It's a terrible thing for us fogies that, after the glory days of Bogart and Cagney, amateurs are now trivializing our country's vaunted reputation for the best crime in the world. Even previously peaceful countries are challenging our old time cinematic disdain for authority now that Elliot Ness is gone.

Take this 73-year-old Dutch man in The Hague, watering his front garden last week when police officers noticed there was marijuana sprouting from his potted begonia plant. This is true. It's unlikely that old-time criminals like Humphrey Bogart would have put their hot pot in a pot that was not a pot pot, right?

"The evidence was planted, officer," cried the old man, which is hard to argue with when it's right there growing in a pot. Anyway, at this stage, Humphrey would have pulled a machine gun from his hat -- in which he also kept his limousine, his dog, three cartons of Lucky Strikes and a gallon of scotch.

Without his hat, Humphrey was only 3 feet tall. Even so, nobody would mess with Humphrey's begonias -- well, not unless he wanted them to.

James Cagney, on the other hand, would have called his accuser a "dirty rat." Cagney's movies were teeming with dirty rats. It's understandable that his heroics were sometimes limited to name-calling, since he was even shorter than Bogy. It didn't help that his remedy was to wear really thick socks. He would have been much more threatening with a 42-gallon hat -- or maybe a bell tent.

But the accused, old Dutch man merely growled, "marijuana? I don't need no steenking marijuana." Perhaps he would have used a smoother line if he had seen Humphrey in that other movie where Rick wears a white dinner jacket and goes off into the mist, arm in arm with Claude Rains to begin a beautiful friendship. Oh sure, I would have put my money on Ingrid Bergman but there's no accounting for taste, right?

The old man said the marijuana must have been secretly planted by local teenagers who had spent hours lovingly fertilizing his begonias without any thought of reward.

Peru is also becoming a hot bed of crime. Last week model Leysi Suarez was charged with "offending a patriotic symbol" by riding a horse naked with only the Peruvian flag as a saddle.

"I have committed no crime," said Suarez.

"She is a genuine patriot," agreed an unnamed onlooker. "I mean, this was the first time every man in our street saluted the flag," he added. "Men cried openly as she disappeared around the corner while their necks were hugged very tightly by their loving wives, who whispered urgently into their ears, 'Right, you can stop saluting now. Do you hear me, you can stop saluting.'"

OK, I really do not want to conjure up a mental image of Humphrey Bogart committing that crime instead of Leysi, so forget it.

Oh, yes, Hollywood has a lot to answer for. Last Thursday, two teenagers were arrested for kayaking across a lake and stealing beer from a beachfront bar. While making their escape, they capsized and lost their paddles. The police followed several floating cans, which had spilled into the water, but they couldn't continue the chase until they had gone back to base for a can opener.

The teens were arrested for marijuana possession. It's unlikely that these are the same teens who fertilized the old man's begonias, since Holland is 6,000 miles away and the kids were literally up the creek without a paddle.

For free booze, old-time movie gangster George Raft would simply have sauntered into a bar and said, "Gimme a free beer or I'll tell everyone old jokes like the one where a horse walks into a bar and the barman says, 'why the long face?'" Of course, in this scene it would be the barman who uses a gun.

Now the only old crime film I can remember that was set, but not filmed, in Florida was "Some Like It Hot."

With this movie, the rot had already started to erode our gloriously criminal past because the fugitives were two transvestites and a beautiful woman. I mean, which part would Bogy have played? Scary, huh? But don't give up on Florida.

Last Friday morning in Levy County, Fla., a man fired his rifle seven times, killing an unfortunate fox that had buried its teeth in his wife's leg. Only one bullet hit his wife. For some reason the humble guy was berating himself for being a rotten shot.

His wife was said to be fine, but the dead fox will be tested for rabies. Now why on earth would the woman give that fox rabies? I mean she's an animal lover, for Pete's sake -- only not as dedicated as her husband.

He will only watch old Westerns where every cowboy gets shot and where, in spite of furious and fiery fusillades of badly aimed bullets, not one horse is even scratched.

Perhaps when only horses are left to produce the Westerns, they will assure us that not one cowboy was hurt making the film. Then Western crime movies would follow Bogart and Cagney into oblivion and so complete the tragedy.

Anthony Cicale is a Lemoore resident. His column appears weekly in The Sentinel. Readers can write him at The Hanford Sentinel, P.O. Box 9, Hanford, CA 93232 or e-mail anthonycicale@hotmail.com.