Page 26 - December 2015

him, ‘Dr. Watson’s going to disperse all these horses down here, and I have a little ole filly I want you to look at.’ When we got there, they had 15 to 20 colts tied up to a pipe rail fence. I asked him to pick one out that might make a good halter horse and that I was leaning to the fillies. He walked up there on both sides, spent 30 to 45 minutes looking them over, and he told me he saw two or three that were halter prospects. He asked me which one I liked and I wouldn’t tell him. I said, ‘Look a little closer, I have one picked out.’ When he narrowed it down to two, he asked me which one I liked and I told him, ‘The one on the end.’ He said, ‘Well, she’s close to another one I looked at. But, she’ll work.’
“So, we go to the sale ring and so happens the one I pick out is the first one to go through the sale ring and somebody else liked her. Her name was Turnpike Patty. So when they let
her in, he asked me, ‘What can you give for her?’ I said, ‘They priced her for $2,500 and the banker won’t loan me that much money on a horse.’ They get up around $1,250 and $1,300, and I’m through. Walter said, ‘She will make you some money,’ so we stayed in to over $1,500. I said again, ‘I’m through.’
“It was at this time Walter stands up and looks around,” Pevehouse continued. “He then said, ‘You know who is bidding against you?’ And I didn’t have the slightest idea. He told me it was Oral Roberts and he was getting in the horse business. I knew I didn’t have as much money as Oral Roberts. But then, Walter tells me, ‘He doesn’t know how much money we’ve got.’ So, we ended up buying her for $1,750. I had to run to the bank first thing Monday morning to get the banker to sign a note.”
Pevehouse tells us how the racing got started. “Walter helped me with her the next year in the halter. But, I found out that halter wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. I knew that Turnpike Patty’s mother was never broke and had never had anything done
with her. But, I found out that she had a full brother named Nuyoka Buck that had run
at Stroud, Oklahoma, and run AAA or Top AAA. I thought, ‘If this filly doesn’t work out in halter I could go to the racetrack with her.’”
That is exactly what he did. “So, as a long yearling I threw my saddle on her and hauled her to the Arkansas River. Rode her up and down the river bank, got her broke, and could do anything with her.”
When Pevehouse started with the IRS, he was put in training at Little Rock, Arkansas. This is where our story takes up again. “I was traveling back and forth to Little Rock during my IRS training. There was a breeder in Arkansas that had Wilson’s Yellow Cat
New Track Record setter Turnpike Patty, shown running second in the 1962 Magic Empire Futurity to Vansarita Too, started Nolan Pevehouse on the road to success as a racehorse owner, trainer and breeder.
breeding. So, I decided to stop in on a Friday evening on my way home for the weekend. Pulled in there and talked to the guy at the barn. I asked him if he had any racehorses
and he said, ‘Yeah we have several of them.’ I asked him what he was doing with them, and he said he was hauling them to Blue Ribbon Downs on the weekends to school and work. Then he was going to pick out the top four
or five to send to Raton, New Mexico, to race.
“I told him I had a couple of fillies I was hauling down there and I’ve gated them a couple of times. He said he’d like to work something with me to work the colts. That was all right with me and I said I would be there that weekend.
“We worked them for $10.00 a side. I had a little Bar None filly out of a King bred mare that was owned by my dad. I worked this horse first. He had a little stud colt - a Wilson’s Yellow Cat. I knew this filly wasn’t the best
I had, and I thought if I lost my first race, I could double up and break even to pay the jockey in the next work. I won with the Bar None filly. So, I told him I had one more to work, and he turned me down as I had already outrun his best horse. I knew I still had the best horse in the trailer, and that was Turnpike Patty. So, I took her to Enid, Oklahoma.”
Turnpike Patty started her official race career at Enid. She first ran in a maiden race against horses that were sired by such great stallions as Leo, Three Bar, Top Deck and Sugar Bars. Pevehouse was skeptical about her ability to race with these horses, but she won her maiden race. She came back to win another race, and then it was on to a stakes race in the Magic Empire Fall Futurity at Stroud, Oklahoma.
Pevehouse recalls the stakes race this way, “Oscar Jeffers had a colt in the trials named Bar None Bob, and he had run Top AAA time that summer at Raton. My friend O. M. Woodson had a filly called Vansarita Too. In
our trial, we drew in with Bar None Bob. We outran him in the trials. Then, Vansarita Too came along and won her trial with the fastest qualifying time. Turnpike Patty had the second fastest time. Bar None Bob had the third fastest time and a little black mare from Arkansas had the fourth fastest time.”
He continued about the finals. “Back then, you didn’t have two weeks between the trials and the finals. You ran the finals the next weekend. We go back up the next weekend with Bar None Bob being the favorite to win. But when the dust settled, they ran just like the trials with Vansarita Too first, Turnpike Patty second, Bar None Bob third, and the little mare from Arkansas fourth.”
Turnpike Patty set a track record in one of her races at Midway Downs, going 400 yards in :20.43. She gained another stakes placed finish with a second in the Florida Quarter Horse Racing Association Derby in 1964. Her overall race record gave her seven wins, four seconds and two thirds in 17 starts. She was officially AA rated with her ROM. She won $3,469.
Turnpike Patty was sired by Bar Three. We are familiar with Bar Three as the sire of Three’s Gal. Three’s Gal is the second dam of Send Me Candy, the foundation mare for the late Carl Pevehouse breeding program. Carl Pevehouse is the breeder of the 2015 All American Futurity-G1 winner Jess Good Candy. This makes Three’s Gal and Turnpike Patty paternal half-sisters, while Nolan and Carl are brothers.
Bar Three is sired by Three Bars and out of the mare Patsy McCue by Charlie McCue by Jack McCue. Patsy McCue is out of Vigo Dotty by Spark Plug by Jack McCue. You will recall that Patsy McCue is bred much like the great mare FL Lady Bug, the dam of many great runners including Lady Bug’s Moon.
Nuyaka Pat, the dam of Turnpike Patty, was bred by Robert W. Belford of Okmulgee, Oklahoma. When Pevehouse realized what
24 SPEEDHORSE, December 2015
SPEEDLINES