Kings and cowboys: I watched the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in a newsreel between the Saturday double feature at the Maine Theatre in Portland, Me. Admission, popcorn and a Waleeco, all for a quarter.

Later, I was shocked, shocked to hear the Queen had had a baby. A prince, no less. Charles. He would someday be the king, the television said.

Scroll forward a half a century. Charles still isn’t king. But, then again, neither am I the king of the cowboys as all those Roy Rogers matinee movies had led me to expect.

As for Prince Charles’ royal wedding to Lady Diana, I took a rain check on it. Ditto her funeral. If I wasn’t going to be a singing cowboy legend, I’d be damned if I was going contribute anything to her santification.

Now Charles, grown increasingly crotchety with advancing age and years of poor reviews from the palace press, is getting married. Again.

Some I know are furious at the notion.

“She’ll never be a princess!”

“Who won’t?”

“Camilla. That hussy. She killed Princess Diana, I know she did.”

“Come now.”

“Indirectly, maybe, but she did. She was the cause of it. Everyone knows it.”

“Everyone?”

“Everyone that counts.”

Charles’ flushed and veined face. Camilla’s horsey smile-cum-grimace. Not a pretty wedding portrait.

But perhaps there is hope. The royal couple put off ying the knot for the Pope’s funeral. Maybe Charles will feel compelled to put it off for Saul Bellow’s funeral. After all, he was royalty, too. He was Henderson the Rain King, wasn’t he?