“Chester, Yesterday’s Horse”

So okay, it’s a recurring rant from me that there’s not a ton from Wonderful World of Disney in its assorted brandings on the service. But this one isn’t exactly high on my list of priorities. Oh, there’s a nostalgia to the intro—it’s the one from my childhood in all of its ‘70s glory—but the thing is, my childhood wasn’t a great era for the show. The ‘70s in general were a tricky time for the company, after Walt died but before they found their footing again. An unassuming hour-long video about a boy and his horse was the sort of thing that got viewers in 1973 and then was forgotten except for a fondness for the name.

The Kincaid family lives on a ranch in rural Oregon, apparently near the city of Albany, itself on I-5 near Corvallis and Salem. They have a Belgian horse, obviously named Chester, who once a year is hired out to a local logging company. However, this year, the logging company has enlisted technology instead of a horse and child (more on this anon). They have a giant helium balloon that allows them to gather logs where there are no roads. Ben Kincaid (Bill Williams) and his fourteen-year-old son, Sliver (Jeff Tyler, and, yes, we’ll be getting back to that name, too), are taken up in a helicopter to see it and agree that, yup, that’s surely smarter than hiring Chester. Then, Ben is injured and the family needs money.

Ben and Belle (Barbara Hale, TV’s Della Street and married to Williams in real life) named their son Sliver. There’s a lot they have to atone for, if you want my opinion, but that name is the worst of it. That’s not a name. That’s an obscure Ira Levin novel. We don’t much have to worry about how the kids at school handle it, because we never hear about Sliver’s going to school in the first place, but every time someone mentioned his name, it struck me anew. What is it about this sort of thing and kids with terrible names?

Meanwhile, they’re also putting a terrific burden on Sliver. Ben refers to Chester as a one-ton pet, but also, no? We see Chester helping to provide the family with firewood, which I assume they’re legitimately using to heat their home, not just for ambiance. If they got rid of Chester, they, too, would have to replace him with machinery, which is its own burden. One also hopes that large amounts of his feed would be grazing naturally in meadows during the seasons when that’s possible.

I mean, it’s fine. The movie is fine. If nothing else, it’s an hour of Oregon scenery, and there are worse things—and, yes, it’s filmed on location in Oregon. Though it’s worth noting that the logging festival that provides the movie’s climax inasmuch as it has one is no longer a logging festival because the industry is in something of a decline in Oregon. It’s hard to feel sad about that when you look at the clearcutting.