Opinion: We could use Will Rogers' humor today

He is best known today for his notes, quotes and anecdotes, still popular and often repeated nearly 100 years after he first wrote them, said them and acted them out:

• “I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.”

• “Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.”

• “I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.”

But did you know that newspaper columnist, actor and political pundit Will Rogers was also an actual, factual cowboy, too? And he often played that role just 15 miles east of Muleshoe.

Ewing Halsell was among Rogers’ closest friends, the pair growing up together in Vinita, Oklahoma, in the 1880s. When Halsell purchased the Mashed O Ranch in Bailey and Lamb counties in 1901, Rogers was a frequent visitor.

Clovis cattle buyer Arthur Haley, who knew both Rogers and Halsell, was among witnesses.

“While Mr. Rogers was on the Mashed O … the Halsells of course tried to show him every courtesy and give him the best of everything, but he refused the comforts available,” Haley said in a 1935 interview with the Clovis Evening News-Journal.

Instead, Rogers stayed with the chuck wagon “and worked right along with the cowhands on the roundup,” Haley said. “He roped and rode right along with us, and he could handle a rope well.”

Rogers penned several of his 4,000-plus nationally syndicated newspaper columns from the Mashed O, using a Muleshoe dateline.

His July 11, 1932, “Will Rogers Says” column — with his own unique style that often lacked punctuation — began: “Down here at the Mashed O my old friends the Halsells ranch branding thousands of calves I been roping at ’em all day and they just look around and say ‘go on comedian and do your stuff on the stage but don’t try a real cowboy’s racket.’ I’ll catch one of the little rascals yet if I have to bribe him.”

Rogers was killed in 1935 in a plane crash while traveling with aviator Wiley Post.

His good-ol’-boy humor has stood the test of time, perhaps because his jabs were aimed at all political stripes and lacked the mean-spirited undertones we’ve been seeing in recent decades.

• “A fool and his money are soon elected.”

• “Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.”

• “The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.”

Today is a good day to remember Will Rogers because it’s his birthday — he was born Nov. 4, 1879 — and because we’re having an election this week.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could ride over to the Mashed O this afternoon and ask him what he thinks about politics today? He’d probably say something like he did in 1932:

• “This country has gotten where it is in spite of politics, not by the aid of it. That we have carried as much political bunk as we have and still survived shows we are a super nation.”

David Stevens is editor for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at: [email protected]

Author Bio

Do you have a question?
A comment you'd like to see published?
Or maybe a story idea for a future edition?

— Please email the publisher: [email protected]