Roy Rogers

"My Last Days as Roy Rogers," by Pat Cunningham Devoto. Warner. 368 pages. $20.Tab Rutland is a feisty little girl growing up in Bainbridge, Ala., where the Ladies Help League is the pinnacle of social acceptance, where the threat of polio lurks in every twilight, and where Gene Autry and Roy Rogers ride the plains at the local theater.The celluloid cowboys will keep riding, as long as the town doesn't close every last public place. In this particular, mid-1950s summer, polio makes the residents of Bainbridge hide in their homes to avoid the disease.

The rich are moving back into Baltimore City. The poor are still getting out.Congress has abolished the Internal Revenue Service and will replace it with an agency having identical functions bearing the same name.The Northern Irish are mired in the 17th century, which looks ridiculous to us, who are well into the 19th.Roy Rogers is finally Home on the Range.Pub Date: 7/13/98

Only a gameBRAZIL shuts down its stock exchange when the national team plays in soccer's World Cup.English fans took on the police of France as well as the fans of Tunisia during World Cup games in recent weeks.Iran acted as though it had won World War III when its team defeated the United States.The worst was when Argentina defeated England on a penalty kick shootout after a scoreless overtime in a 2-2 tie.The Argentines went crazy at home. They thought they had gained vengeance for the Falkland Islands war of 1982.

A bright star from Hollywood's simpler years has fallen - a star from the days of the cinematic Old West where blood never flowed, despite a proliferation of flesh wounds, where the good guys always beat the bad guys, and where there was never any problem telling which was which.Roy Rogers died of congestive heart failure in his sleep yesterday in Apple Valley, near Los Angeles. He was 86.Rogers was in more than a hundred movies through his long career, and for nearly a dozen years - 1943 to 1954 - was the biggest cowboy movie star on the back lot, famous on nearly every continent.

He had a much longer and far more successful career in feature films, but it is through television that most of us came to know Roy Rogers, who died yesterday at 86.From 1951 to '57, he and his wife, Dale Evans, starred in "The Roy Rogers Show" Sunday nights at 6: 30 on NBC. And, if you were of the baby boom generation, you could hardly turn on a television set Saturday mornings or after school in the 1950s and early '60s without seeing one of the scores...

A Pasadena couple is seeking $6 million in damages after employees at a Pasadena Roy Rogers Restaurant left spit or some other fluid on their cheeseburgers nearly a year ago, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday in Anne Arundel Circuit Court.Carl E. and Darlene M. Coffey say that "large amounts of mucous-like fluid" slid off their cheeseburgers when Carl Coffey lifted the buns to inspect the sandwiches they had bought in the restaurant's drive-through lane, according to the suit.The couple is suing McDonald's Corp.

Roy Rogers, Domino's, McDonald's, Clyde's and Pizza Hut are all names that regularly attract Howard County restaurant-goers. This weekend, police said, they also attracted robbers.Police said holdups of employees and patrons occurred from Friday afternoon to early yesterday. None of the five incidents appear to be related, said Sgt. Tara Ball, a police spokeswoman.The series of robberies began when a youth was accosted in the Roy Rogers restaurant parking lot in Columbia's Wilde Lake Village Center by a knife-wielding teen-ager who demanded money and took $20, police said.

McDonald's Corp. will complete the purchase of 180 company-owned Roy Rogers restaurants in the Baltimore-Washington area by the end of May as part of its growth strategy.The real estate deal, worth at least $66 million, will allow the company to increase the number of stores in the Baltimore metropolitan area from 117 to 177."We are working with McDonald's to make the transfer of the remaining restaurants," said Sharon Hamilton, director of public affairs for Hardee's.This doesn't mean that Roy Rogers fans will have to trade roast beef sandwiches for Big Macs, but they may have to go farther to get them.

Roy Rogers has a place of honor in Lynda Gomeringer's Harewood Park dream house -- and we're not talking fast food.The 1940s and 1950s movie and television star is an integral part of her bedroom's Western decor.Gomeringer said that as a child, she wanted a bedroom like that of an uncle only 3 1/2 years older -- a bedroom with cowboy decorations, and a wagon with a light in it.But she never told that to her mother, who she thought would not understand."I had a lovely bedroom, but it was very much a girl's," she said.

The Roy Rogers restaurant in Columbia's Owen Brown village that closed last month will re-open as a McDonald's by September, a spokeswoman for McDonald's Corp. said yesterday.The Owen Brown Roy Rogers -- the third closed in Columbia since McDonald's bought some 180 stores in the fast-food chain last summer -- is the only one to be converted to a McDonald's so far, said Karen Witbeck of McDonald's.Meanwhile, another former Roy's location -- on Lynx Lane in Wilde Lake village -- was sold to Kentucky Fried Chicken early this month and is scheduled to reopen as a fried chicken outlet in September, said Jean Litterst Vezeau of KFC.Witbeck said the Roy Rogers restaurants in Wilde Lake and Oakland Mills were closed because of slow sales, and McDonald's put both up for sale.

Gas crisis or no, millions of Americans are hitting the road this summer, and many will travel that magical stretch of road known as the New Jersey Turnpike, where they'll stop at its various service areas which are, well, not so magical. These are named after great Americans, for some reason, and include the Vince Lombardi Service Area, the Thomas Edison Service Area, the Grover Cleveland Service Area, the Molly Pitcher Service Area and so on. You wonder what someone like Thomas Edison would think about having a rest stop named after him. This was maybe the greatest inventor in history, the man who gave us the electric lightbulb, the phonograph and 1,000 other inventions.

What can Michael Khudak possibly say about the Burger King Whopper? A Whopper is a Whopper --not necessarily what Khudak had in mind for lunch this Tuesday afternoon, but it's a distance yet to Newport News, Va., and Interstate 95 is Interstate 95. "It's the first time I've had a Whopper in 10 years," says Khudak, who stopped en route from New Jersey at the Chesapeake House in Cecil County. He'd rather have a turkey sandwich, "but there's no choice." Well, maybe. As an alternative to going to Burger King, the interstate traveler bound on an East Coast summer road trip may also choose, say, McDonald's.

A man robbed a fast-food restaurant in Eldersburg late Tuesday. The man ordered the manager to open the business' safe, forced him into a walk-in freezer and then fled with an undisclosed amount of money, authorities said. State troopers from the Westminster barracks said the man, who was described as in his 20s, had a dark-colored pistol when he accosted the manager of Roy Rogers outside the business in the 1400 block of Liberty Road about 10:45 p.m. Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call state police at 410-386-3000.

"Hillbilly Hollywood: The Origins of Country and Western Stye," by Debby Bull (Rizzoli, 128 pages, $39.95), illustrated If you detest everything conjured up by the term "country and western" you will adore this devastatingly visual send-up. But make no mistake: It's almost spiritually respectful of the excesses and outrages of the singers and other performers who were drawn by the hope of glory and riches from Depression era rural outposts to Los Angeles. Some of the characters -- Gene Autry, Roy Rogers -- are known well even today.

Baseball Giants: Signed P John Johnstone to two-year, $3.35 million contract. Indians: Agreed to terms with former Orioles C Matt Nokes on minor-league contract. Invited P Tim Drew, P Paul Rigdon, P C. C. Sabathia and P Mark Watson to spring training. Rangers: Agreed to terms with OF Jason McDonald and IF Luis Ortiz on minor-league contracts. Tigers: Signed OF Billy McMillon to minor-league contract and invited him to spring training. Yankees: Named Lee Mazzilli first base coach and Bob Didier major-league catching instructor.

"My Last Days as Roy Rogers," by Pat Cunningham Devoto. Warner. 368 pages. $20.Tab Rutland is a feisty little girl growing up in Bainbridge, Ala., where the Ladies Help League is the pinnacle of social acceptance, where the threat of polio lurks in every twilight, and where Gene Autry and Roy Rogers ride the plains at the local theater.The celluloid cowboys will keep riding, as long as the town doesn't close every last public place. In this particular, mid-1950s summer, polio makes the residents of Bainbridge hide in their homes to avoid the disease.

The rich are moving back into Baltimore City. The poor are still getting out.Congress has abolished the Internal Revenue Service and will replace it with an agency having identical functions bearing the same name.The Northern Irish are mired in the 17th century, which looks ridiculous to us, who are well into the 19th.Roy Rogers is finally Home on the Range.Pub Date: 7/13/98

Only a gameBRAZIL shuts down its stock exchange when the national team plays in soccer's World Cup.English fans took on the police of France as well as the fans of Tunisia during World Cup games in recent weeks.Iran acted as though it had won World War III when its team defeated the United States.The worst was when Argentina defeated England on a penalty kick shootout after a scoreless overtime in a 2-2 tie.The Argentines went crazy at home. They thought they had gained vengeance for the Falkland Islands war of 1982.

A bright star from Hollywood's simpler years has fallen - a star from the days of the cinematic Old West where blood never flowed, despite a proliferation of flesh wounds, where the good guys always beat the bad guys, and where there was never any problem telling which was which.Roy Rogers died of congestive heart failure in his sleep yesterday in Apple Valley, near Los Angeles. He was 86.Rogers was in more than a hundred movies through his long career, and for nearly a dozen years - 1943 to 1954 - was the biggest cowboy movie star on the back lot, famous on nearly every continent.

He had a much longer and far more successful career in feature films, but it is through television that most of us came to know Roy Rogers, who died yesterday at 86.From 1951 to '57, he and his wife, Dale Evans, starred in "The Roy Rogers Show" Sunday nights at 6: 30 on NBC. And, if you were of the baby boom generation, you could hardly turn on a television set Saturday mornings or after school in the 1950s and early '60s without seeing one of the scores...