THURSDAY'S THEORY OF RELATEEVEETY - A TALE OF TWO SMITTIES

As I've mentioned in the past, a lot of present day citizens of Toobworld can trace their lineage back to the wild, wild West.  There, their grandfathers or great-grandfathers found themselves passing along their bloodlines thanks to overly-friendly saloon girls.

One such example was one Charles Jensen, known by the nickname of Chuck, who sold RVs for a living.  And a little bit more....

'COLUMBO'
"THE CONSPIRATORS"

It will be my theory of relateeveety that Chuck Jensen was the great-grandson of an old West historical figure on his mother's side of the family:

"Smitty" Smith.

U.S. Army Cartographer

From the "Cheyenne" wiki:
When he's along for the ride with Cheyenne, Smitty has got his big friend's big back. Smitty was a talented artist and was using his skills as an Army mapmaker. While Cheyenne usually let his fists do most of his talking, Smitty had enough chatter and wit for the two of them combined.

On one of their adventures, Smitty had to pretend to be a gun drummer....

'CHEYENNE'
"JULESBURG"

From the IMDb:
Cheyenne and Smitty encounter settlers headed to Wyoming who lost their guide. On the way to Fort Laramie, a group of rustlers steal their cattle and a boy's brother is killed. The two head to a nearby to try to recover the stolen cattle.

From the "Cheyenne" wiki:
Smitty and Cheyenne found a lost wagon train and offered to lead them to the nearest fort. During the night, rustlers stole the settlers' cattle and one of the settlers, Morton Scott was killed. Smitty and Cheyenne hatched a plan to get the cattle back, with Smitty impersonating Scott in the nearby town of Julesburg. Smitty had to pretend to be both a gun salesman and big brother to Scott's relative Tommy. Smitty and Cheyenne discovered that the cattle were in the hands of a dangerous criminal, McCanles, and challenged him. The confrontation ended in a rip-roaring fist fight that Smitty said was the best fight he'd been in since he left Texas.

Julesburg was in Colorado, but I think Smitty finally put down roots in California when he left the Army.  And there he had children (whether by a saloon gal or not, I cannot say) whom he regaled with the tales of his cross-country journeys with Cheyenne Bodie.

When those children grew up and had children of their own, the stories were again recounted for their own offspring.  And those tales grew in the telling.

One of Smitty's granddaughters, born at the end of the 19th Century, married a man named Charles Jensen in 1926.  She gave birth to his son the following year and they named him Charles Jensen, Jr. but everybody would come to know him as Chuck.  (At that point in time, Chuck's grandfather was fifty years of age and it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble that Smitty was still alive as he would have been 80 years of age.)

Mrs. Jensen carried on her family's tradition with her bedtimes stories for young Chuck about his great-grandfather the map-maker in the Old West.

But it was that one story about Grampa Smitty being a gun runner (or at least pretending to be) in Julesburg, Colorado, which really captured his imagination.  And as he got older, Chuck became fixated on the financial gains aspect of a life as an arms dealer.

So remember when I said at the beginning that Chuck Jensen was an RV salesman?  That was his cover line of work.  Even with the largest inventory west of Chicago, he actually found a more lucrative line - Jensen had become a dealer in illegal weapons over the years and now, about the same age as his own grandfather was when he was born, this fourth generation of that family tree of Smiths was about to close a deal on the biggest transaction of his life....

Chuck Jensen was going to sell a ton of mercenary merchandise to the IRA in order to foment the "Troubles" over in Ireland.

Originally he was going to do business with an intermediary by the name of Vincent Pauli, but Pauli met with an unfortunate... accident.  So Chuck had to deal directly with the buyer, an Irish poet named Joseph "Joe" Devlin.  (Known in some circles as "the Floof".)

It was supposed to be the biggest arms deal he had ever arranged.  Chuck Jensen might very well have retired from the profit he would garner. Unfortunately, a rumpled, New York-born detective from the homicide division of the LAPD, one Lieutenant Frank Columbo, put a kibosh on that deal.  

I've been talking about Chuck Jensen in the past tense, but that was in conjunction with his former life.  Columbo, being in Homicide, brought that aspect of his case to the attention of his superiors and they brought Jensen down in collaboration with the ATF.

Chuck Jensen probably served at least twenty years, perhaps more since there was an international element to the case and he had such a voluminous cache of weapons.

I'm going to assume he served time in prison until the turn of the century and has been living the last 18 years back in the Los Angeles area.  He's no longer involved in gun sales; too many eyes on him even now with him being about ninety years old. 

But he did get back into the other line of work he knew - the RV business.  It was only meant to be a small enterprise; but when Chuck made a few cheap-jack commercials to air on a local cable station, he became something of a pop culture sensation.  (Not an uncommon situation in the Los Angeles area over the years.)

Chuck Jensen in one of low-cost commercials

And he found his niche in the trade dealing with senior citizens interested in the RV lifestyle in their retirement and who could relate to a fellow old codger.

And that's my TV Western theory of relateeveety for the week.....

Happy trails to you!