THE FUGITIVE

I always have liked David Janssen a lot. When he played private detective Richard Diamond in the '50's, I was so impressed that when the kids at school during recess would pretend to be their favorite superheroes, exclaiming, "I'm Superman!" "I'm Robin Hood!" "I'm Tarzan!" I would yell out, "I'm Richard Diamond!" and they'd all ask, "Who's that?" And I enjoyed watching David Janssen play the tough cop in the movie "Warning Shot," and the tough private investigator, Harry O. But when he played the vulnerable, puppy-eyed, wrongly-convicted doctor, Richard Kimble, on "The Fugitive," my heart just went out to him. How many of us had been wrongly accused? How many had felt the pressures of society closing in? A common theme of this series was to watch good people be corrupted by lies, and bad people converted by truth. And I ran with Richard Kimble. This show was on ABC, Tuesday nights at 10 p.m., and I watched every episode for two years without missing one. One time our TV broke down, and so I went across the street to the home of a state patrolman's family and watched "The Fugitive" there. But finally, for some reason, I had to miss one episode, but it was a rerun and I had seen it before. Then I watched the final two years of the four-year series without missing one episode. It ended in 1967, the year I graduated from high school, and it's no coincidence that later that very year I left home with only thirty dollars to begin a six-month hitchhiking trip around the U.S. Richard Kimble was often on my mind as I thumbed my way to Kansas, to Georgia, to Pennsylvania, and back to Washington State, meeting hundreds of people and experiencing life. Walking through Bardwell, Kentucky, followed all the way by a police car two blocks away, I was finally stopped at the edge of town and had my zipper bag searched. The little town's bank had been robbed that day, and I was a stranger passing through. I was almost expecting to see Lt. Gerard.


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