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474 MOTION PICTURES I922-I945
And I particularly remember a Sunday in mid-July when I went over to his house. He had just returned from a hectic week's trip during which he had helped in some Oklahoma harvesting, attended a family reunion in Texas, flown to Washington to confer with the Russian Ambassador preparatory to flying into Russia with Wiley Post, visited Fred Stone in New York and his own daughter Mary, who was playing in stock somewhere in New England, chartered a private plane to get back to New York— commercial planes being grounded by bad weather— and finally caught a transcontinental plane to California. What a man! I rode a horse and roped some calves, with a generous assist from Rogers, the rancher. I have some humorous snapshots of the doings.
On the Saturday before the Monday when he set out on his last flight we spent the whole day together. About eight o'clock in the morning he came by and picked me up at the house in Bel Air Bay, where we were living while our ranch house in Hidden Valley was being built. He arrived in a little jalopy that didn't look as if it could possibly stand the rugged trip we had planned. We drove out the Roosevelt Highway from Santa Monica to look at corral fences and other improvements on some ranches quite a distance out. After grabbing a noon lunch of hot dogs at a wayside stand, Rogers struck out through Sycamore Canyon. It was not easy to get through in an automobile, but he knew the way, and even where to find the keys to the gates that were locked. He was interested in the possibility of buying the canyon, later purchased by my friend, the late Carl Beal, the petroleum geologist and engineer.
After looking over Sycamore Canyon as carefully as we wanted to, we came out on the Hidden Valley side, drifted down into the valley, and came to our place where the men were at work clearing the ground on the side of the hill that slopes up from the road. It was about three o'clock. Rogers was at home with the workmen in a jiffy. He just stood around and talked, and then sat around and spat and kidded. The twenty men stopped work, gathered around him, and just listened and laughed with Will. It was a scene I'll never forget. It lasted so long that it was already late when we started back to town. I couldn't help talking with him about the danger of these airplane trips of his, in which he seemed to relish taking chances. I did this frequently, partly because of my own feeling about it and partly at the suggestion of Betty. But now he said: 'This is one time, Bill, you don't have to worry, this is a cinch. Why, Wiley can set that boat down on a millpond."
We drove in slowly— much more so than usual— and we talked about everything, and especially about our boys. His son Jimmy was to return Monday from a roundup on a friend's ranch in Texas, and the father was happy about it, recalling his own ranching as a boy in Oklahoma. And then, right out of the blue, he broke in, "Bill, doggone it, Bill, I'm going to give you two horses." I tried to refuse. "Yes, I am," he said.