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OLD FORT OLIVER, THOUSAND PLALMS, CALIFORNIA
J O K E   B O O K
of
Harry Oliver, the Desert Rat

    Desert Rat humor, anecdotes and quips differ from the common run of joke book material, in that desert story tellers are tireless desert publicists. So as you read this book you are sure to learn much of the fine life we live, the healthy, fun loving life that excites us to tell 'em tall.
    From the pages of the last four years of the "Desert Rat Scrap Book," a quarterly of Desert Tall Tales, Humor, Philosophy, Wit and Banter, I have compiled this book. The reason, the ever increasing requests from contributors and their friends for back packets containing their happy contributions. The back copies, that is, most of them, have long gone to the four corners of the world, many to the boys at the front. That's what happens when jokes are chosen well.
Harry Oliver, Editor

Anyone anywhere can send 50c and have this quarterly, "the only newspaper you can open in the wind, only 5 page paper," sent them.   It even makes its own editor laugh.

    When Mark Twain stated that there were liars, damn liars and statisticians, he failed to classify Harry Oliver. His tall tales and those he has garnered from other good sources are in a class of their own. Tuned to his beloved desert, they bring a sorely needed "down-to-earth" feeling to those of us who take this world too seriously.
    Harry punctuates his jokes here and there with a bit of serious wisdom that it startling and refreshing. The wind he generates, as he says, is "like the wind in your tires—it makes ridin' kinda smooth like."
    A master of the shorter than short school of journalism, Harry has packed the essence of several years of Desert Rat Scrap Books into this one convenient packet.
PAUL S HUBBARD
Hubbard Printing, Ridgecrest, California

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FIRST DESERT JOKE BOOK

    Don't be misled by the picture on the cover showing me half burro and half prospector. Shakespeare said, "Let me not waste words on he who be half ass and half man."
    Shakespeare didn't know the Desert Prospector nor the sharp-witted Desert Burro.
    So you see all this doesn't necessarily make this a half-ass joke book. It's the first Desert Joke Book, and I have put in some stuff that is not funny just to make the funny stuff funnier.

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    To the borrower of this paper: If, as you read these words, you are careful to remember who's paper it is, and make it a habit to read each packet, you can save yourself 50¢ a year.
    I hope some day you may read it right after pay day.

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    I do not ask the public to do anything that I was not willing to do myself. I have read this paper from start to finish—and so did the proofreader (I hope).

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    When you've been here in the Desert a few years you find yourself talking to yourself. . . . After a few more years you find yourself talking to the lizards. . . . Then in another couple of years you find the lizards talking to you. . . . When you find yourself stealing their amazing tales you are about ready to start a Desert paper.

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    Only the wild creatures that find enough of the right kind of food, cover and water will live. The rest must either starve because they cannot eat, be killed because they cannot hide, or die off because they cannot raise enough young to replace their losses. These are natural laws.
    Editor's Note: But the now wild burro pays no attention to such laws. —H.O.

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    The wildflowers at Ft. Oliver were so thick this spring you could hardly see the discarded beer cans.

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    The biggest pain-in-the-neck about smoking is a fellow I know who never smoked in his life. In the 30 or 40 years I've known this man, he has made more people miserable than any ten men could smoking.
    The teetotalers exaggerate what drink does to a man. They are always harping about drink changing a man into a monster. I have done a few ornery things when drinking, but they were all planned when I was absolutely sober.
    When I am drinking, I am me, just me, and you are you, just you. And so if you are a disagreeable person when you are drinking, that's you, you are a disagreeable person.
    Your Editor likes people with good honest vices—out in the open.
—D. R. S. B. Ed.

2

How Shadow Mountain Got It's Name

    In the year 1888, as the story goes, a desert rat hired a burro in the summer time, to pack a load from Palm Springs to Dos Palmos. At noon, when the sun was very hot, both he who had hired the burro and the owner of the animal wanting to sit in the shade of the burro, they fell to thrusting one another away. The owner insisted that he had hired out only the burro and not the shadow. The Desert Rat insisted that he ha hired the burro, all that belonged to the burro was his.
    Old timers say that the fine point of the burro and his shadow remains unsettled to this day, but the name Shadow (later Shadow Mountain) has stayed through the years. Today most folks come to Palm Desert not for shadows, but to enjoy the winter sun.
—Harry Oliver

There Ain't No Silence on the Desert

    I was talking to my old friend Shoshone Gus recently and he has a pet peeve to get off his chest. Says Gus—"I gits might tired of these danged dude writers that come down here fer a week end an' go back to Noo York or Pokytllo and write a "great desert novel." The worst mistake they make is talkin' about the vast threatenin' silence of the desert.
    Now they ain't no silence on this here desert nor none other I ever heard of an' it's never deserted nor lonesome. It's jest that the noises are smaller here. Anybody that ever slept alone on the desert knows that aside from the "lonely howl of a mournful coyote" (anybody knows coyotes are happy when they holler) an the soft whisperin' of the gentle desert breeze, there is a good many other noises that after a week or so begin to be so important to a feller as to almost sound like a racket.
    I play a game with the desert tryin' to figure out where all the noises come from an' it never gits tiresome. For instance there's that funny sound the grub worms make in the mesquite bark in the spring. Stop under any mesquite tree, where they ain't no street cars passin', an' stand still fer a minute—anybody can hear it! Then there's the noise made when seed pods split open on the desert primroses. Makes a feller almost jump out of bed. An the tiny rustlin' noises of desert mice an' the cheepin' noises they make callin' one another. There's no end to 'em. Why one night a noise kept botherin' me till I had to git up out of bed an' investigate. It was one of them stink bugs stompin' around in the dark. I had to carry him away a quarter of a mile an' turn him loose so's I could sleep.
—John Hilton

3

Sweat and the Type Louse
By Harry Oliver

    Getting this paper out when its 121 in the shade is tough—but trying to do the job with Pack Rats changing things around in the pigeon holes of this hundred year old desk is almost the impossible—(but I am going to do it)—and what's more I got a new bunch of trouble—this new trouble came out of an old font of type I found in a Ghost Town—(nice old type but no c's)—yes sir I found a Type Louse—He had his nest in the ffi compartment, but got away from me crawling into the 18 pt P. T. Barnum type case—but knowing what to expect—I'll watch for his dirty work.
    As an apprentice I learned of the Type Louse. I remember when they fired me because I couldn't spell. The boss said if he could, he would keep me just to chase the Type Louse around.
    I didn't learn to spell—but I did learn the typesetter's rule—"Set up type as long as you can hold you breath without getting blue in the face, then put in a comma. When you gape, put in a semicolon, and when you want to sneeze, that's the time to make a paragraph.
    As to that 121 in the shade—you know, you don't have to stay in the shade all the time.

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Outside the lizards hang by their tails on the shady side of the cactus to keep their bellies from frying.

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    Too hot to go any place and not much to do, so for a month I have been trying to teach "Whiskers," my dog how to play checkers. He will make about two moves but then he stops and lays down on the cool floor. As a last resort I shut him up by himself in the room with a double jump right in front of him, and told him it was his move. After considerable time had elapsed, I finally stooped and looked though the keyhole. No, you're wrong—all I saw was one of "Whiskers" brown eyes and he winked—and said Hot Dog.

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    Dry Camp Blackie brought two cakes of ice home from Indio wrapped in burlap, opened the car door and says they started walking down the trail hand in hand and fainted.

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Last year about this time rain came but nary a drop hit the ground—turned into steam—like spittin' into a blast furnace.

4

My dog Whiskers' nose is so hot he burnt a hole in the back door.

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    Yesterday two city real estate men all dressed up in new blue serge suits called at the Fort. They got into a jeep and started across the sand dunes, when the jeep finally got to the highway, the two blue suits got out of the jeep, the men had done melted out of 'em.

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    It's so hot here at Fort Oliver, my two pet Desert tortoises have burrowed ten feet under ground—last time I saw them by moonlight, Kate who is 6⅞" had Duplicate's 8½" shall on and was almost walking out of it, while Duplikate was oozing out of Kate's pint size quonset. Sure is hot.

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My cat sinks her claws into a prune for each foot when she walks in the sunny patio; gives her the new look.

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Look! Look! on the desk—that Type Louse is taking a bath in the ink well.
Gee, It's Hot! —Harry Oliver

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    Did you know that the Mojave lizards travel in pairs in the summer time? One rides the other piggy-back till the tootsies get hot. Then they trade off.
—Mrs. Karl Mott Klinger

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    Time for my bath. I've had the electric fan setting in the bathroom window sucking in a mirage—great bathing in those mirages.
    (P. S. I never have known a mirage to bring soap and towel.)

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This summer Harry Marrel of Rancho Vaquero, got so mad at the heat he turned his thermometer's face to the wall.

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Pull in Your Arm, Podner

    Don Curry, former Park Naturalist, says he learned to know the current temperature by feel. When the temperature was sufficient to cause a pain at the base of his fingernail he found by checking with a thermometer that it was 116°F. When the pain was extended to the first joint of the index finger he knew the temperature was 121. If the pain reached the third joint of the finger he knew it was time to rush back to cooler elevation in the Panamints. After listening to Curry relate this method of reading temperatures, a man and woman visitor started toward Badwater on August 23 to make the test by this unique observation. The man rolled down the car window and extended his arm into the atmosphere and uttered a violent cry.
    His wife observed that his arm had been burned off sheer just above the elbow.

5

I have never made an error in weather prediction—H²O.
DESERT WEATHER: Next year, from Texas to California: "Unusual as usual."

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    Old Timer McRae who lives just west of Fort Oliver always has a saucer in his hand when he turns on his water spigot to drink—got to SAUCER AND BLOW a spell before he drinks.

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    During an earthquake in a certain desert town, the municipal building was all shook up and the councilmen left in a hurry. The clerk, a man of rules and regulations, didn't know how to give his record the proper official business tone. Finally he made his entry: "On motion of the City Hall, the council adjourned."
    Ask Mayor (Grasshopper) Farrell.

    Your Editor thanks the Saturday Evening Poste for the use of this cartoon Bob (R. C.) Dell of Marengo, Illinois, made the drawing. Thanks to you too, Bob. From cover of Desert Rat Scrap Book, Packet 1 of Pouch 3.

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"The trouble with whiskey is that you take a drink and it makes a new man of you. Then he has to have a drink. —Says S. E. Robinson of Imperial, Calif.

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    On a trip down into the Arizona desert country this past month a Navajo told me about the old hermit who died recently when he wandered out of the hills and saw an auto for the first time. He didn't see it soon enough. —Thanks to Curt Skinner, Chief Ranger, Yellowstone Park

6

BURROS

    A prospector over at Quartzsite, Arizona, that's spent 26 years out here in the desert, six years huntin' gold, and 20 years huntin' his three dad-burned burros, told me this story today.
    "Years ago," said he, "I put a bell on Sappho, my pet burro, and turned her loose to feed nights with Frankey and Johnny, a pesky pair of blues, the bell so's I can locate them in the mornin', they stayin' together. Well, lots of times I couldn't hear that bell and after spendin' most a day lookin for 'em would find their tracks close by. I thought maybe I might be getting deaf, till one day after trampin' for miles, I found out how them pesky burros had been a trickin' me these years. I returned to camp and looked down into a canyon close by; there was Sappho, her head motionless over a large rock, and Frankey and Johnny bringin' every other mouthful of grass over to her rock, so's she wouldn't move her head and ring that tell-tale bell."
—Harry Oliver

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    California and Arizona fighting over water is not new. The first cause of early man's fighting was women. Next came water. He fought for the water holes in the desert when his only weapon was a club. In the Nile valley 6000 years ago he was fighting for water to irrigate his grain. The pioneers of our west were constantly fighting over water. That whisky has caused more fights than water is a mistaken idea. History will bear that out.
—From The Sun, Wickenburg, Arizona

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    And then there was the rancher's widow over Bowie way. When died she collected $50,000 in insurance. Upon being presented with the check she sighed: "Oh, dear, I'd give $10,000 to have him back."
—From F. A. McKinney's Brewery Gulch Gazette, Bisbee, Arizona

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One of the greatest labor saving devices of today is mañana.

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J.H.S. of Santa Fe writes—
    Konrad, the chef at La Fonda, our local Harvey House, got in the paper the other day for saying he'd seen some flying saucers in the sky that morning.
    Joe, the San Felipe Indian who sells stuff to the tourists around the hotel said, "Huh, I think he just goosed a waitress."

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    Magistrate: "So you claim the defendant hit you with malice . . . and aforethought?"
    Plaintiff: "No, your Honor—it's no good trying to make me contradict myself. I said he hit me with a shovel, and that's right!"

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    After searching for a week for a lost mule the owner offered the town half-wit two bits if he found him. In about an hour the dope came back in leading the mule. When asked how he found him so quickly he replied—"I just thought where I'd go if I was a mule and I went there and there he was.
—Geo A. Stingle

7

    Buffalo Bull Maxwell, head man of the Randsburg Desert Museum, reports a sad happening in Stringer District. According to Buffalo, Larry Reynolds, mechanic at Hardee Witt's garage was bitten by a rattlesnake yesterday and in spite of everything they could do, the snake died within 30 minutes.

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TOURISTS—People who travel thousands of miles to get a picture of themselves standing by the car.

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    Dry Camp Blackie of Buzzard's Gap is as perturbed as an ambidexterous sidewinder. Says the buzzards are almost scared out of this desert valley. The aeroplanes care them.
    He has been watching a pair that nested up in the gap—says that a lop-sided egg hatched into a baby buzzard with two tails. Its ma was scared by a p-38.
—Harry Oliver in "Limelight News," Palm Springs

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Way to stop wars is to quit lending money to other nations. That's the way I got Dry Camp Blackie to stop drinking.
—"The Desert Sun," Palm Springs

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The Magic of Desert Air

    This desert air is something wonderful. It's pasteurized, homogenized, dehydrated and impregnated with solium. It also has atomic properties which make you immune to allergies. Many hopeless victims of rapid decline improve so rapidly they soon start hiking to the mountains to fight bobcats. Some anemic folks gains strength so fast they have to take take sleeping tablets to keep from overdoing. One walking skeleton gave this desert atmosphere a trial and in three months had to go on a diet to reduce to fighting condition for a battle with Joe Louis. Hay fever victims develop a hobby of making and sleeping on ragweed pillows about the second day after they hit this atmosphere.
    Germs? Well there ain't any. The old miners around these parts have a legend concerning germs. According to their story a long time ago a group of germs of various diseases invaded the desert and after several days of fighting wind and sand they spied a burro. They immediately attached themselves to a clump of grass right where the burro was browsing. Pretty soon the burro ate the bunch grass, germs and all and that made the germs mighty happy. At last they were off to a good start in the burro's stomach. However, they were pretty tired and they decided that they would all take a good sleep and in the morning when they were rested and fresh they would go to work and make a fresh killing. When they woke up the burro was gone. Consternation was in camp, as they say and after sizing up their predicament they decided they had better go back where they came from. Which they did. They never came back. That's why there are no germs on the desert. Most folks 'round these parts die from old age. Occasionally a tenderfoot will get ambitious, don his bathihng suit and dive headfirst into a mirage. Others again laugh themselves to death reading the Desert Rat Scrap Book.
—By George A. Stingle

8

    Like finding a gold nugget, was the thrill of digging this item out of an old copy of the Santa Fe magazine:
    How Editors Get Rich—I have just learned of an editor who started poor twenty years ago and retired with a comfortable fortune of $50,000. This was acquired through industry, economy, conscientious effort, indomitable perseverance and the death of an uncle who left him $49,990.

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    Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico, is the oldest city in the United States, there being evidence to show that it was inhabited as early as 1325, or 300 years before the Pilgrim fathers landed on Plymouth Rock. I like its narrow streets and old adobes. Today as I strolled near the church of San Miguel, built in 1710, I saw an old man seated outside an old adobe with all his furniture around him.
    "Poor old soul. What's your trouble? Evicted I suppose." "No sir," was the mournful reply. "It's just my old woman whitewashing again."
—From a Daily Desert Column I wrote in 1938—H.O.

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    The Dry Lake Dude talls about the young bride who came into the hardware store and asked the clerk for "a little oven." It was about three second later that she slapped him down.
—Brewery Gulch Gazette, Bisbee, Arizona

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    The only way to know anything about a lost mine is to go to just one man. If you go to two, what you know is reduced by half. Go to three and you don't know anything.
—From a Daily Desert Column I wrote in 1938—H.O.

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    Old Rip-Snortin' ain't no prohibitionist, we all know, but when he was charged with selling liquor to the Indians it took his friend Calculatin' Cal to get him away from the law. Cal's smart, he just says to the law—"Look at Rip—look at him again—now gentlemen, do you honestly think that if he had a quart of whiskey he would sell it?"
    Old Rip-Snortin's free of the law and says he's glad he switched to Calvert.

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Rip-Stortin', the Old Time Prospector is back from his vacation. It was an alcoholiday.

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    Frenchy from Slap Jack Gulch went berserk during World War I—and he even tried to walk on the waters of Salton Sea, but his fait wasn't quite strong enough, so they dragged him out and sent him to the insane asylum. In a few years they let the harmless old fellow out, checking his medical report and gave him discharge papers.
    Nowadays when anything comes up about Desert Rats being nuts he always ups an says, "Well, ya know there's a heap o' crazy folks in this Desert, but I'm O.K. I got the papers to show I'm sane. Don't know anyone else around these parts that's got real proof they're sane.
—Must thank my sister, Frances, for this story. Gee, I wish I had some of those papers to show.—Your Editor.

9

    The Dry Lake Dude was talking to a forlorn looking cowboy over on Maley street the other morning. "What's the matter, bud?" he asked. "They don't treat me right out at the ranch anymore since they turned it into a dude outfit," replied the waddie. "They used to let me sit at the table with the family." How come they cut you off?' asked the DLD, "bad table manners?" "Nope! That wasn't it, they said my appetite's too big. I set bad example for the playin' guests."
—Brewery Gulch Gazette

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Mexican Story from Weinstock's Book "My L. A."

    Miguel was a grizzle old fellow of sixty-five. He was charged with drunkenness. When he pleaded guilty, the judge asked: "Have you ever been in here before?"
    "Si, Señor," said Miguel. "Don't you remember, it was two years ago? You asked me in what year Columbus discovered America."
    "I remember,' said the judge. "You were boracho then too, weren't you? You could not answer the question."
    "No, I could not answer then, but—" with the pride that knowledge brings—"today I know 1492!"
    The sobriety test was good enough for the judge who recommended leniency.

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    The fellow who makes the same mistake over and over doesn't keep his eyes open. There are thousands of other mistakes close at hand which he could make.
—Foxtail in Prairie-Farmer

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    In the foreword of Bennett Cerf's new book of humor, he says, "If you know a good story, publish it from time to time."
    So I am reprinting this yarn of mine from Packet one of pouch one.—Ed.
    Nogales, Ariz.—A few months ago old man West died here at Nogales. His two sons, Ted West, a newspaperman, and Bill West, a paper-hanger, each received $250 from the small estate. Bill, the paper-hanger, deposited his in the savings bank, where it still remains. Ted, the newspaperman, always had a great yen for tequila in fancy bottles, and expended his heritage in the purchase of a grand array of the fanciest he could find. He had just finished drinking these, and sold the strange, fantastic empty bottles to a tourist for $360.
— H.O.

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    Death Valley Scotty leaned back in his big leather chair, puffed at his cigar, and told this one:
    "One day I'm out in the courtyard diggin' a hole. An old sister came up to me an' says:
    'You'll cook your brains, working like that out in this hot sun.' I says "Hell, if I had any brains I wouldn't be out here in this hot sun in the first place."
— H.O.

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Borego's Doc A. A Beatty says the way to tell if a man is lying is to watch and see if his lips move. If they do, he is.

10

    I have a big old 44 Colt "Trouble Stopper" with notches on its handle and by gee I have to use it ever night because I don't like trouble—yessiree, I lay that old shooting iron on my well stuffed old office chair so's "Whiskers," my dog, and "Sin," my cat, won't fight all night to see which one sleeps on that soft chair seat.

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    A favorite habit of the wood rat, one that would justify a chickle if the animal were human, is that of carrying the redoubtable joints of the porcupine-like cholla cactus into farm house privies, where very often they are stored in a corner on the seat or the floor!—Vorhies & Taylor.
—Calico Print

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    Phat Graettinger, Editor of the Palm Springs swank press, The Desert Sun, recently referred to our desert Road Runners as Street Walker.
    Glad I live where we have roads.

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    Charles Funk, the Dictionary maker, who knows 25,000 words, started his career as a mule skinner. Cussing mules sure enlarges ones vocabulary.

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    Man isn't so smart. Thousands of years before he began to have afternoon headaches from trying to think, the dessert tortoise had a streamlined body, turret top, retractable landing gear, and a portable house.

Thanks to Paul Carruth for the turtle cartoon from "Best Cartoons of the Year 1947," Edited by Lawrence Lariar. (From P. 2 of P. 2).

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    A rooming house keeper from Red Mountain went into a pet shop to price some dogs. "You can have that small bitch over there for $25," said the clerk, pointing, "or that large bitch in the corner for $35." The lady frowned as the man spoke. "Why, madam," asked the clerk, "aren't you familiar with the term 'bitch'?" "Why, certainly," replied the lady haughtily, "but never before have I heard it applied to dogs."

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    Old Dry Wash Smith will be eighty-three years old in July. He says he'd be eighty-five, but he was in jail for two years in Carson City, Nevada.

11

WIND,   WIND,   AND   MORE   WIND

    Many of you folks heard me tell these wind stories around the camp fire. This is the first time I have coralled them all and put them on paper. Now it is your turn to tell them. Go to it, but remember they are not funny when the wind is blowing.—Harry.

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    General George Patton was holding maneuvers at Camp Young when one of his desert trained boys came drifting into camp and landed with a bump. Slightly bruised and cut up, he was taken to General Patton who commented, "You've really got nerve, son, to come down in a parachute with this 100-mile wind blowing. You might have been killed. "I didn't come down in a parachute, sir," replied the soldier "I went up in a tent."

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    I can recall one time I got awful mad at my whiskers—sure were troublesome. I came out from the lee side of Old Fort Oliver when the wind was blowing a 190 mile gale, and like a fool I opened my mouth too wide and that wind blew me inside out—my mouth was full of whiskers, I thought I would choke. Guess I would have too if Blackie hadn't pushed me out into the wind again and shouted into my mouth, SO MY EARS COULD HEAR, "Face the wind again and open you mouth wide." I did—the wind blowing me back into shape again with my whiskers on the outside where they belong.
—Harry Oliver

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    We get used to it being windy. Why, we get so's we can wake up at night and taste which way the wind's been blowing. Yes, we know from the taste that the wind's been blowing from Imperial Valley (Cow Country), out Blythe way, or over the hills from 29 Palms. Of course, there's more spice in them wild night winds coming from Palm Springs.

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    I live in 1000 Palms and get all the wind coming down from San Gorgonio Pass, and in them 35 miles there's nothing to stop the wind but three barbed wire fences. Of course it blows all the barbs to the corners, but it slows it some.

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    Most generally the wind comes from wherever it happens to be. But talking about heavy winds—once over at Garnet the wind blew a cook stove 14 miles, and came back next day to get the lids, and the poker behind the door.

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    Our school teacher at 1000 Palms claims she scours her pans by holding them up to the keyhole. The sand coming through in a stream polishes them better than she can by the usual method.

12

    The wind sometimes moves the desert sand. Farmer down near me says he can't keep up with his farm, which took a trip north, but speculates she'll be back next week, he says, "And I van plow then."

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The S. P. Railroad turns it engines around so the heavy end is in front to keep the wind from blowing the light end off the track.

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    I didn't like the wind my first year in this desert because I lost sixteen hats. Then I found I could screw them hats on using the wrinkles in my forehead to hold them.

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    Jack Secor, of Snow Creek Station, was blown through a screen door and put together again on the other side. A silver dollar he had in his pocket made a hole in the screen that he uses to prove the story, to this day.

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    Then there's Dry Camp Blackie, he's been prospecting thereabouts for years. One day a drop of water hit him in the forehead, and they had to throw two buckets of sand in his face to bring him to.

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    Scotty has a hat farm along with his gas station at 1000 Palms. He's found a six foot woven fence alongside the station would net him 12 to 15 hats a night, and sometimes a dollar bill.

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    Jack Diamond, over at Hidden Springs Ranch, used to have a lot of fine chickens; but he ran out of buckshot—yes, he ran out of buckshot. You see, if he don't feed them chickens lots of buckshot, the wind blows them away. Fact is, he is starting a new brand of buckskin chickens, making them tough. Wind kept them moulting all the time, so he's teaching them to go around without feathers.

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     The bend in the road from Palm Springs to Garnet was done by the wind. Years ago the Old-timers decided the wanted a road to the Garnet depot from the end of Indian Avenue. The road boss said, "Follow me with your wagons and we will bust her through." And he started out just as one of our and starms came up. Well, he got out of sight, and the wind blew those horse tracks a half a mile to the east, and that's why the road bends and misses the depot.

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    Soon after you turn off Highway 99 to enter Palm Springs there is a spot where the wind sure goes "plum loco." The people leaving town sometimes get spun clean around, others have landed in the ditch. Mayor Farrell ordered a warning sign put up. The sign painter got the sign almost up—then the wind hit him. He now has a shop in El Centro.

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    I've seen it blow so hard from the west, the poor old sun was at least three hours late going down. Yes, sir, the wind sure did blow out here that day.

13

    We don't have hurricanes in this desert because our local winds just blow the into a couple of dozen Dust Devils before they get a good start.

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    HARRY—You old Desert Rat, here is a high wind story that tops the one where the wind blew the stove fourteen miles away and came back the following day for the lids.
    I was out toward Searchlight, Nevada, one day, and saw a chicken with its tail toward the wind, lay the same egg five times. If that isn't a high wing, I'll take my hat off to your yarn.
—Your Apprentice Desert Rat Friend, Austin Cranston

Editor's Note—Son, after that you're not an apprentice.

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    Some people don't seem to like our desert. I saw an Old-timer loading all he had on his old Ford that was pointed east, and I says, "This would be a fine country if we just had water." "Yes," he answered, "so would Hell."

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    Of course its dry in some of our desert valleys, don't rain for years, like over at Borego. I remember an old leather-faced gold miner I met over there. He had his family with him, and says to me, "I hope it'll rain before the kids grow up. They ain't never seen none."

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    "Oliver, there is nothing in your Desert Rat Scrap Book but a lot of wind," writes Arthur Bliss Conkwright, the Palm Springs Hillbilly. I wish to say there is nothing but wind in your tires, "Conky," you old buzzard—it makes ridin' kinda smooth like.

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    Jack Topper, Desert Rat, sez: A hen at his shack wanted to set, so lacking hen fruit he put some desert tortoise eggs under her.
    The hen remained faithful to her job until the tortoise eggs were hatched, but hasn't been seen since.
—Harry Oliver

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    Dry Camp Blackie has a new invention, a rattlesnake burglar alarm. The rattles are on springs and buzz if you don't know your way around Blackie's place.
—Harry Oliver

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    Gold was discovered at Sutter's mill in California in 1848. It has taken just 100 years plus a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get it all dug up and properly put under the ground again at Fort Knox in Kentucky.
—Thanks to Geo. H. Davis

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A tourist asked Rip, "Isn't there another cur for snake bite besides whiskey?"
    Rip's answer was: "Who cares?"

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    Alaska, now being pushed for admittance as the forty-ninth state, is twice the size of Texas. We await, with bated breath, the first sign of an inferiority complex in Texas.

14

    When a couple of old prospectors, after scourin' this desert forty years for gold, decided to split up, it's a serious problem. The scrap started thirty-nine years ago and now that Sonora Bill has gone stone deaf and his answers don't fit Charley's arguments there weren't no more pleasure in scrappin'.
    There was plenty of well meanin' advice on how to divide their outfit. We agreed that Honest Ed Fixit had the solution. Ed flips a coin and tells Sonora Bill he's the one to divide the outfit. . . . There was two burros—Bill stacked up the two piles into what he figured was half and half, kinda thinkin' the stuff he was pilin' along Diana might be his, 'cause Charley never liked her since she chewed up the deeds to his pet claim.
    Philosophizin' Ed says to Charley: "Pick the pile you want." Charley says, "I'll take that pile all except the burro—I want to switch and put General Pico in place of Diana." That was the finish of Honost Ed's plan. You're right, it ended by chopping everything in two parts.
—"My Column" in the Monrovia "News-Post"

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    On the old road from the desert to San Diego there is a very dangerous precipice. An old timer told me they had a warning sign up for two years, but no one fell over so they took it down.

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Egg Packer of the Panamints
George wrote this for my Death Valley Packet

    Eggs are just about the meanest things to pack—they're easy to break and they waste space. That's because they're round. If eggs were square, you could stack them.
    My friend Todd does a lot of packing, mostly to mines around Death Valley. On the side he has a chicken ranch over in the Panamints. He's been working on this problem of eggs for a long time. The other day he blew into our hotel at Stovepipe Wells.
    "By gum, Major," he confided over his second double bourbon, "I've got it licked!"
    "The eggs?"
    "Yes, sir Come and have a look."
    Outside he took one of the kyacks off his pack mule. Sure enough there were four dozen of the squarest eggs you'd want to see, packed in an old tobacco carton the way you'd stack kid's blocks. Snug. They fit right together.
    "In the same space I can carry twice as many as the old fashioned kind. No jiggling around, No breakage."
    "Todd," I told him, "your fortune's made."
    "Could be," he admitted, as he took my order for fifty dozen. I figured the square eggs would be a novelty for guests at Stovepipe.
    "I'll be a bit slow making delivery," Todd cautioned. "Just now I'm working with individual hens. You know, it's so hell's fire hot at my ranch, the eggs are melted pretty soft when they come out. Sorta pliable. All we do is drop them in those ice-cube containers. They cool off fine and hard. AND square. Soon's I can get production organized, we got a new industry for Death Valley.
—By George Palmer Putnam

15

    Dry Camp Blackie is unfair to organized desert burglars. He dipped crackers in Muscatel wine, putting them out for the pack rats, and just like people they swapped every thing they had—dug up every thing they had dragged away from Old Fort Oliver in the last 75 years—not asking for change—just a quick swap.
    Blackie says he didn't have to use pack rats to know Muscatel wine was a brain dissipater, he has read Matt Weinstock's new book—"Muscatel at Noon."
—H. O.

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    Old Rip-Stortin' says he was standing astraddle the Mexican-California line when that earthquake messed up those town's names—Mexicali and Cale-xico.
    Rip says, "Prohibition was better than no liquor at all."
—H. O.

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Hidden Treasure

    Last spring Mrs. Dave Needham of Holtville purchased a riding mare. As months passed, the animal became more and more averse to working. In time it dawned on the Needhams that they had a hidden treasure—a blessed event was about to occur. Excitement ran high. What a wonderful Christmas present it would be! And sure enough one morning there was the foal—as cute a little jack as any one could desire.
—Louise Eaton

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    The scene was in a gambling hall in Tonopah. Each night, seated at the same table of chance, is a Chinaman and each night a Salvation Army lass makes her rounds, seeking donations for the cause. Each night also, the sectarian approaches the Oriental and in a soft voice, asks, "Will you give a gift for Jesus Christ?"
    The Chinaman was a good gambler and was usually winning, so when the damsel requested money the man from China would nonchalantly toss her a five dollar gold piece.
    One night, however, the Chinaman's luck had abandoned him and he was in a surly mood. As usual the Salvation miss entered. She made the rounds of all the tables, and finally came to the table of the Oriental. Again in her soft voice she asked, "Will you give a gift for Jesus Christ?"
    The Chinaman gave her a disgusted look and blurted, "Wat's a molla that Jee Clie alla time bloke?"
—Excerpts from Chas. Lockwood's Scrapbook

16

You Can't Stop the Irish

    After several fruitless years of tunneling for gold Pat O'Brien gave up in disgust and abandoned the claim. Later a Swede took it up, continued digging and struck it rich at about ten feet from where O'Brien had quit. When the Irish miner heard about it he said, "Begorra, that'll sure be a lesson to me till my dying day—I'll never stop digging again till I've gone ten feet further.
    That's the story as sent me by Old Timer, Geo. A. Stingle.
    Last week at Randsburg, I got the rest of the story. It was this same O'Brien that after ten years of "ten feet further," popped out on the east side of Red Mountain a few weeks ago, like a scared gopher. He wouldn't stop and went right on through that darned mountain. When his pick knocked the first hole through her, "Why the sun came in looking just like gold." Said O'Brien, "And begorra I thought I had hit the Mother Lode and I couldn't stop." And he didn't stop till he slid to the bottom of the canyon.
—H. O.

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It don't take backbone to belly up to a bar.

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    Death Valley Scotty was bitten by a sidewinder (rattlesnake) last year. It happened on his ranch where he lives near Ubehebe Crater.
    Scotty, who like the Indians, if they had work to do in Death Valley and its country in the summer, would work between dawn and sun-up, was out early repairing a leak in his water line when he reached for a wrench lying in the grass, the sidewinder nailed him on the thumb.
    Scotty, who is 76 years old, said that he had been bitten four or five times before, and that he always goes prepared for them. He carries a bottle of serum with a razor blade attached in his pocket at all times. So, when he was bitten he slashed the wound, soaked it in the serum and then laid down in the back of his station wagon for a few hours.
    Failure to keep calm after incurring a snake bite may lead to trouble, according to the man who has roamed the desert for almost half a century.
    "Lots of darn fool ringtails start crying an hollering and jumping around instead of opening the wound and soaking it with something like that super peroxide I carry," Scotty observed.
—George Pipkin

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    In the good old days of Tonopah, Nevada, a miner was up before the judge for highgrading gold. "Guilty or not guilty?" thundered the judge. "Gosh, I dunno," said the miner. "I ain't heard the evidence yet."

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KENO—Is the Raio Station in Las Vegas, the gambling capital of the West.

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    Crack-Shot Smith of Yawning Gulch who has chewed tobacco for thirty-eight years has sworn off, and the change in him is remarkable. He has had his chin sandpapered, and his teeth calsomined, and his delighted wife wanted to take him to Hollywood to breath through his teeth like those actors do when getting their pictures took.

17

Wimmin and Cows

    A handlebar-mustached veteran of the brush country cow-days along the Nueces bottoms in Texas was visiting his daughter-in-law. The 90-year-old rawhider was a bit lame from the old days of breaking horses and punching cows, but his mind was as bright as a Colorado dollar at high noon, full sun. The daughter-in-law had a card party one Thursday after the morning baking. The old man just "set" on the porch all during the afternoon hen party. And, afterward, he was making conversation about it and came to comparing the intelligence of women with the intelligence of cows ("Both being breeding animals," he said).
    "A crowd of wimmin attendin' a party brought their babies along, some even, unweaned. They slacked 'em in the spare room off the dinin' room. And you know, one of them youngsters suddenly lets out a holler and every one of them young wimmen jumps up to see if it was her offspring that's bellerin' . . . "Yet I've rode herd on a thousand cows of a dark night like as to you can't see the horn on your saddle:—one little half-weaned calf can wander off to the edge of a herd, find itself lost and set up a beller.—And one old cow—jest one, the calf's mama—will quit anything she's doin' and come out to claim it . . . I cain't see as women are as smart as cows. Everybody should be with enough sense to know kin, especially little ones."
—Ken McClure, San Antonio Texas—The Pioneer Gazette

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The only man in Imperial Valley who ever kicked a jackrabbit while it was running is Gordon Stuart, he says.

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    The beauty of the old-fashioned blacksmith was that when you brought him your horse to be shod he didn't think of no other things that ought to be done to it.
—Sunshine Magazine

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    In my lifetime only two men have kept the center of the stage (The Front Page of the Papers) for 50 years—Death Valley Scotty and George Bernard Shaw—50 years is a long time.
—Your Editor

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    'Tis said of Rancho Mirage that every day's a holiday and every night is New Year's Eve.
    Don Cameron's toast is, "Here's to the holidays—bless the whole three hundred and sixty-five of 'em!"
    Once on a New Years Eve (in the middle of July) I overheard Don Cameron telling a Johnny-come-lately just what it takes to be a real Desert Rat. First you have to have been bitten by a sidewinder. Second you must have a floater out of the biggest country in the world, namely San Bernardino. Third, you have to hole in a spell with one of the Agua Caliente's squaws.
    That's the makin's, says Don. Just learn to lie and let your whiskers grow and you'll be a sure enough Desert Rat.
—Harry Oliver

18

    Every so often the stories of Cactus Kate are taken out of moth balls anywhere from Los Angeles to St. George, Utah, and told to tourists, who of course never believe them, but the strange thing is most of them are true.
    Cactus Kate did race and beat a train from Barstow to Las Vegas before the days of the highway; she did carry seven men a full block down Fremont Street, Las Vegas; and she did do scores of other things attributed to her.
    The only thing you should never tell a tourist is that Cactus Kate was a Stutz Bearcat car driven buy a representative of the Automobile Association of Southern California.
—Nevada Magazine

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    And that reminds us of the Pahrump farmer who took a load of hay to Las Vegas and sold it for a good price. Thought he: "I'll surprise my wife." He bought a suit of clothes, a hat, new underwear and a pair of shoes. He placed them in the back of the wagon and started home. Nearly there he stopped by a dry lake, took off his old clothes and threw them into the lake. They sank immediately. When he went around to the back of the wagon, his new clothes were gone. He hesitated for a minute, then got into the wagon, and said: Giddap, Maud—we'll surprise her anyway.
—The Legion Liar, Las Vegas, Nevada

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    Today I discovered the Navajo's greatest hate. They hate barb wire, never use it, don't like the people that do us it, and they say white men make lot of bad things and wrap them up with barbed wire. They are very friendly with nature's barbed wire, the cactus, however.
    I think as the Navajo for the use of barbed wire has taken all the beauty out of our American landscape. A barbed wire fence is a lot of spindle sticks with an imaginary something between them with stickers on it from a distance but a bunch of trouble close up. When the artist paints a fence, he paints a board fence, split-rail fence, picket fence or stone or adobe wall. Gosh, even a cactus hedge is better than a barbed wire fence, and besides those were my Sunday pants.
—A "Desert Brief"

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    Moonshiner brewed himself a jug of whiskey. When it was ready he grabbed his gun and the jug and lit out for the nearest community, threw the gun down on the first man that he met up with, handed him the jug of whiskey and said, "take a drink," man said he never drank, moonshiner said "drink" so man took a drink and shuddered all over, moonshiner said "pretty bad stuff apparently," man said it sure was, moonshiner handed the man his gun and took the jug himself, said "now hold the gun on me while I take a drink."
—Thanks to Collis Mayflower

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Mirages are like women—strictly unpredictable—they always look inviting, cool, and attractive—but you can''t pin one down.
—Keith

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Some folks seem to get the idea they're worth a lot of money just because they have it.
—Seth Parker

19

    If I didn't know this to be true I wouldn't believe it. Dad Revert of Beatty put a nickel in a slot machine and won five nickels; changing the nickels for a quarter he placed the quarter in a machine and won four quarters. Changing the quarters for a silver dollar he put it in a dollar machine and pulled the lever. He hit the $100 jackpot.
    Dad's fame spread like flame around town. Not only was he dollared to death, but strangers rushed up to him and cried excitedly, "Oh, are you really the man who hit the hundred dollar jackpot?" Slowly disentangling himself, Dad answered, "Yes, I am, lady. And I'm selling picture postcards of myself for 50 cents apiece. Would you like to buy half a dozen?" The woman murmured a hasty no, and retired to the seclusion of her Tom Collins.
    Which reminds me of the time a school teacher took her class to see a slot machine and to lecture them on the evils of playing them. Furthering the point on how the machines always took your money, she put in a nickel and hit the jackpot.
—George Pipkin in his Desert Sands column

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Irvin Cobb says a good story teller is one who has a good memory and hopes no one else has.

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And in the old days a bad man would go around with notches in his gun handle instead of dents in his fenders.

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    Word about Ted Hutchinson, the desert plant wizard of Greasewood Greenhouses our Barstow way:
    The fellow that has talked desert holly, smoke tree and other desert trees and shrubs into getting into tin cans and growing so that you may plant them at your desert place. Well, it seems that being a plant genius is just being willing to work 24 hours a day.
    For Ted gets up at 4 a.m. (which is starting time for a colony of black harvester ants), gets himself a light set in the line of ant travel with a package of radish seed and a pair of tweezers—takes from the thieving ants his rare "Brandegea Bigelovi" seed—giving the ant in exchange a radish seed.
    Just a Desert (trade) Rat is Ted.
—Harry Oliver

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    A tourist trying to talk with old Deef Dan, gave up, saying: "It's no use—you're deaf as a post."
    (Deef Dan)—"No sir, don't believe in 'em."
    "Don't believe in what?"
    (Deef Dan)—"Ghosts—no, sir, nothin' to be afraid of. A skeleton's nothing but a stack of bones with the people scraped off.

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    "These wolves are like railroad trains," said Pirtleville Pearl, "you like to hear the whistle if you don't want to go any place!"
—From the Brewery Gulch Gazette

20

My Dog Whiskers

    I've got dog named "Whiskers," given me because he was supposed to look like me. But I can twist his whiskers and make him look like Steve Ragsdale. He's marter than the two of us Old Timers. He don't drink (making him smarter than me) and he don't worry none about the world as it is today (making him smarter than Steve Ragsdale).
    Our desert is a great place for dogs—no fleas.

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    My dog Whiskers is all mixed up. He don't think he's a dog. I don't know just how to tell him that he's only a dog—(the best dog in the world)—but some morning when he wakes me up I'll sure tell him. I don't like his choice of early radio programs. I wish I had never shown him how to dial that radio.
    I don't want to hurt his feelings. Guess I will wait. He is very sensitive. Yes I will wait—those programs might get better. Gee, I hope they do.
    Good thing that there's a Mountain Ranger between this desert and that new fangled Television.

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    Awakened by Whiskers thrusting a cold nose in my ear, I listened. There was someone opening the window of the Desert Rat editorial room up front. I got out of bed, and with my old 45 about 3 feet ahead of me and "Whiskers" 3 feet behind me, I went quietly through the press room, snapped on the light, and found a skinny little fellow going through the drawers of my desk. As I bellowed, "Hands up!" Whiskers went for his legs. The unsuccessful burglar surrendered promptly, and stood patiently while I went through his pockets. I found $16.00; just think, and I did think, and it made me as mad as if I had jumping cactus in my beard—that buzzard would steal from a starving editor of a 5 page Desert Rat newspaper when he had $16.00 in his pockets!
    Whiskers and I let him keep one dollar and pushed him out the window. We think it'd be a good idea to leave that front window open.

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    My dog Whiskers ain't so smart. Last week I came home with a nice big steak, some dog biscuits and the week's supply of tobacco, left them on the bench as I put the car away.
    Made me mad. He knows I don't eat dog biscuits—or he ought to, he's never seen me eat any.
    When I showed him the bill for $1.25 the steak costs—why he acted like he could have done better—then went and got his piggy bank and shook out $1.25 and 5 cents for tax.
    I wish you folks would not send him money—makes him too damn independent.
—Harry Oliver

21

    Dry Camp Blackie is wasting most of the summer. His determined effort to teach my dog, "Whiskers," to wag his tail up and down instead of sideways is ending in total failure.
    . . . You don't notice the heat so much though if you got something to do.

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    We know man and dog have lived together two thousand years. My dog Whiskers knows 25 or 30 words I speak—but when he speaks to me I must watch his tail, his ears, his eyes and then guess what he's saying.

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Animals are smart—Horses never bet on people.

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    Joseph Burns, in the Chemung Valley Reporter, telling about the old maid who was very fond of her faithful she-cat and before she left on a trip to Palm Springs she instructed her sister: Now feed Geraldine well and whatever you do, don't let her out nights. After a week, the sister received a card reading: Having a wonderful time, met a swell fellow on a hay-ride . . . P.S. Let the cat out tonight.

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The wisest owl occasionally hoots at the wrong time.

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"Some think East is always East
And West is always West.
They haven't seen Conchita's slacks
Or Ginsberg's cowboy vest.
—Brewery Gulch Gazette, Bisbee, Arizona

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The records show that the tortoise won only one race with the hare.

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    Many fine metallurgists have been developed here in Death Valley because of the mining interests. These are well qualified gentlemen who could take a weekend trip to Hollywood, look at a platinum blond and with one glance determine whether she were virgin metal or just common ore.
—Says a Red Mountain Waitress

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    Dry Camp Blackie says, desert animals are undependable in hot weather—complained today that the pack rat he had taught to bring him kindling every morning, brings him twice as much in hot weather as in the cold winter months and wants many more crackers in payment.
    He is worried about his ant proof bread box. says the horned toad he has on watch under the bread box complains that it doesn't get enough ants to eat.

    Blackie says the two badgers he has trained for prospecting are overdoing it and have dug up his garden three times just keeping in practice.

    Says his burros alarm clock attachment is two hours ahead of daylight savings time. So his troublesome days start early.
—H. O.

22

Death Valley Scotty's Philosophy:

"You come into this world all naked and bare;
Travel through life with its sorrow and care.
When you die you go to you know not where;
But if you're the real thing here, you'll be it there"

Now chew on that awhile," says Scotty.
—Thanks to Ranger Sam Houston, Death Valley

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    "Look here waitress," exclaimed the irate Palo Verde rancher, "there's a ladybug in my soup." The new waitress from Palm Springs fished the bug out and inspected it very closely. "By golly, you've got better eyes than I have."

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It certainly pays to advertise. There ar twenty-six mountains in Colorado higher than Pike's Peak.

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    Dewey Wallace, well known date grower, drove a round a peg in a round hole. The hole was his wooden water tank and the peg was a freshly cut pice of tanarisk. That was several months ago. Yesterday the water quit coming out of the tank and he discovered that the roots from the tamarisk peg had stopped up the pipe. Also the bloomin' tank was covered with branches. Dewey is letting them grow, hoping the tank will stretch out to where he can saw off a couple of new ones.
—H. O.—"Limelight News," Palm Springs

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    With sand as far as the eye can see my youngest grandchild nagged me for a sand-box till she got one. (It has no bottom).

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    Liminating Lem, desert efficiency expert, says worst part of doing nothing is . . . you can never take any time off. Lem is sure thinkin' way ahead of most folks.

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    Old Timer McRae who lives just west of Fort Oliver is adding another room to his shack so's he'll have room to take a Sunday paper.

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    At a desert crossroad at Patagonia, Arizona, there is a road sign which read, "Take care which rut you use. You'll be in it for the next twenty miles.

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    A miner here tied a stick of dynamite around his neck and lit the fuse. Relative and friends say they can't imagine why he did this. Of course this is only a theory, but he may have been tired of living.

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    We cigarette and pipe smoking folks should geve a thought to how we must smell to a SKUNK.
—Harry Oliver

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    Note on prospector's shack, "Would you please put out a little food for the cat? It will eat almost anything, BUT DON'T PUT YOURSELF OUT."

23

    The ax is a tool of romance. From earliest history on down through the Stone Age, the Bronze age and the Iron Age, and more especially during the time of America's early pioneers, the ax has been the indispensable friend of man. And it is the one thing most liable to be left when moving camp.
    "Curly" Carroll of Randsburg has an ax he's might proud of, claims it came across the country with his grandpappy in a covered wagon. In asking him about it I commented on the ax because it seemed as good as when his grand-pappy bought it. "Well," replied "Curly" after a thoughtful pause, "it's had three new blades and five new handles, but excepting for that, she's just the same, sir, just the same.

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    Dry Camp Blackie is satisfied as to the worth of old Kashin's newly developed dehydrated water pills—Blackie walked across Dry Lake with his hat off in the midday-sun, put the pill in a glass of water—and by gosh he had a glass of water.

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    Heard on the radio—Eminent doctor says only sure way to prevent tooth decay is to chew tobacco. I asked old Sky-Eye about it. The old boy spat—saying, "My teeth are all gone, wore 'em out chewing tobacco.

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    I like to do business with smart people. My claim in California is not so big on top but the man told me it goes straight down for four thousand miles.
—Charlie Eightfloor

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RENO: Where the cream of the crop goes through the separator!

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    PUZZLE—Dry Camp Blackie, our old desert rat friend, blew into town yesterday with a big puzzle on his brain. He's the lieutenant and chief bodyguard out at Oliver's famed old Fort Oliver at 1000 Palms, you know, and he sez he can't understand why an historic old place like the fort isn't mentioned in any history books. "Shucks," he said, "I know it's old because just this week I helped Harry finish the ruins of the west wing!"
—H. O.—The Desert Barnacle

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    Cabot Yerxa, old timer of burro days (Desert Hot Springs since 1913), says the only difference between an Alaskan sourdough and a Desert Rat is about 4 pair of blankets and 6 pair of socks. Cabot was in the "Cape Nome Alaska" gold rush of 1900, and the "Cape Prince of Wales" stampede of 1905.

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    Bugs Belden wailed, "It only takes ten minutes to get married in Yuma—six weeks to get a divorce in Reno—yet Uncle Sam says I have to stay here five years to prove up on this desert claim."
    "Bugs" got me thinking about that old age pension of mine, it's coming around the mountain, too!
—H. O.

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Pekingese devour more wild burros than mountain lions. (Canned Burro)
—Says Calico Fred

24

Liminatin' Lem Says:

    There are two days about which no one should ever worry—yesterday and tomorrow.
    Rest in the desert does not seem to fatigue one as it does elsewhere.
    If a fellow works hard and saves his money by the time he is 50 he can afford a nervous breakdown.
    Never put off a hard job till tomorrow. Put it off for good.
    Lem most lost his face atryin' to keep his nose on the grindstone and his chin up at the same time.

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    A Fort Worth newspaper printed a personal ad that read, "If John Blank, who deserted his wife and baby twenty-one years ago, will return, said baby will knock hell out of him.

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    You Texas folks are not going to like this. The largest County in U. S. is San Bernardino, California with 20,131 square miles, two and one half times the size of the State of Massachusetts. Next, Coconino County, Arizona with 18,573 square miles—Nye, Nevada, 19,064—Elko, Nevada, 17,181—Mojave, Arizona, 13,403.

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    Lynn Lewis, of Indian Wells, has an Indian pot that is 3,026 years old. Twenty-six years ago Fred Harvey, an expert on those things, claimed it was 3,000 years old.

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    Dry Camp Blackie is fed up with radios! The screaming comedians get hs goat; says he listened to a preacher last Sunday that was almost as bad. He was talking like he thought God was a hundred and fifty miles. away.

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    The Dry Lake Dude tells about the old rancher who died and concluded his will with the following: "And being of sound mind, I spent every damned cent that I had."

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Arizona highway sign: When this sign is under water, the road is impassable.

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I asked a very old whiskered prospector how he accounted for his longevity an' he says, "I never shave, just let 'em grow."

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Mr. and Mrs Joe Webb, of Coachella, say the termites ate up their bright new marriage certificate.

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    The largest bird that flies today is the California Condor. It's wingspread is ten feet. It could fly to Florida in exactly — — — what's the use? It don't want to go to Florida.

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A high-powered real estate salesman at Palm Springs, received from an easterner, a down payment on a MIRAGE.

25

Injun Stuff

    Pyramid Lake, Nevada—My Piute Indian guide has a fine sense of humor; he told me today that his field glasses were so high powered that anything less than ten miles away looks like it's behind you. Told me of a great painter that stayed here . . . The painter would tell the tourists, "I paint a picture of the Pyramid Lake in two days and think nothing of it." The guide said, "They, the tourists, thought nothing of the paintings also.
    My guide said last year he told a lady tourist from Boston that this desert is God's own country. The lady tourist answered by saying, as she rattled around in the back of the car, "I'll say he's certainly done his best to discourage trespassers."
—From my daily column "Desert Briefs" H. O.

Chief say, "Television Heap Crazy Medicine."   
Original Cartoon by Wilbur Timpe for the Desert Rat Scrap Book

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    Story of the week . . . It was a long, lazy summer afternoon . . . and two Indians . . .one on each side of a wide valley . . . had struck up a conversation . . . using smoke signals . . . This went on for quite a while . . . and one of the Indians, growing bored with the whole thing, dozed off to sleep . . . An atomic explosion out in the middle of the valley awakened him with a start . . . gazing awestruck at the huge mushroom of smoke rising into the air . . . the Indian shook his head admiringly and murmured . . . "I wish I'd said that!"
—Hildred Crawford in Banning Live Wire

Indian Signs You Should Know

    Indian Sign No. 1—When you see a squaw carrying her papoose on her back and it's wrong side up—it's a sign "she's in a hurry."
    Indian Sign No. 2—When you see an Indian chief trying to start a fire with two dry sticks—it's a sign his grandson is a Boy Scout.
    Indian Sign No. 3—When you see an Indian with a sign on him reading "Wet Paint"—it's a sign he's a cigar store Indian.
    Indian Sign No. 4—When you see a baldheaded Indian—it's a sign he's not an Indian.
    Indian Sign No. 5—When you see an Indian walking pigeon toed—it's a sign he will never have fallen arches.
—Harry Oliver

26

    A visitor to a Western trading post asked one of the clerks about the weather prospects for the following day. The clerk, unwilling to hazard a guess, merely shrugged his shoulders in disinterest, but an Indian, and od-job worker about the place, freely volunteered, "Going to rain—much!" And so it did.
    During the downpour the visitor re-entered the post and sought out the prophet of rain, who he was convinced understood the voices of Nature. This time, the Indian predicted, "Clear and cool." Again the forecast was correct.
    When the question was repeated on the third day the visitor received quite a shock. "Dunno," chuckled the redskin. "Didn't hear the radio today!"
—Country Gentlemen

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    At a men's club in Oklahoma an Indian chief, upon being admitted, said, "You all know me as 'Chief Trainwhistle," but since I am one of you, I hope you will feel free to address me as "Toots'."

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    A Cheyenne, Wyoming, paper reported on an Indian gathering. "An Indian woman squatted over a fire in one teepee, and you could smell fresh meat cooking."

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    Phat Graettinger tells one: A tourist asked the old Indian chief what he did all day.
    "Drink and hunt," he answered.
    "What do you hunt?" the tourist asked.
    "Drink," answered the old chief.

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    An old doctor at Needles tells this one: An old time Indian came to his office and asked "You fix sick man?" Doctor said "Yes," whereupon the Indian led the doctor to his wagon, drove him 11 miles to his adobe hogan, entered, laid down, said "Gut hurt like hell, you fixum."
—H. J. Hilligardt

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    The only fine thing I know that we have done for the Indians—is to call a few days in early fall INDIAN SUMMER.
    Blackie says . . . In some irrigated spots in the desert ranchers call it SECOND HELL.
—H. O.

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    It is very true that what one does not know will not harm him.
    The California Indian probably had great fun in selling a kind of meal to Fremont's men in 1845, which the purchasers relished well. "Bidwell, in his memoirs wrote: "It was rich, spicy and pleasant to the taste."
    It was so well liked by early pioneers that demand for it grew until the Indians became careless in its manufacture.
    When the travelers found in it the legs, wings and heads of grasshoppers, the demand was killed.
    The "rich, spicy" meal was nothing more than grasshopper meal.

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To avoid trouble breathe through the nose. It keeps the mouth shut.

27

    Many years ago, an Indian and two other man were riding across the Inyo Lava Beds. They'd been in the saddle since early morning, and their talk got around to the big dinner they expected to eat when they got to town. When the Indian was asked if he was hungry, however, his answer was "No."
    They soon reached their destination and ordered steaks with all the trimmings.
    The Indian wolfed own everything in sight. One of his companions remarked to the redskin that only an hur ago he's said he wasn't hungry.
    "No use to be hungry bac there," the Indian replied, "No food."
—Retold from a story by Senator Charles Brown of Shoshone

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    A party of tourists wished to see some Indian ruins in a desolate section of Arizona. In order to get to them they had to leave their car and walk some distance. When well on their way, one lady suddenly cried, "Gracious, I forgot to lock the car!" "Don't worry, it's all right," the Indian guide comforted her. "There isn't a white man within fifty miles of this place."
—Mrs. Snif

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    A teacher in an Oklahoma school one day remarked, "I wonder if any of you children have some Indian blood." "I have, teacher," replied Tommy. "That's interesting," observed teacher. "What tribe?" "Well, I don't think it was exactly a tribe," said Tommy, "Gramma says he was just a wandering Indian riding a wonderful white horse!"

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    When an Indian reappeared in a Nevada drug store for the fourth time and asked for a half-dozen bottles of a certain cough medicine, the druggist grew curious. "Somebody in the family sick?" he asked. "Nope, no sick," grunted the Indian. "Then what in the world are you doing with all this cough syrup?" persisted the druggist. "Ugh!" responded the indian. "me likeum on pancakes."

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    Frank Haffey of Blythe, an oldtime road builder and land leveler was in charge of a land leveling job for the government at Parker, Arizona.
    Haffey hired an old Mojave Indian by the name of Tom as a rod man. Old Tom was in his seventies, but he was a straight as a ramrod and as active as a young buck.
    Old Tom had fifteen wives, maybe more. One day Haffey asked him if he got rid of the wives by divorcing them. Old Tom said "No Mr. Haffey, I just sene them back to their people."
    Another time Haffey asked Tom if it were true that in the old days the bucks laid around in the shade all day and let the squaw do all the work. Very seriously Tom replied, "No Mr. Haffey, that isn't true. We bucks hunted, fished and trapped, while all the squaws had to do was to plow the corn, gather the mesquite beans, grind them into meal, do the butchering, tend the goats and raise the papooses. No, Mr. Hffey, that's not true."
—George Pipkin

28

    Either Indian or land was cheap in the early days, for in the year 1830 on the 24th day of December one Blas Lucero from Lower Ranchita sold to Juan de Jesus Vigile a certain tract of land, the consideration of which was one Indian squaw, mature, strong and healthy.
    It is believed that this is the only case on record in Taos County where land was exchanged for human beings, the same being recorded in the oldest record book of Taos County being A-No. 1 at page 82. Please do not rush as we do not know if any more squaws are available at the present writing.
—Taos Review

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    "Daddy, my teacher wants me to prove that the white man is superior to the Indian," said Johnny. "Can you help me?"
    "Don't think so, son," replied Daddy. "When the white man took over the country the Indians were running it. There were no taxes. There was no debt. The women did all the work. How could you improve on a system like that?

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    GALLUP—A party of eastern tourists came into chamber of commerce hogan in August, and inquired of Secretary Frank H. Holmes: "Where can we find a guide to show us the reservation?" Just then Dick Mattox walked in. "Here's just the man you're looking for," Holmes said. "Mattox knows the reservation like no one else. His fee is $10 a day." "Oh, we didn't expect to put in a full day at it," said spokesman for the tourists. "We thought we'd have a look around before dinner time." It was then about 3:30 p.m. Just in case you didn't know—the Navajo reservation covers 16,000,000 acres—just an afternoon's spin.
—Desert Magazine

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May the Great Mystery make sunrise in your heart.
—Sioux

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Joost Playin'

    The fighting ability of New Mexico's Spanish-American citizens was well proven on Bataan. That they sometimes "practice" a little at Saturday night bailes is also acknowledged. Called out with an ambulance after a little fighting in a hill village one night, a state policeman ventured to rebuke participants! "What you guys tryin' to do—kill somebody?"
    "Oh, no señor!" protested a knife-slashed paisano gravely. "We was joost playin'!"
    Next week the policeman had another knife fight call. He found one victim sitting on the dance hall doorstep with his throat bleeding from ear to ear.
    "So," said the officer sarcastically. "I suppose you were just playin' too, eh?"
    The injured man moved his head gingerly to look up at his accuser.
    "Oh, no, por Diós!" he protested solemnly. "I theenk Agapito was a leetle mad weeth me!"
—By S. Omar Barker in Brewery Gulch Gazette

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Worry is like a rocking chair: It gives you something to do when you ain't going anywhere.

29

    A certain judge in the mining territory of Nevada had a reputation for probity. In keeping with the opinion, he opened a mining claim case one morning with the following words to the court.
    "Gentlemen, this court has received from the plaintiff in this case a check for $10,000, He has received from the defendant a check for $15,000. The court has returned $5,000 to the defendant and will now try the case on its merits."

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    Out in the wide open places of West Texas where men are men, we find a general store. The proprietor, a lad of 104, is impatient. His son, a youngster of 80 who makes the deliveries on his bicycle is late, he finally arrives 30 minutes late.
    His father says, "Son, why are you late?"
    Son replies: "Well, Pa, I need glasses. I can't see the signs so good."
    Father says, "Now listen, son. Nary one in our family wore glasses. Come out here and look down the road at the mile corner and tell me what you see."
    Son looks and says, "Pa, I see a dog coming this way just this side of the corner. Yes, a one-eyed dog."
    Father says, "Let's see son (shielding his eyes with his hand), "Yes son—my poor boy, you do need glasses. That's a dog all right, but he is going the other way."
—Thanks to Gail Hamilton, El Paso, Texas

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No matter what the geologist says, gold is where you find it.

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    Phat Graettinger, Editor Desert Sun, Swank Palm Springs paper says: The trouble with this country is that the Indians didn't have strict enough immigration laws.

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    Sign on little stand way out on Highway 99: 1000 palms, 100 palms, 29 palms, 7 palms, 4 palms. You are now in
NO PALMS, CALIFORNIA

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I asked Dry Camp Blackie if he was a Folk Lorest and he said—Nope, I'm a Poor Folkest.

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Old Stage Drivers

    L. S. (Tex) Crosse tells me that in the old days the roads in Nevada were longere in the wet season—and would shrink in the dry season—saving as much as ten miles in sixty.

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    Writing of the old stage drivers in his "As I Remember them," C. C. Goodwin, the kindly Nevada newspaperman, said" "As it is, the old race have all passed away, as did that driver in Sacramento who, when dying, whispered: "It's a down grade and I can't reach the brake."

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    We can't remember whether if it was Ted Cook or Milt Gross who wrote to the Bureau of Indian Affairs: Dear Sirs, I've always wanted to have an affair with an Indian. How can I go about it?"

30

DEATH VALLEY

    After years of research and careful count, I find that 78,978 artists have drawn or painted Death Valley with a beef skull in the lower left hand corner. I got most of them in but you can't see the valley for the skulls. A woodcut, cut by your Editor on the butt end of a pice of iron-wood from the floor of Death Valley.—from Packet 2
    This woodcut was on the cover of the Death Valley Packet—Packet 2of Pouch 3.

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SHORTY HARRIS
Single Blanket Jackass Prospector

    Shorty Harris' burial beside Jim Dayton in lower Death Valley was quite an occasion. Four hundred CCC boys, an army chaplain and a goodly gathering of desert rats and interested visitors gathered at the site near Eagle Borax and awaited arrival of the hearse from Bishop, as the sun dropped to the crest of Telescope Peak.
    All day two old miner friends had been digging the grave aided and abetted by a jug of firewater hidden behind a clump of greasewood.
    When the casket arrived and was measured the grave was too short as the diggers had figured on the length of the "Short Man" and not the coffin.
    As the sun dropped behind the Panamints and the chaplain and mourners fidgeted uneasily, a voice came from the grave.
    "Bend the so and so in the middle and let's plant him. He won't give a damn.'
    However it wasn't feasible to bend a coffin so it was lowered on an angle so Short was buried with his head up.
—Told by T. R. Goodwin, Superintendant Death Valley National Monument

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Hell-to-Breakfast

    In Death Valley Hell's Gate is located near Daylight Pass. Some 25 miles south is Breakfast Canyon. Visitors in Death Valley will find, therefore, the only place in the world where they can drive from Hell to Breakfast in fewer than two hours.
—Says Naturalist Keller

31

Seldom Seen Slim
A Tale by George Pipkin

    Slim is a sly old codger who lives by his wits, and sometimes that is better then working for a living. One time he was in Randsburg, when a truck loaded with manure stopped at a service station. Slim's curiosity was aroused. Engaging the driver in conversation, he asked, "What are you going to do with the manure?" The driver answered, "Haul it to San Bernardino and sell it." Slim said, "You mean to tell me you can sell that stuff?" "Sure,' replied the driver, "it brings a good price." Right away a memory clicked in Slims mind, he knew where there was an old corral full of manure. So he high-tailed it out and slapped a placer claim on the corral.
—From Trona Argonaut

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    "The mentality of an Indian moves in ways peculiarly its own, and I think, alters little no matter how the world about him conducts itself," wrote the late George Palmer Putnam in his "Death Valley and Its Country."
    "Once I saw an Easterner afflicted with a social conscience encounter the aboriginal state of mind head-on.
    "It was at Keeler, beside Owens Lake. As we waited in the shade of a little store for a man who was to take us to his talc mine, we watched an Indian arrive on horseback, followed by a squaw on foot. The Indian brought his groceries, put them in a gunnysack, and loaded the pack on the back of the woman. Then he got on his horse for the ride home.
    "My friend with the conscience didn't like that. Before I realized what he was up to, he stepped out to the Indian the way you'd approach a man who was kicking a child on Park Avenue.
    "Look here," he expostulated, "what's the big idea? You riding a horse and your wife walking and carrying everything.'
    "The Indian regarded my friend stolidly.
    "'Squaw got no horse,' he said."
—From the Rocketeer

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    During prohibition, Johnny Shoshone of Death Valley attempted to make some "home brew" from mesquite beans. His first sample made him violently ill so he solicited his white brother to send a sample of the brew to the State chemist for analysis. The report came back from the State chemist which was as follows: "Your horse died of diabetes."
—Told at Beatty, Nevada

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    Paul Wilhelm of 1000 Palms, a colossal palm seed planter, also finds time to unearth the mysteries of the Indians of 1000 Palms Canyon. Rumor has it that he has recently unearthed a complete set of petrified Indian smoke signals.

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PAPOOSE: Consolation prize for taking a chance on an Indian blanket.
—R. L. Swadley

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Ideal weather is weather not too cold for beer and not too hot for whiskey.
—Matt Weinstock

32

Scotty's Straight Story
From George Palmer Putnam's Book—Death Valley and Its Country

    Once a newspaper man went to the Castle.
    "Scotty," he said, "Mr. Hearst has told me to write your straight story. From the beginning up to date. No matter how long it takes, I'm I'm going to dig up the facts.
    "Okay," said Scotty. "I'll help you. Don't just get the stuff from me. You go to these people who know me. Get the dope from them and then come back."
    Scotty gave his visitor half a dozen names. They were men of Reno, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago.
    Weeks later the writer returned.
    "See 'em all?" Scotty asked.     The writer nodded. "Every one of them. They all talked, too, very cooperative.
    "That's fine," said Scotty. "Between 'em they know all about me."
    "The trouble is," the reporter went on, "each one told me an altogether different story."
    Which is the way it is. And, I think, likely evermore shall be.
—George Palmer Putnam

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    For years Johnny Shoshone enjoyed the exclusive right as a photographers model. It started one day in Wildrose Canyon when a Washington official, escorted by the Superintendant, met the old Indian on a riding burro, a 30 carbine across the saddle, and a pack burro following behind.
    The Washington man, a movie camera addict, asked Johnny how much to take his picture. "Ya Ya, Oui Oui, Si Si, Sure, two bits," was the unexpected reply.
    Winters at Furnace Creek yielded a rich crop of two bit pieces until a motion picture company arrived and so incessant was the demand that some joker told him he was too cheap and the price went up to four bits.
    Early in the 1948-49 season a burro man with a miniature prairie schooner of four burros drove into Furnace Creek, made camp in the mesquite and every morning was parked in front of the Furnace Creek Ranch gathering in the tourist shekels for the privilege of being photographed. Johnny's business declined rapidly and he was quite unhappy but couldn't figure a way to beat out his rival.
    The Ranch gift shop had stoked an assorted lot of cheap imitation Indian headdresses to sell to children. No Panamint Indian had ever worn a feathered top piece but Johnny got an idea. He bought one of the gaudiest in the shop, laid aside his battered Stetson and appeared in the brilliant regalia.
    The trick worked and the burro man was deserted for pictures of the savage red man. After a few days the burro man packed up and silently stole away and Johnny thew away his feathers and went back to the Stetson.
—T. R. Goodwin, Death Valley National Monument

A wink's as good as a nod to a blind mule.

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A Clipping That I Am Proud Of

    In 1935 your Editor staged Gold Gulch at the California Pacific International Exposition at San Diego.
    "The Rip Roarin'est Mining Camp since '49" as designer, producer and director of the twenty-one acre Old West Mining Camp, I'd received much publicity; the following tells the tale of the fun I had.

WILL ROGERS SAYS
—From Bill's Sunday column, May 19, 1935

    Yes, but we haven't got enough with that spirit. We talk more independence than we practice. Here is an interesting letter from an old friend of mine, Harry Oliver. He was art director for our movie company (Fox). That's the man that arranges all the "Sets." That's the houses and scenes that we shoot. Well he is quite a desert rat, and has a place away out on the desert, and he is head of the big amusement place called Gold Gulch at the big San Diego Exposition, which you don't want to miss. It's going to be a big fair. He is putting on a "Mule Swearing Contest." That is its prizes for the man that can cuss a mule the best or worst. They are importing real Missouri mules. He has a lazy dog contest, where there is handsome prizes for the laziest dog, including the owner.
    Then he has a special contest just for residents from Florida, who can tell the biggest lie about California, (or maybe it won't be a lie, but the Californians will call it a lie). I can't imagine what it would be if it was a lie. California is a hard state to lie about.

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    The Desert Rat is to the desert what the Man About Town is to the metropolis. The only difference is the possibility that the man about town might really be a rat.

Publisher's Note:

    This book is not copyrighted in the United States or foreign countries, including Scandinavia. If you steal any of this stuff, just give me credit for one out of three.
HARRY OLIVER
THOUSAND PALMS, CALIFORNIA

Printed on the Great Mojave Desert at Ridgecrest, California by Hubbard Printing.

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ONLY NEWSPAPER IN AMERICA YOU CAN OPEN IN THE WIND

Harry Oliver's

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HUMOR,   PHILOSOPHY

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From the Desert of the Salton Sink

OLD FORT OLIVER

THOUSAND PALMS

CALIFORNIA

Desert   Rat   Scrap   Book

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All text was hand-entered (no OCR scans) by Dick Oakes who did the layout, markup and graphics reproduction (all of Harry's misspellings retained). The contents remain the property of Bill Lincoln and his heirs.

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