Reub Long

Infobox writer
name = Reub Long


imagesize = 285px
caption = Sage of Fort Rock at his ranch in 1966. Reub said this photo should be titled "One horny old goat contemplating another"
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birthdate = 26 January 1898
birthplace = Lakeview, Oregon, USA
deathdate = 28 July 1974
deathplace = Fort Rock, Oregon, USA
occupation = Rancher
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genre = Story teller
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notableworks = "The Oregon Desert"
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Reuben Aaron Long (1898-1974) was an Eastern Oregon rancher, author, and story teller. He was known throughout Oregon as a witty and wise cowboy philosopher.Oregon Public Broadcasting, [http://www.opb.org/programs/oregonexperience/reublong/ "The Oregon Experience: Reub Long’s Oregon Dersert"] , first broadcast 30 October 2006]

Rancher

Reub was born in Lakeview, Oregon on 26 January 1898. His parents owned a ranch in the Fort Rock Valley approximately one hundred and twenty miles north of Lakeview, where Reub lived his entire life. The ranch was adjacent to Fort Rock (now a state park) in northern Lake County. The ranch covered several thousands acres where he raised cattle and allowed wild horses to run free. Ranch life also provided the raw material for his good natured humor.Jackman, E.R. and R.A. Long, [http://www.opb.org/programs/oregonexperience/reublong/book.php "The Oregon Desert"] , Canton Press, Caldwell, Idaho: 1964]

"Once, after standing on the top rails of a corral above the thick dust covering a bunch of running horses, almost all of them paints, he dropped to the ground as the gate swung shut and announced, "By golly, boys, I'm a rich man; I've got 42 head of horses!" A woman standing close by looked at him in utter amazement and blurted out, "How could you count all those horses, Mr. Long ... Why ... There was so much dust you couldn't see your hand in front of your face." Reub looked at the woman almost apologetically and said, "Why it was easy, ma'am, I just counted all the legs and divided by four."

In 1938, a team of archeologists from the University of Oregon led by Luther Cressman excavated the Fort Rock Cave located on his ranch. The team found sandals made of bark and sagebrush that carbon dating proved were 9,300 to 10,500 years old. At the time, these were the oldest human artifacts ever found in North America. [Cressman, Luther S., [http://oregonstate.edu/dept/press/s-t/SandalandCave.html "The Sandal and the Cave: Indians of Oregon" ] , Northwest Reprints Series, Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, Oregon: 2005.] [Tucker, Kathy, [http://www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/historical_records/dspDocument.cfm?doc_ID=000E82E3-D82A-1DBE-BB3880B05272FE9F "Fort Rock Sandals" ] , Oregon History Project, Oregon Historical Society, 2002] The success of the Cressman dig was widely publicized, and as the team’s local host, Reub and his stories shared the spotlight.

Reub used his influence to persuade the Bonneville Power Administration and the Federal Government’s Rural Electrification Administration to bring electricity to the Fort Rock Valley. As a result, the rural communities of Fort Rock and Silver Lake, Oregon in northern Lake County were connected to the national power grid in 1955. [LaLande, Jeff, [http://www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/narratives/subtopic.cfm?subtopic_ID=468 "For Better and For Worse, Part of the Wider World: World War II and the Post-War Boom"] , Oregon History Project, Oregon History Project, Oregon Historical Society, 2005]

"Sage of Fort Rock"

In 1964, a collection of Reub’s anecdotal stories was compiled into a book, co-written with E. R. Jackman. The book, titled "The Oregon Desert", recounts with good humor the places, events, animals, and people that made up Reub’s Eastern Oregon world. The book "successfully blended natural science with cowboy humor and scholarly prose with casual meanderings. It was a celebration of rural Western storytelling, and over the years, it has become a Pacific Northwest classic."

Reub’s philosophy was always practical and touched with humor. When he told a story, one topic led to another and then another without a break.

"…You can usually get along if you aren't a specialist. Nowadays men list their jobs as "freight car wheel inspectors" or "bottle fillers," and if those particular jobs aren't available, the men are eligible for unemployment checks. My only way to check unemployment was to go to work - it beat hunger quite a bit, even if the work is out of one's line. So I cooked, trapped, freighted, wrangled dudes, trained horses, lambed sheep - just anything there was to do. I learned to do lots of things, but some of the things aren't of much use to me now - for example, how to put a six- or eight-horse team around a sharp bend. But some are real useful. What you learn from horses helps in dealing with humans. A horse is good for a boy or a man. It helps something inside of him. A man trained by a horse for many years is never quite the same afterward, and is better."

Reub died on 28 July 1974. His stories and anecdotes about life in rural Eastern Oregon are his legacy. They have been widely recorded and are often retold. As a result, Reub Long is still one of Oregon’s best-known story tellers. [Tonsfeldt, Ward and Paul G. Claeyssens, [http://www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/narratives/subtopic.cfm?subtopic_ID=392 "Telling Stories"] , Oregon History Project, Oregon Historical Society, 2004.]

References

External links

* [http://pressroom.opb.org/pressreleases/200610191 Oregon Public Broadcasting - Reub Long]
* [http://digitalcollections.library.oregonstate.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/archives&CISOPTR=504 Oregon State University Archives - Reub Long's Cave]
* [http://www.flickr.com/photos/gbaku/sets/72157600017125594/ Fort Rock Cave Archaeological Project]