Idle American: Oh Will, oh Johnny

They are missed, these two men who didn’t try to make us love each other, but at the very least, made us tolerant of each other during their professional lives. Perhaps unknowingly, their gentle humor fostered tolerance. What they said was helpful - seldom painful - helping us to relax a bit, even when upended by life’s obstacles cropping up along the way.

Their body language, smiles and observations were worthy of taking to the bank, or at least taking note of. (I’m writing of two late greats, Will Rogers and Johnny Carson. They could have made something clever out of my sentence-ending preposition, but they’d go about it so gently, I wouldn’t have felt no shame. Fact is, I’d have been honored if either even glanced at my column!)

They could have taken today’s turbulent world culture head on, making us smile in spite of it all.

Too bad these American heroes likely never met, Rogers having been born in Oklahoma’s Indian Territory in 1879, and Carson in Corning, Iowa, three dozen years later. Rogers - charmer of the U.S. and the world with his down-home approach to life - died in 1935. Carson was born in 1925, passing in 2005.

Masters of easing tensions, they would have welcomed the company of my Uncle Mort, still vertical and ventilating in his second century on the planet. He’s old enough to have known them both. He’s bragged about how he saw them from a distance. Had he ever been in their company, I think Mort would have held his own conversationally, whatever the topic.

My uncle called me a day or two ago, eager to share a dream, one that he deemed to have both religious and political tones.

Say what? Mort, ready to roll out the details, said that in his dream, he was clad in a turban that dripped of cheap jewelry. He was sitting at Carson’s desk, holding a hermetically-sealed envelope from the front porch of Funk and Wagnalls, or something like that.

“I tapped the envelope against my forehead, hoping that the words I spewed out would fit the question posed in the envelope.” Mort paused, slowly saying, “from here to eternity.” Then, he cackled.

It fit. The question? “How many Hail Mary's would the president need to make should he ever become a Catholic?”

I smiled, thinking of the many times my uncle had recited famous lines attributed to Rogers and Carson. (And, there are many; I’ve taken to doing the same thing.)

He’s told me often about how Rogers responded to introductions suggesting that he was from Claremore, Oklahoma.

“I hate to start out the evening correcting our emcee,” he’d say. “Really I’m not from Claremore; I was born out of Claremore at a community called Oologah.” He’d grin, his eyes sparkling to the delight of every audience. His words were considered golden whether in print or from microphones in the nation’s largest venues.

“Truth to tell, I wasn’t born in downtown Oologah; my birthplace was out of Oologah.” He’d pause yet again, setting the audience up for the punch line.

“To be technically correct, I was actually born at the crossroads village of Wedlock, or a few miles out. I guess it would be safe to say that I was born out of Wedlock.” Audiences roared. Many countries co-existed, with the truth of many topics unglossed by multiple layers of paint and/or

whitewash.

Rogers died in an Alaskan plane crash with pilot friend Wiley Post in 1935, at age 56. Carson, whose Tonight Show spanned 30 years, retired in 1992, his final show seen by some 50,000,000 viewers. He died at age 80 in 2005.

They made the world a better place. I, and millions of others, loved them. I think I’ll stop now to look up some more of their wonderful quotes. They are priceless, not only when reading for the first time, but multiple times thereafter. Thank God for Google!

Dr. Newbury, longtime president of Howard Payne University, lives in the metroplex with Brenda, his wife of 60 years. Website: www.speakerdoc.com. Email: newbury@speakerdoc.com