Will Rogers, The Oklahoma Cowboy

The header sketch this time is supposed to be Will Rogers from a photo on Wikipedia Commons.

I don't think very many school kids of today ever heard of Will Rogers, but when I was growing up we looked forward to the day when one of his movies would be shown at the church house because we knew that it would be full of down-home, common-sense humor, and everyone would laugh and carry on and go home and repeat his jokes later. At the time, he was downright funny with his horse and rope tricks and his political jokes.

He wrote several books and articles like He Chews To Run, There's Not a Bathing Suit in Russia, and Illiterate Digest. He wrote a weekly newspaper column for The New York Times for several years. He starred in silent movies and sound movies and was a popular actor, playing in the Ziegfield Follies and many other vaudeville acts and nightclubs.

Monuments to him stretch from Oklahoma to California and Texas and points East. He was famous for his one-liners like A fool and his money are soon elected,  Our foreign policy is an open book, a checkbook, When the Okies left Oklahoma and moved to California, they raised the average intelligence level in both states, and one more of his many, The Income tax has made more liars out of Americans than golf. Okay, here's another one, Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

Rogers even ran a mock campaign in Life magazine for the Presidency. He was the "bunkless candidate" for the Anti-Bunk Party. His only campaign promise was that if he won, he would resign.

Will Rogers like to fly and supported Billy Mitchell, who advocated a military air force. He died with his friend, Wiley Post, in 1935 in a plane crash in Alaska.

Ref: Wikipedia/Will Rogers Bio