User Reviews

An old prospector, Asa McQueen, comes into a diner in Folkston loaded with hundred dollar bills. He pays off a bank debt and asks his landlady to marry him. After years of poverty and eking out a bare living by prospecting, he is obviously very happy to now have so very much money. There's a catch of course. The banker is suspicious and notifies the Highway Patrol who confirms that the serial numbers on the bills the prospector gave the banker are the same as bills stolen in a bank robbery. The bank robber killed a bank guard when getting away and is now staying in Folkston, his home town. The robber soon hears that old Asa is flush with money and immediately goes after him. Mathews and his deputy learn where Asa's claim is and they too head out. The robber shoots Asa and when Mathews and the deputy try to drag him to safety, the robber pins down all three of them. I especially liked the scenes at the dinner and the country side ones where the prospector had his claim. I wonder how much of that rough terrain still exists without houses or malls and parking lots. When I first saw this episode it was on a 13 inch t.v. screen (maybe even a smaller one) and this time I saw it on a 55 inch screen. The resolution was very good but it seemed so odd to see an old t.v. show on such a large screen. The old t.v.s had small screens but also had consoles and were very heavy, perhaps weighing a hundred pounds or more. Sometimes when I watch one of these old t.v. shows I'm reminded of when ours caught fire and my Mom ran over, lifted it up and carried it outside. She should not have been to do that. In an emergency she had extraordinary strength.

In the tiny town of Folkston, elderly prospector Asa McQueen, never known to have money, suddenly shows up with a bundle of $100 bills and he's paying off all of his debts. He even suggested to his landlady at a rooming house that they get married. But the manager of the bank where he repaid his $300 loan checks serial numbers and learns they are from a bank robbery some 9 months ago. Of course, he calls the "highway patrol" and our man Dan is on the job, in a hurry as always.

I've always thought it odd that Dan leaves his office to race around to catch crooks while wearing his business suit. Friday and Gannon took an unmarked police car, they left the "black-and-whites" for he uniformed officers. Dan is almost never involved in a pursuit, I don't see why he doesn't use an unmarked car and leave the other ones for people actually patrolling.

Right from the start, Dan figures Asa was never involved in the robbery, that he just found the money. And right away (because it was a half hour show) he gets a lead on another boarder, Brownie, at the rooming house who he believes was the robber.

Asa gets wind that the money was stolen but figures it was found on his claim (mining type) and it rightfully belongs to him. He tells his landlady that he's going to his claim-which nobody knows where it is-to get the rest of the money and go someplace where no one will ever find him.

Even though he left sometime before the landlady blabbed to Brownie about where Asa went, not knowing Brownie was a crook, Brownie is somehow able to drive right up near Asa's claim and from behind a rock (fitting for him) see Asa digging by a rock down below and withdrawing a big box full of money.

As he is observing, Dan and his uniformed partner-of-the-week, Sgt. Corey are stopped nearby, trying to figure out where Asa and/or Brownie might be. Now they had stopped to get a map showing exactly where Asa's claim was, and should not have been on the scene until some time after the other two, yet even with the map they couldn't find the two vehicles parked adjacent to the claim site. But Brownie had no trouble getting to the site almost as fast as Asa did. Go figure.

Brownie could have just waited for Asa to pick up the money and return to the area near his car. Instead, he fires on Asa from his hiding place, with his rifle, from a long distance. So of course it's like the old Westerns, where the bad guy has the hero pinned down somewhere in the mountains but all he can do is keep firing shots and missing as the good guy lies on the ground near a rock. Except in those old shows, the good guy also had a gun, which is why the bad guy tried to way lay him as Brownie did here. Since Asa didn't have a weapon, Brownie really made his task much more difficult than it needed to be.

Dan and Corey hear the shots and are able to locate the shooting. They see Asa on the ground, wounded and see the basic area where the shots are coming from. Here's where I don't think they were bright. They both rush out, facing gunfire, to get to Asa's side and pull him more safely behind the rock. One should have gone to help him, the other around to get behind the bad guy and stop him.

Instead, as soon as they get behind the rock with Asa, they realize the rifle's range is superior to their handguns and that they are trapped with no way to call for help. Dan decides to get Corey to fire for cover, getting Brownie to duck, while Dan races out to get around behind Brownie to stop him. The plan works and they rescue Asa.

Talking with Asa, the old man tells him that he can't continue to prospect way out here, not with his bullet wound in his leg. Asa says he will have to stay in Folkston. Dan says, "Well, why don't you look there?" Asa concludes "Yeah, I might register my next claim there." We are to understand the implied notion that he now does intend to propose, seriously, to the landlady, sort of "staking a claim" for her.

The best line of the episode is surely one of the best lines from this series. As Dan lays out his plan to have Corey cover him while he runs up the hill to rock cover, Corey asks, "Why don't you cover me? I'm younger - maybe faster." Dan quickly replies, "I'm old enough to be scared. That makes me just as fast."

One thing that seemed to make no sense to me involves the location of where the box of money was hidden. The rock it were buried next to was on an open field, far from other rocks or hills, not near any sort of creek. If Asa spent his time with a pick and shovel digging for valuable ore, you'd think he'd be searching by caves or a creek bed or digging where there are lots of colorful rocks on a mountain side. Whatever possessed him to dig by this non-descript rock in the middle of this field?

One of the best episodes of the series, maybe because we felt for a good guy, Asa. I can only give it an 8 because these dramas just don't have enough happening to normally score higher. Dan didn't do much "detective" work to figure out who the bad guy was, and the action scenes are easily plotted so we know how they will end and that it won't take long.

**SPOILERS** Reviewer Paularoc covered most of this story; just thought I'd throw in a couple of possibly interesting points. First, the old prospector was luckier than he knew. Sure, he spent what he said was six hundred dollars, but usually, there's a finder's fee for recovered loot from a major robbery. If the F.D.I.C. Handled it, he would most likely have gotten about 10-15% of the stated loss, or $9,000. Not too bad for an old coot who should be collecting social security, too. Think about it. He was honest about the find, he paid his debts, Yup, I'd make sure he got a reward. After all, he wasn't trying to steal it; he just thought it was "finder's keepers".

If anyone else noticed, the town was not just small, but almost petrified. REAL Bad Guy "Brownie" replied to his landlady when she said "something exciting happened "What? an airplane flew over?" It still makes me chuckle. Also, when they were pinned down, the young trooper with Matthews was a better shot than Dan was. I think Dan just wanted to shoot Brownie himself. Can't say I blame him, either; good riddance to a creep who'd shoot down an old scudder who was unarmed. If he lived, it was worth a long stay in a federal pen, so let's hope he expired right there, rather than us payin' his feed bill.

The incredibly sexy dispatcher was played by Joan Dixon, and that's all I know about her. Asa (the Prospector) was played by Billy Griffith, who either had a lot of makeup on, or was just plain OLD either is possible, but I think he was mostly famous for playing old farts. He passed away four years later at only 62 years old (R.I.P., Billy). He had a great truck, a model "T"; extremely cool that he drove like a hot rod. Whoever maintained it was doing a fantastic job of it. Dirtbag Brownie had a sweet '56 Buick convertible (they use the same one in several episodes), and of course, the H.P. are using fake four door Buick Supers - the frostiest.

Good show. Fast, tight action, and Broderick's terrific gravelly voice was used with abandon; it was probably one of the best voices of that kind, EVER.(R.I.P. Mr. Crawford). I'll bet there are a lot of new guys (especially R+R singers) who wish they had that voice.