One of Life's Great Tragedies

It really is quite a shame that Blogging is so new and didn't exist years and years ago. Just think of all the wonderful posts and comments that were filtered by an editorial board. I found this piece about the Udalls in Wikipedia, and found it a shame that this guy never had a blog.

In his autobiography Too Funny To Be President, Mo Udall describes the efforts of himself and his brother Stewart to get a dam built on the Colorado River below the Grand Canyon (a position they later opposed). A citizen, who lived in Saint Johns, Arizona as a boy, dictated the following letter and mailed it to a number of politicians:

Dear Sirs: I am an old man and I know a lot about...this Udall outfit. My father had a ranch on the Little Colorado River when I was a boy. We had cattle, sheep and goats and horses. In the bottom land we raised our corn and beans and chile and we were contented and happy. Then David K. Udall moved down to Saint Johns...and he and some other men like him put in a dam across the Little Colorado. We objected because it was a dangerous place to put in a dirt dam but they went right ahead and put it in anyway.

When it broke, it ruined our land and drowned our cattle and goats and...I have been poor ever since. They never paid us a cent for the damages. I confess I do not like the Udalls and this is one reason.

Another reason is that you cannot trust any of them. The whole tribe were Republicans and David K. Udall and his brother Joe Udall tried for years to get the Mexicans, who were then all Republicans to give them a public office. But Don Lorenzo Hubbell, who was a great leader, saw through this scheme and never would let them get on the Republican ticket. And the Mormons, who were nearly all Democrats, would have none of them. But when Franklin Roosevelt came in, some of the Mexicans switched to him and the Udalls went along, or most of them did.

However David K. Udall, the big shot, had a second wife hid out down the river at a place called Hunt and this wife had some boys who stayed Republican and one of them got to be mayor of Phoenix. In this way the Udall family can now work both sides of the street. I want you to check up on this because I am an old man and want to be sure of my facts. But my granddaughter tells me this Stewart Udall is trying to steal the water from the Colorado and I can believe it. Because this is the way it happened fifty and sixty years ago. The Udalls have been at this business a long time.

Respectfully yours,

Jose (Joe) Chavez