When I was a kid, like many others I watched the Disney "Davy Crockett" series with enthusiasm. While I loved Davy and Georgie (Fess Parker and Buddy Ebsen) the series became really great when they met Mike Fink on the river.   Jeff York, a regular player with Disney, portrayed a sort of likeable and laughable bully with a heart of gold. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

I enjoyed the tales of Mike Fink for years until I ran across a library with a wealth of wonderful old books and low and behold, here was an entire life and times right there! It was in a collection that had to be read in the library so I stopped in every now and again. Then and later I discovered that Ol' Mike was about the least likely and most disagreeable bastard ever to enter American Foklore!

I'm not real sure how he came down through history to be even remembered except as a mean and cantankerous son of a bitch with a need and the ability to fight who had no real feelings of pain (they say and its beleivable). Lots of other folk heroes were truly not too nice or too great either but for sheer meanness I doubt that Mike Fink has a peer. While its true that Davy Crockett may have known him, why old Walt chose to throw him into the series is beyond me. Of course it did give Big Mike a whole new life and legend and the Mike Fink Riverboat Restaurant in Cincy is a helluva' fine seafood and chophouse!!! (I think they're currently closed for a refurbish)

BTW.......I'm sure I'm not alone in watching the Crockett series back then. If you're anywhere around 60 I'd bet you had a coonskin hat or really wanted one. I'll bet you DON'T know that a former 'Catter (who sadly only rarely drops by) was a young man then who played one of the Indians that Davy fought. He still has the "necklace" he wore in the movie and wears it as a hatband. He even has some stills to prove it............. I was impressed!


Spaw