This is not a story of how I met, Johnny Crawford, the actual person. To this day, I have never had the pleasure of meeting him. However, this is a tale of how I became familiar with a tiny fragment of what it must have been like to be a teen idol in 1965. My narrative is perhaps more similar to a page torn out of a diary of a 15 year old Valley Girl, which I was. (from the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles) It is the account of a young girl’s fancy during a wild and crazy era, interwoven amidst the cobwebs of Hollywood Celebrity.

From the very young age of 8, when the Rifleman first began, I was glued to the couch, floor or whatever I could find to sit on and watch the show. I would layer up in my Annie Oakley holster and guns, my cowgirl vest, shirt, boots and Hopalong Cassidy watch and sit myself down for the ride. After all, I was an experienced amateur Mouseketeer since age 5. Growing up in Southern California, my parents had taken our family to Disneyland on opening day, in 1955. I wore the same getup, except with the mouse ears and guitar, when I watched the Mickey Mouse Club, but that is another story altogether.

Now I’ll get back to Johnny Crawford... When I was in High School (Chatsworth High), my first serious boyfriend looked just like Johnny. So much so, that they could have easily been brothers, or even twins. I met him when I was 15 and his name was Robert John C., but he went by "John." (I'll leave off his last name for privacy). When I found out his sister’s name was actually “Cindy”, I thought I had died and gone to heaven!

One day, not terribly long after we first met, I went with John and his family to the train station in downtown L.A. to see him off on a trip he was taking to Indiana. John was carrying a large suitcase with the letters “J.C.” prominently embossed on it. It was at the beginning of the summer and I was feeling somewhat melancholy that he would be gone for a month or so. At age 15, a month seemed like eternity. While quietly waiting for his train to arrive, we were suddenly mobbed by a group of young girls who thought he was Johnny Crawford! The scene bordered on hysteria and they were trying to get his autograph.

As John smiled and signed away, and I’m still not exactly sure whose name or initials he used, I was quite stunned! By that time, I had witnessed first hand a girl jumping out of her balcony seat onto Mick Jagger at a Rolling Stones concert. I had seen the very controversial Jerry Lee Lewis at a county fair in L.A. playing and jumping up and down around his piano in the 50’s. In addition, before the age of ten, I had heard the Everly Brothers performing in the back of a pickup truck behind a store in a local shopping mall. But, never had I been on the other side of the coin next to someone I knew and cared for, nearly being attacked by a group of hormone fueled teeny boppers! It seemed pretty funny and I soon found out this was a regular event for “J.C.”

However, at the same time, as a result of this experience, I feel great empathy for what the real Johnny Crawford had to face on a day-to-day basis as a young boy and teenager. Like so many lessons learned from the Rifleman show, this occurrence for me was a message about the illusions of fame and compassion for the privacy of those who walk within those walls. I will always remember this as if it happened last week...