FROM: Squeak of the Week Published Fridays

Happy Trails Lead to South American Tales

During World War II, Walt Disney once rode south, with Los Rancheros Visitadores, to enjoy a week of 'wrangling and roping', as John Donaldson puts it, but also to ruminate upon the power of animation to win South American allegiance.

- John Stanley Donaldson, June 17, 2011

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On a bright spring day, in the first week of May, 1941, two hundred horsemen, saddles silver glittered, clattered away from the historic Covarrubias Adobe, and headed to what was to be pegged for first night encampment - the twelve thousand-acre Rancho Juan y Lolita, just south of Santa Ynez, California.

Reviving days of dons, Los Rancheros Visitadores so rode each year, from ranch to ranch, in display of friendly neighbor.

For one week, there would be wrangling and roping, songs around the campfire, sleeping under the stars.

All along the trail were equal - millionaires, as automobile maker Everett L. Cord, or gum-wrapper Philip K. Wrigley, on a first-name basis with any plain-made Joe R. Soap.

Saddle sores were shared alike.

Walt Disney was of the riders.

At some point, one evening, over baked beans and biscuits, the situation in Europe was discussed. Certainly, with war, the United States had been deprived its supply of Bavarian cuckoo clocks, Austrian cracked crockery, and Polish peasant prints.

South America, towards forging a friendship, was turned to for native novelties - to the extent that a fellow in Ecuador fainted after receiving an order for six million beads.

But, the continent also abounded in strategic war material.

Bauxite, beryl, and manganese.

Rubber, raw cotton, and nitrate.

Oil.

Such was also known to the Nazis, already setting up shop - given an estimated one million Brazilians could claim German antecedents.

The accent in Rio, already utteral, of this gutteral.

To help quell such sales, the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, spearheaded by Nelson A. Rockefeller, had recently been established, to promote, like Visitadores, the 'Good Neighbor' policy.

They now only needed 'ambassadors.'

Of such things cultural, one could be Walt.

Movies could be made, guaranteed by government funds; the March of Time newsreel, had already been so signed.

The idea was something to sleep on.

At break of dawn, the ride would begin with a "Via con Dios!" to the next ranch - where, crossing through the gate, and keeping with tradition, a greeting of "Saludos Amigos!"

John Stanley Donaldson, once the protege of Disney Legend Herb Ryman, is the author of Mr. Ryman's biography, Warp and Weft: Life Canvas of Herbert Ryman, which you can purchase directly from the author's site.

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