Texas Cowboy Humor Is Recycled
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WASHINGTON — All hat, no cattle? A joke that President Bush told recently in Montana struck several readers as very familiar when it was recounted in the Washington Post.
In Bush’s telling, the joke involved a city slicker asking for directions in Livingston and being told to look for two “cattle guards.”
Now, everyone in cowboy country knows that a cattle guard is a metal grate that keeps livestock from straying. But this fellow is so clueless, he asks: “Hey, what color uniforms do those cattle guards have on?”
In 1978, when Dubya was running for Congress in Texas, the very same joke was on him. His Democratic opponent, Kent Hance, used that punch line to portray the 31-year-old Republican as a carpetbagging easterner.
At a candidate forum, Hance got laughs by recounting how he’d given a lost motorist directions to a ranch, telling him to turn after seeing a cattle guard. And the man asks, “What color uniform will that cattle guard be wearing?”
In Hance’s version, the city slicker was driving a Mercedes with Connecticut plates.
Connecticut-born Bush, who lost that race, didn’t enjoy being the butt of the joke. But clearly he never lost his love for Texas cowboy humor.
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