Museum Preserves Wonderful Years Of Roy And Dale, Trigger And Bullet

I was hunkered down in front of the TV, my hand moving automatically between an open box of Post Toasties and my mouth, my cap gun at the ready. Soon, I could hear the sound of thundering hoofbeats. Into the scene galloped my hero, Roy Rogers, the King of the Cowboys, astride the world’s smartest horse, Trigger.

Not far behind rode Dale Evans, the Queen of the West, atop her horse, Buttermilk. Alongside streaked Bullet, a German shepherd clever enough to have done brain surgery if he only could’ve handled the instruments.

They were after the bad guys. And they always caught ‘em. After a half-hour, the West was safe for another week (during which I vacillated between wanting to become Dale Evans or Bullet, fighting western crime at my beloved Roy’s side).

And I wasn’t alone. In their minds, millions of baby boomers the world over rode along with Roy and Dale.

Imagine, then, the wave of nostalgia that hits like the kick of a prospector’s burro when we aging boomers spot the giant-size Trigger from Interstate 5 in Victorville and pull into the parking lot of the Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Museum, built to resemble an 1860s fort.

Yee-haw and pass the Post Toasties!

The museum is no dry souvenir repository, no attempt at personal aggrandizement. It’s the Rogers’ attic, basement and closet, all rolled into one. Inside is every pocket watch and wristwatch Rogers ever owned, dolls and baby clothes that belonged to the couple’s nine children, family photos, Roy’s dad’s tools, Dale’s glamour shots from her stint as a band singer, hats and guns and saddles and rhinestone-covered shirts. And much more.

“Everything we’ve ever done is right here for everyone to see,” Rogers wrote with his wife in “Happy Trails, Our Life Story.”

“I’ve always liked to save things. No matter what came my way … I stuck it in the basement or the garage or in drawers at home. Dale would say, ‘Honey, when are you going to empty those drawers?’ I’d put everything in a box and call the van and storage company to come pick it up and keep it for me.”

All those boxes of stuff were the basis for the museum, which opened in Apple Valley some 30 years ago and moved to Victorville in 1976. “It was probably an act of desperation by Mom to get all the stuff out of the house,” laughed Roy Rogers Jr., who manages the museum. (He’s called Dusty to avoid confusion with his famous father.) And the collecting is still going on.

“Every once in a while, Dad’ll bring in a bag full of stuff - business cards, belt buckles, whatever - and drop it on my desk,” he said. “Most of the big items are on display, but there’s probably three times as many small items in storage that we don’t have room to show.”

Of the thousands of items on display, what’s the most popular with visitors?

“They want to see Trigger,” Dusty said of the horse mounted and put on display after his death in 1965 at the age of 33. “We close at 5 and stop selling tickets at 4:30 … but people come after that and beg to get in just for a few minutes, just to see Trigger. We let ‘em in - and they go away happy.”

Visitors range from “little kids not knowing exactly who Dad is to some middle-age gals we almost have to give oxygen to” after they meet the cowboy star, Dusty said. Roy, who turned 85 in November, drops by most days to chat and have his photo taken with museum visitors, although recent heart problems (he underwent triple bypass surgery in 1978 and was briefly hospitalized at least twice this summer) have interrupted his daily visits.

Dale, who’ll be 84 in October, also visited often before a stroke affected movement of her left arm and leg. She now uses a wheelchair, but doctors are optimistic about her recovery, her son said.

While the items on display at the Victorville museum are fascinating, a microcosm of a family’s life from the 1930s to the present, the most fun is watching a half-hour film that interweaves an interview with Roy and Dale with home movies and clips of the movies and TV shows they made together. It’s almost like sitting down for a chat with the couple.

The two were first teamed in Republic Pictures’ 1944 “The Cowboy and the Senorita.” Many other films followed, all written around the same general premise, Dale said in the film.

“I was sort of a foil for Roy, the smart-aleck gal from the East - very smart-aleck - and he taught me better,” she said with a laugh.

Dale, on her way to the top in Hollywood as a glamour girl and singer, said she was impressed from the start with the rangy cowboy with the blue eyes and the courtly ways, who had sung with the Sons of the Pioneers and had taken on the King of the Cowboys moniker in 1943 when he starred in the movie of that name.

“He was himself; there was no facade,” she said. “Everybody loved Roy. You couldn’t get anybody to say a bad word about him.”

Roy, a widower with three small children, proposed to Dale, a divorcee with a young son, just as the two were preparing to enter a rodeo arena at a public appearance. The couple married on Dec. 31, 1947, but they still never kissed on screen because Roy, true to the cowboy tradition of bussing only his horse, didn’t approve of public smooching. The pair’s 48-year marriage has survived the birth and death of their own daughter - who was born with Down’s syndrome and who died of a heart defect at age 3. They adopted several more children, two of whom died - a girl who was killed in a school bus accident at age 12 and a son who died in a freak accident while serving in the U.S. Army in Germany in 1965.

Dusty Rogers said the family stayed close, the kids traveling with their famous parents whenever they could to rodeos and film locations and public appearances.

“The family was always going somewhere,” Dusty said. “And we were always together.”

The museum film shows some of those public appearances, with thousands of expectant young faces turned toward the two figures on the tall horses. It was to avoid getting lost in the crowds that led Roy and Dale to Nudie the Rodeo Tailor for custom-made spangled boots and costumes.

“I thought I should dress so the kids could see me, sparkle it up a little,” Roy said in the film.

Those spangled costumes are on display in Victorville, along with the 1923 Dodge flatbed truck that brought Roy and his family to California in 1930, Roy’s first pair of cowboy boots (bronzed), a white Bonneville convertible with a pair of steer horns on the hood and revolvers for door handles, and dozens of copies of movie still photos, newspaper articles, comic strips and comic books devoted to the couple.

And there are Bullet and Trigger, stuffed and mounted - the dog with his tongue hanging out, the Palomino stallion rearing up on his hind legs as he did so often in the movies.

In the museum film, Roy jokingly said he plans to be an addition to his own museum someday: “I told Dale, ‘Honey, when I pass away, just skin me and put me up on Trigger and I’ll be happy.”’

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: If you go The Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Museum is at 15650 Seneca Road, Victorville. From Interstate 15, you’ll see the larger-than-life statue of Trigger rearing up in front of the fortlike structure. From the freeway, take the Seventh Street exit northbound, or the Palmdale Road exit southbound. The museum is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily (except Thanksgiving and Christmas). Admission is $5 for adults, $4 for seniors 65 and older and children age 13-16; $3 for ages 6-12; and free for those under 6. Information: (619) 243-4547.