Will Rogers On Republicans

An old, long-wiskered man once said to Teddy Roosevelt: "I am a Democrat, my father was a Democrat, my grandfather was a Democrat." Roosevelt then said: "Then if your father had been a horse thief and your grandfather had been a horse thief, you would be a horse thief?"

"No," the man said, "I would be a Republican."

The story is not true. All Republicans are not horse thieves. At the biggest estimate, not over 90 percent are horse thieves. Every once in a while you meet a pretty nice one.

Just want everyone to know: my grandfather was not a horse thief. He was a smuggler. Had a respectible job in Arizona working in the Post Office. That's how he got Grandma to marry him. Once they tied the knot, he got the smuggling operation going. (This was during Prohibition.) Was pretty good at it, too. Ran semi's out of Mexico. The FBI caught up with him, though. He did a stretch at MacNeil Island Federal Penitentiary. Grandma loaded up my father and the rest of the kid in the car and drove up to Seattle to wait for him to get out. That's how the family wound up in Washington State.

The foregoing is a true story.