November 4, 2014: Today is the birthday of cowboy poet and humorist Will Rogers (1879). He was born on a ranch near Oologah, Oklahoma, although Oklahoma was still the Cherokee Nation at that time. Since he grew up on a cattle ranch, its not too surprising that he learned how to throw a lasso, but Rogers took it a step further. He made it into the Guinness Book of World Records for throwing three lassos at once to rope a galloping horse and rider: one rope went around the horses neck, the second went around the rider, and the third captured the horses legs. His trick roping skills are featured in a movie, The Ropin Fool (1922), and he was popular in Wild West shows and on the vaudeville circuit. He also had a knack for wisecracks, and soon those became part of his act as well. He appeared in several Broadway shows and about 70 movies. He also wrote six books and a popular syndicated newspaper column, Will Rogers Says, which reached 40 million readers. I’ve lived in three states that lay claim to Will Rogers: Oklahoma, California, and Alaska. The Delany Park Strip in downtown Anchorage is the old runway were he took off with Wiley Post shortly before his fatal crash near Barrow, Alaska on August 14, 1935 at the height of the Great Depression. Earlier he had embarked on a nationwide tour to raise funds for the many people who were living in poverty, nearly 1 in 4 Americans. The following is the transcript of his “Bacon, Beans and Limousines” Speech that that he made before then President Herbert Hoover, or listen to it by clicking the link: Now we read in the papers every day, and they get us all excited over one or a dozen different problems thats supposed to be before this country. Theres not really but one problem before the whole country at this time. Its not the balancing of Mr. Mellon’s budget. Thats his worry. That aint ours. And its not the League of Nations that we read so much about. Its not the silver question. The only problem that confronts this country today is at least 7,000,000 people are out of work. That’s our only problem. There is no other one before us at all. Its to see that every man that wants to is able to work, is allowed to find a place to go to work, and also to arrange some way of getting a more equal distribution of the wealth in country. Now its Prohibition, we hear a lot about that. Well, thats nothing to compare to your neighbors children that are hungry. Its food, it aint drink that we’re worried about today. Here a few years ago we was so afraid that the poor people was liable to take a drink that now weve fixed it so they cant even get something to eat. So here we are in a country with more wheat and more corn and more money in the bank, more cotton, more everything in the world—there’s not a product that you can name that we havent got more of it than any other country ever had on the face of the earth—and yet we’ve got people starving. Well hold the distinction of being the only nation in the history of the world that ever went to the poor house in an automobile. The potters fields are lined with granaries full of grain. Now if there aint something cockeyed in an arrangement like that then this microphone here in front of me is—well, its a cuspidor, thats all. (October 18, 1931) Its great to be great, but its greater to be human. Will Rogers, Feb. 28, 1930
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 02:39:39 +0000
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