Hopalong Cassidy and the Square Dance Holdup.

I'd seen this book/album kicking around flea markets for years, but never heard it until master webcrawler Bill Crider turned me on to a site called Kiddie Records Weekly.

The site offers you the option of listening to the record, downloading it, or viewing it like a storybook. It's the next best thing to being a kid again. I hope I'm not spoiling things by revealing the moral of the story. "Well kids," Hoppy says at the end, "that's the story of the Square Dance Holdup. Next time you go to a square dance, better not check your guns at the door. Never can tell when you might need them." Words to live by.

Clicking here will take you to the index of 2009 entries. You'll find Hoppy listed down on Week 28. Click there and you're good to go. There are half a dozen other western-related records on the site. You could peek at them all right now, of course, but I'll be featuring them one at a time over the next few weeks.