I'm pretty sure if you check that "druthers" was a term coined by Walt Kelly in his famed Pogo comic strip. It is used exclusively in the phrase "If I had my druthers" throughout the history of the strip.
Here's what I found: "This is an American phrase and not used widely elsewhere. People elsewhere in the world might want to know what druthers are, as the phrase conveys otherwise. Druthers is a shortening of 'would rathers'. The phrase originated in the late 19th century and is first cited in the January 1870 edition of Overland monthly and Out West magazine, in a story called Centrepole Bill, by George F. Emery:
"If I was a youngster, I 'drather set up in any perfession but a circus-driver, but a man can't always have his 'drathers."
Druthers, as opposed to its earlier variant drathers, is traced back to 1876 in Dialect Notes:
"Bein's I caint have my druthers an' set still, I cal'late I'd better pearten up an' go 'long."
So, not coined by Walt Kelly, according to that source (phrases.org). :0)
