Harry Oliver's Desert Rat

Two weeks got a check for $300 for six of them (I never did as well again), and two months later Life, as a humor maga-zine, folded. By 1937 I had about twenty-five stories pub-lished (many I had to give away), so with them I made up a book called Desert Rough Cuts and paid one of those vanity printers to print it (with woodcut illustrations of my own). In 1940 I wrote a daily desert column for fifteen Cali-fornia and Arizona newspapers. After 9 months I had lost all but one paper, The Bisbee Evening Ore, and ended the year at $1.50 a week, but was lucky and got on the payroll of Howard Hughes' production, "The Outlaw," at Moen-copi, Hopi Village, Arizona; so the last few weeks netted me $301.50 per week; but the Evening Ore subscribers got their copies each day-and on time too.

To be very frank, my writing wasn't in demand until I became my own publisher, but now with "me the pub-lisher" very much interested in "my stories," I am fast getting a name as a Desert Folklorist. Perhaps it comes from my association with big names of tall tale tellers here in the Southwest, Fred McKinney of the Brewery Gulch Gazette, Foxtail Johnson, Bert Fireman, S. Omar Barker, Calico Fred, T. R. (Death Valley) Goodwin, Matt Wein-stock, J. Frank Dobie, and then, too, Mark Twain and Bill Rogers show up in almost every edition.

To really go nuts about the desert one must be dragged away from it every so often. In these 37 years I was sent (by motion picture companies) to Italy, Ireland, France, Mexico, Canada and Tahiti. Always I counted the days, wanting to get back to the simplicity of the good old desert.

Anyone that publishes a desert publication could easily develop an ego that doesn't belong in the desert, for he is sure to receive as much fan mail as a movie star (the desert just plain fascinates people). Some of my mail makes me very, very happy. This experience I have had several times -a man sends me his pet story-I print it-don't change a word-then in a week or so I get a letter from him telling me his story is funnier in my paper than it ever was before. After a great deal of study I find this to be true. It's due to the format of my paper, the old type, old woodcuts, the stories before and after his story, this all helps-(then too, I am always sure to add the writer's name to his story). Some of my gags I can't leave out, as when I do my subscribers ask me to put them back-here they are bunched up.

Only one editor would say "His paper is not entered as second class mail, because it's a first class newspaper. It is the smallest newspaper in the world and the only 5-page one-a newspaper that grows on you as you turn each page -excepting page 5. And it's the only newspaper in America you can open in the wind. Its editor boasts that for so small a paper he gives you a generous amount of typographical errors, and that all news printed has been tested by time" true, and my readers think they are funny.

Readers ask me how's the paper doing? Meaning, of course, is the Desert Rat Scrap Book a success? Now as I see it, there is more than one fair way to live; so is there more than one kind of success.

Judging the Desert Rat Scrap Book by what it is, not by what other papers make, or try to, I think as a one-man operation I have a peacheroo, my readers and writers make it that way. You have sent my little publication pirouting along the trail; it may not have arrived as yet but it's traveling hopefully, trailbroke and happy.

Over 70 per cent of my readers send in a new sub-scription (sometimes 10) along with their renewal. Must be the sunshine in it or maybe the price of it: 50¢ a year.

Fifteen thousand of the last packet were sold, one-half of them in small desert towns-to REAL DESERT RATS -3070 sent to subscribers east of the Mississippi-50 to a dealer in London, England (my only wholesale account outside the U. S.)-67 subscribers in Australia, 361 sub-scribers in Canada, subscribers in Mexico, Alaska, Philip-pines, Afghanistan, Hawaii, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ire-land, Germany, Egypt, the Union of South Africa and only one in China.

FUN? SURE IT'S A LOT OF FUN. Just a little piece of wrapping paper folded three times, and my readers seem to value them and send for back packets.

I am not going to let my list get much bigger. When I have to have help, OR PAY INCOME TAX, I am not going to take any more subscribers. WHY SHOULD 1? Takes me a week and a half to address and wrap this many. I could do it in a week if I did not have to go out and sell the local trade to get stamps to mail the wholesale orders.

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

Old Captain Catnip Ashby, says "The prospectors over near Quartzsite ain't mining much gold, but they are getting good television reception."

Magistrate: "So you claim the defendant hit you with malice . and aforethought?"

Plaintiff: "No, your Honor it's no good try-ing to make me contra-dict myself. I said he hit me with a shovel, and that's right!"

Buffalo Bull Maxwell head man of the Randsburg Desert Museum reports a sad happening in Spring District.

According to Buffalo, Larry Reynolds, mechanic at Hardy Witts garage was bitten by a rattlesnake yesterday and in spite of everything they could do, the snake died within 30 minutes.

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.

"The easiest way to really be rich is to cut down on your desires."

Thanks to my sister Frances

ARIZONA RATTLESNAKE STORY Liminatin' Lem FASTER THAN SOUND BREVITY A REQUIREMENT IN THIS 5 PAGE PAPER

Two buzzards were lazily winging over the Arizona desert when Howard Hughes' jet-propelled plane suddenly went hurtling by, its exhausts belching flame and smoke. The buzzards silently watched it disappear into the Western sky, and then one of them found his voice. "Holy carrion," he said. "Was that bird in a hurry!" "Listen, Lucius," opined the other, "you'd be in a hurry too if your tail was on fire."

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

After searching for a week for a lost mule the owner offered the town half-wit two bits if he could find him. In about an hour the dope came 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.

Smart as a Mule

The Old Prospector wrote to the Corn Syrup Co., "Dear Sirs. I been using your syrup for five years and it ain't helped my feet at all. They hurt worse than ever."

A TOURIST ASKED

A Desert Rat, "How far would you say it was to Quartzsite?"

"Wal," calculated the Desert Rat, "It's 24,992 miles the direction you're headin'; 'bout 27 if you turn 'round."

Old Whiffletree, exstage coach driver, says, "My philosophy never go see a Doctor, but when the Doctor has to come to you then LISTEN!"

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

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

We cigarette and pipe smoking folks should give a thought to how we must smell to a SKUNK.

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

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

It certainly pays to advertise. There are twenty-six mountains in Colorado higher than Pikes Peak.

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

"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."

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.

Way to stop wars is to quit lending money to other nations. That's the way I got Dry Camp Blackie to stop drinking.

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

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

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.

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.

One of the greatest labor saving devices today is manana.

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

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

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).