A BOX OF PANDORAS: KING OF SLIP OF TONGUE.

Byline: STEVE TERRELL

The late Bruce King was known as the cowboy in the Roundhouse, for being the longest-serving governor in state history, for being better than any New Mexican politician at working a room. And he'll undoubtedly be remembered as the Yogi Berra of New Mexico politics.

With his folksy charm and proclivity toward verbal gaffes, King launched a thousand anecdotes -- many of them actually true -- repeated mostly in a loving way by those who were fond of him.

His most famous malapropism, frequently repeated by legislators during floor debates, was the time King said that a legislative proposal would "open a whole box of Pandoras."

King opened a box of Pandoras himself shortly after he assumed office in January 1971. He complained to a reporter that his predecessor, David F. Cargo, had taken most of the furniture in the governor's office. "He didn't leave a doggone thing but that woodpecker," King told a reporter -- pointing to a wooden carving of the state bird -- the roadrunner. (In his autobiography, Cowboy in the Roundhouse, King said that he was distracted by a red spot on the carving. "I was born in the country," he wrote, "and I sure enough knew what a roadrunner was, and a woodpecker too.")

Gov. Bill Richardson in his own autobiography mentions one famous Kingism. Back in 1978, when King became the Democratic nominee for governor, Richardson was the state party's executive director and was surprised when King moved to replace him. Richardson protested that he had a commitment from King that he could stay on. But King replied, "a commitment and a promise are not the same thing."

Sometimes his malapropisms came at awkward times. One of the best remembered came during a news conference in the wake of the deadly 1980 prison riot in which King described some inmates as being "smoked damaged."

Lorene Mills, whose late husband, news broadcaster Ernie Mills, covered King, on Friday recalled King shaking hands in a large crowd. "How's your Aunt Mary?" he asked one man, who replied that his aunt had died. "Well, tell her I said 'Hi,' " King answered.

In remembering King's colorful manner of expression, Mills recalled the former governor saying of a new acquaintance, "We howdyed, but we haven't shook."

Contact Steve Terrell at 986-3037 or [e-mail]. Read his political blog at roundhouseroundup.com