PENDLETON – Monk Carden may be getting on in years old, but nothing gets past him at the card table. Each day, Carden and three buddies – Wray Hawkins, Howard Hagen and Herb McLaughlin – sit at a table at the Elk’s Lodge and dive deep into gin rummy. McLaughlin is the baby of the group at age 78.

Insults flowed like water down Niagara Falls on a recent day at the lodge, the scene reminiscent of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in “Grumpy Old Men” – times two.

Carden flipped a card on the table and declared, “Gin.”

“You can’t deal ’em fast enough for Monk,” Hawkins said. “He lives and dies to play cards.”

The irascible card shark turned 100 earlier this month.

Carden, who’s confined to a mobility scooter because of “aches and pains,” once performed as a rodeo clown with his friend George Moens at the Pendleton Round-Up. The pair started a comedy tumbling act in high school after an unintentional pratfall.

That night, Moens, the school’s yell king, enlisted Carden to flip him into the air. Moen’s foot caught Carden in the chin and the audience laughed, believing it part of a slapstick routine. The boys refined their act and were soon performing a warm-up routine at professional wrestling matches, poking fun at the athletes and once wrestling a humorous grudge match.

The pair later took their comedy to the Round-Up, entertaining the crowd between events. The clowns often got physical, riding bulldogged steers, doing trick shooting and comic roping.

Carden also took his physical prowess onto the football field, basketball court and track during high school and college (Eastern Oregon Normal). He loves to tell of playing against the Harlem Globetrotters when the exhibition basketball team toured the Northwest in 1929.

“They all traveled in an old Studebaker touring car playing teams across the country,” he said. They played in the old high school gym, he said, which was packed.

Carden, who played guard, said the town team got beat handily.

Carden finally gave up clowning at the behest of his college girlfriend, Vivian, when Carden asked her to marry him.

“She said, ‘When you quit clowning around, I’ll marry you,”‘ Carden said.

He did and she did. The couple had two daughters.

Carden started a stellar advertising career, broken only by a stint in the Navy in World War II. One memorable advertising campaign involved a billboard at the Multnomah Stadium in Portland.

“I rented a billboard in the Portland Beavers ballpark,” Carden said.

The billboard, deep in left field, was often struck by home run balls. Carden had a hole – slightly bigger than a baseball – drilled in the sign and painted notice of a $100,000 payment to the player who put a home run through the hole. He paid $78 per month for rent. Lloyd’s of London insured the gimmick.

No hitter ever managed to put a ball through the hole, but announcers often got excited when a baseball smacked the billboard.

Carden also took his advertising talents to Hawaii, where he worked for Liberty House. He moved back to his home town after retirement in 1974.

Monk is not Carden’s given name – that’s Allen. Monk came during Boy Scout camp at Emigrant Springs.

“I used to climb trees and throw pine cones at the other guys,” he said.

“Monkey” soon turned to “Monk.” His mother hated the nickname.

“When my friends called and asked to talk to Monk,” Carden said, “my mother hung up the phone real fast.”

Tim Harvey and his wife Hallie hosted a barbecue two years ago at a rodeo clown reunion, held in Pendleton during Round-Up week. Carden had seniority at the colorful clown bash.

“There were 105 of them, full of humor and fun,” Hawkins said. “They all came in costume.”

The clowns devoured a mountain of prime rib and drank Pendleton whiskey, wine and beer to fuel their high-octane humor.

Harvey has known Carden for 40 years and just smiles when asked to describe his friend.

“Bottom line,” Harvey said. “He’s unbelievable – exceptional and unbelievable.”

He and Moens were inducted into the Round-Up Hall of Fame in 1978 along with a bull named Sharkey.

Looking back over his 100 years, Carden attributes his longevity to one simple thing.

“Humor,” he said, chuckling in his gravelly way.

He thinks of something funny rather than focusing on his “aches and pains.”