Longmire

I have been watching the first couple of seasons of a Netflix series called Longmire.  Walt Longmire is the sheriff of a Wyoming county that apparently includes a Cheyenne Indian Reservation.  The relationship between Longmire and the residents of the reservation is not good.  The relationship is especially troubling between the sheriff and the chief of the tribal police or BIA.  It isn’t exactly clear what tribal jurisdiction is in play here.  Regardless, the relationship is sour.

Though set in Wyoming, much of the filming is done in Northern New Mexico.  In fact, the filming of Longmire’s home is located just outside of Los Alamos in the Valle Grande.  The Valle, as it is known by the locals, is a huge extinct caldera.  I recognize the landscape and the buildings that are in the Valle.  (The Valle Grande is also the setting for some of the story lines in my first book, Desperado.)

I have to admit that I cringe everytime I watch an episode of Longmire.  Evidence collection techniques and proper crime scene investigation is sloppy and do not remotely approximate real life investigations.  I have yet to see an admissible confession.  In fact, many,  if not most confessions would thrown out of court.  Jurisdictional matters are meaningless to the sheriff and his three deputies.  They go about investigating crimes and enforcing the law everywhere they go, including other counties and states.  Still, Sheriff Longmire seems to be able to read people’s minds and fill in the blanks with information that the viewer does not have and solve all the crimes.

For a county the size of his, he seems to have an unusual amount of crime.  The show never tells us how many square miles constitute the county or what the county’s population is, but with a staff of a sheriff, three deputies, and a secretary/dispatcher, there cannot be an awful lot of people in his county.  Still, there is an awful lot of crime going on in his county.  There is an average of more than one murder per week.  During the first two seasons he has uncovered a cult, a prostitution ring, a business hiring scores of illegal immigrants, and discovered that a law enforcement forest ranger and a law enforcement livestock officer were not only criminals, but murderers - in separate episodes.

On top of all the drama, Longmire’s wife was a terminal cancer patient who was murdered.  Longmire and his close friend are suspected by a Denver police detective of murdering Longmire’s wife killer.  Both are innocent, but the world doesn’t know that yet.

In spite of all of this, the entertainment value is tops.  I look forward to each episode, and since we have it on Netflix, I may be guilty of watching a couple of episodes in one sitting.

I’m drawn to Sheriff Longmire.  In spite of all our differences, I see a lot of me in his character.  He is often distant.  He doesn’t generally answer questions, but asks questions when a question is put to him.  He tries to do everything for everyone he can.  He has the answer to everyone’s problems.  His life is wrapped up in his job to the point that it adversely affects his relationship with his adult daughter.  He acknowledges this but doesn’t know how to turn it around.  As you look at him, you see that he is conflicted over something.  At times you know what it is that causes him this stress.  It’s fairly easy to discern and you can predict where he is going and how he will handle a particular situation.  But, a good deal of the time you can tell that he is a troubled spirit.

These attributes that I see in Longmire are in many ways a reflection of my life - distant, always questioning but never answering.  Just as he acknowledges that he has failed as a parent I see that same failure in my life.  And this is what makes watching Longmire hard to watch.

Park Benches

I understand why we see old men sitting alone on park benches.

There is a lot of history sitting on those benches. 

Not all of them sit on park benches feeding pigeons.  Some are alone.  Occasionally you see them sitting in pairs.  There are others like those sitting in pairs.  They sit in coffee shops or at McDonald’s occupying tables for hours and sipping their coffee, black.  Those sitting in pairs on park benches or at restaurant tables talk about the sorry state of politics, their grandkids that they see occasionally, sports scores, their last prostate exam, and whose names they recognize in the obituaries.  Mostly they talk about the past.  Like their counterparts sitting in pairs or in the coffee shops, those sitting alone think about the past.  They think about the good times.  They think about the not-so-good times and when they do, they think about the would have, could have, and should have things that they never did.

You can only sit with your buddies at the coffee shop table so long before you move on to your individual life, then you are in a solo act, like the other old men sitting alone on park benches.

But they also think of where they had been, their successes, and their triumphs.  Some think of the respect they had among peers and the need they filled.  It’s nice to be needed.  Everybody is the best at something no matter how big or insignificant it may be.  It is nice to fill a role, a gap, and to think that when you walked out a door for the last time that you left a void.  But, they know it isn’t true.  No one is irreplaceable.  Not having a place in the world, the world you lived in is hard.  Being valued for who you were and what you were is nice, but that value is worth nothing in the present.  “Thank you for your service.  It’s over now.  Please step aside.  You aren’t needed now.  Someone else has taken your place.”

The title of the book and subsequent movie was No Country for Old Men.  But, there are park benches.