One of the most impressive western artists was a Dane by the name of Olaf Weighorst. Weighorst immigrated to the United States in 1918. He made his living with the New York Police Department and the U.S. Calvary, but spent whatever time he could traveling through the West gathering material for his paintings.

When he retired in 1945, he settled in El Cajon, Calif. He built a small home with a stable and a studio. His paintings became world famous.

It always struck me as odd that a world renowned painter would come form my shabby hometown, and that decrepit little neighborhood he lived in would have seemed suitable to a man who painted men on horseback. But it's easy to forget that when Weighorst moved to El Cajon, it wasn't much more than 12 streets and a post office. His small parcel of land was nothing but sagebrush and milkweed.

El Cajon's Chamber of Commerce is quite proud of the city's Weighorst connection (not much else to be proud of in El Cajon), and they've turned him old home into a museum. You should visit it, if you're in the area. It's a little oasis of artistic ambiance amidst a lot of suburban decay.

I hadn't thought about Weighorst for a long time, then tonight Billie and I watched one of the Netflix movies we had sitting around — El Dorado, with John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, James Caan, and ... get this ... Olaf . Olaf has a bit part, with a couple of lines, as a Swedish gunsmith. He plays his part well. But what's more impressive are the prints of some of his most famous paintings that are the backdrop for the opening credits.

El Dorado is a classic western, and if you go in for that kind of stuff, I recommend it. Plenty of action. Wayne gets the girl, of course, though there isn't much romance. There's some snappy dialog, especially between Caan and Wayne, and enough plot twists to keep you riveted.