It’s Time for the Next Version
By Clifton Butt
Hello, this is Clifton Butt. I’m an English teacher in Amarillo, Texas, and I’m here to briefly discuss the book Never Met a Man I Didn’t Like: The Life and Writings of Will Rogers.
There is a famous saying that you should never meet your heroes. There is an English teacher’s corollary that I have often found to be true: you should never read too much about your heroes. As such, it took longer than I would like to admit to sit down and read this book. Will Rogers exists as a hero of my adolescence, and it was a task to put that at risk, but I’m glad I did. It was a treat to learn some more specifics about the life of Will Rogers and develop a fuller vision of a man who I hold in high regard.
Somewhere in my early teens I discovered a book titled something like The Best 4,236 Things Anyone Ever Said. There was lots of Emerson, Twain, and Thoreau, but the subtitle of that book should have been “But Mostly What Will Rogers Said.” I’m sure other boys were obsessed with his skills with a lariat, but I was in awe of his ability as a wordsmith, and the way he could skewer just about any topic from an angle no one quite saw coming. His ability to do that isn’t unlike watching him throw three lassos at once.
Even more important than his raw ability with words was where he was from. He was from a small, out of the way place. A place that elicits a simultaneous curiosity and condescension. Will Rogers was a bit of hope therefore that the place I came from, the place I still live in roughly, might provide me with some keen insight to the world at large. I could be from a place that would offer the angle of that lasso and result in some kind of insight. The type of insight I could spin into worldwide fame or at least a High Plains Public Radio BookByte.
I knew Will Rogers was world famous, but hearing about his travels early on in his life surprised me. I’m sure that seeing so much of the world influenced him and his writing, but I think the time he spent in this part of the world laid a foundation for his world view. One of his most famous phrases and the titular one for this book, “I never met a man I didn’t like” speaks to something at the core of the High Plains. John Steinbeck picked up on that same thing. There is a wisdom to this place.
Recently, I attended a poetry reading by Texas Panhandle poet, Seth Wieck, for the release of his book Call Out Coyote. Wieck is deeply attuned to the people and places of the Southern High Plains. His poems do what Will Rogers did. They find the angle. They capture something good and true about this small and out-of-the-way place, that when I start looking doesn’t seem small at all and is no longer out of the way, but is the way.
No matter where Will Rogers was, and no matter what was happening, that’s what he did. He lassoed words into so many aphorisms that people make up their own and attribute them to him. I’m still devastated that my favorite Will Rogers quote is in fact, not a Will Rogers quote.
But what I enjoyed most about reading this book and thinking about Will Rogers is being reminded that the world is always ready for us to pay attention to it, and we are all hoping for others to help us make sense of it. It’s been 100 years, so I think we are due for the High Plains to produce our next version of Will Rogers.
Thank you for listening to this BookByte by me, Clifton Butt. I hope you keep your head up and your heart open out there on the High Plains.
