'Daveeey, Davy Crockett ... '

"Daveeey, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier."

How many of us were singing those words softly to ourselves today, words we haven't sang since we were kids many moons ago, words we thought we'd forgotten, after we'd heard Fess Parker had died?

Fess Parker was Davy Crockett, a folk hero if there ever was one.

The real one was larger-than-life, a Tennessee frontiersman who was elected to Congress, opposed President Andrew Jackson's Indian removal policies, then went to Texas where he died at the Alamo.

Fess Parker seemed larger than life, too.

Especially in that famous coonskin cap.

Both my brother and me wore them when Walt Disney's "Davy Crockett" was on TV.

And I can't count the number of times we got into scraps with other boys in the neighborhood who made fun of us and called us names whenever we went outside with the caps over our crewcuts.

We never did heed Mom's terse words of advice, "Just ignore them."

I bet we weren't the only coonskin cap-wearing boys that happened to, either.

If a coonskin cap was good enough for Fess Parker, it was good enough for us.

"Daveeey, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier."