee Western idol, Tom Mix, died in a car crash when I was ten—in 1940—and idol Tom, after a long career in the saddle of wonder horse Tony, was a still swinging sixty. In my hometown Hollywood I loved Tom’s brash vulgarity. He was the only movie star to light up the night sky—outshining the multi-bulbed HOLLYWOODLAND sign—with a billboard-size white neon autograph spelling out TOM MIX beaconing over the tiled roof of his fantasy Spanish Hacienda in the Hollywood hills.