The Frazz cartoon of December 5 (hat tip to Victor Steinbok): It’s not just Li’l Abner. OED2 has U.S. dialectal druther ‘would rather’ from the 19th century, with the noun variant druther(s), ruther(s) ‘a choice, preference’ (nice quote from Tom Sawyer). It relates the pronunciation to the dialectal variant dern for darn.