Reuben Long

Greetings! This is Nelson Olmsted about to introduce a cowboy who produced a best-seller. But first, listen a moment to Clint Goober, our spokesman for Pacific Power. Welcome once again to Stories of Pacific Powerland, a presentation of Pacific Power and Light, the company that has been serving the electric needs of the region's homes, farms, and industries

through more than half a century of progress and growth. Now, here's Nelson with another chapter from his storybook. It's just where the pine forests of Central Oregon break over into the limitless land of sagebrush and rim rock between bend and lakeview.

Land where they measure distance, not by miles, but by looks. That faint purple range, they say, is just about two long looks away. That's the high desert country, and Ruben Long is its most eloquent spokesman and humerist.

And speaking of his life in the desert, Rubes says, nearly everything I've done in my life is due to horses. I've raised them, worked them, broke them, sold them. How much you call a horse made man?

I bought my first saddle when I was seven. You hardly ever find anyone so horse diversified. The Ruben Long family moved from Lakeview to a Christmas Lake country when Rubes was just two. was 1900, as Rubes says, just to start even with the century and make it easy to remember.

They ran cattle on the sparse desert range and of course raised horses. Rubes says, folks say we raised fast horses in this country. They have to be fast. In the desert, a horse has to feed at 30 miles an hour all day long just to get enough to eat.