Budget, was born at Alsea on September 26, 1886. He was graduated from Eugene High School in 1904, and from the University of Oregon in 1909, where he contributed to the Oregon Monthly, student literary magazine, a story of college life and a poem on the Mill Race that attracted much attention. After receiving his bachelor of arts degree, he immediately took up newspaper work, securing a job on the East Oregonian at Pendleton as telegraph editor and city editor. Ten years later he went to Astoria as editor of the Evening Budget. In 1930, when the two Astoria dailies were merged, he became editor and manager. He was married in 1911 to Daphne Leasure. They have two children, Peggy and Bob.
"The Weakly Bulldogger"—not weekly, though that was its regular occurrence—was started as a feature in the Pendleton East Oregonian on October 4, 1915, and continued every Monday until the summer of 1918. In addition to its wise-cracking miscellany of a highly local nature in verse and prose, it contained such regular departments as "Local Limericks" or "Weakly Limericks", and "Priceless Poetry", and frequently ran apocryphal letters and an interchange of compliments with other columnists, particularly with the gifted two in the same county—Colonel Clark Wood of the Weston Leader, who is included in this chapter, and Colonel Boyd, who conducted "The Mulligan Stew" in the Athena Press.
Priceless Poetry
An "Ode to Sharkey" is the title of the verses here printed and composed by a guy who calls himself "Checkers". After reading them we think he owed Sharkey an apology:
And Sharkey's short on brain,
But buckin's Sharkey's hobby,
And he gets there just the same.
And Sharkey's big of carcass,
And Sharkey's tough of hide,
And Sharkey's full of dynamite,
That makes him hard to ride.
Sharkey bucks for pleasure,
And Sharkey bucks for pay,
And Sharkey bucks for anything,
For that is Sharkey's way.
And, take it straight from me, boys,
It's a sound most wonder-ful,
The blatant, bawling bellows,
Of the big, black Belgrade bull.
