Page 104 - Speedhorse March 2018

Beggar Boy and Oklahoma Star were marked for greatness – and they achieved it singly at first and then together on the Cross J Ranch.
(left) The Quarter Horse stallion Oklahoma Star (by Dennis Reed TB), shown here as a youngster with his dam Cutthroat, being held by Tommy Moore.
(right) The black Thoroughbred stallion Beggar Boy (Black Toney- Useeit, Bonnie Joe), whose blood Ron Mason crossed with daughters of Oklahoma Star.
track or wherever. I was always too involved in running the ranch, and in other pursuits, too. A man can’t do it all.
“When AQHA started up in 1940, a lot of people started telling me I was messing things up by keeping on with Thoroughbred infusions. I told ‘em to go to hell. It takes a Thoroughbred, the RIGHT Thoroughbred, to make a good Quarter Horse, it’s as simple as that. I’ve had
too doggone many horses to remember all of ‘em, but just a few of the Thoroughbreds I’m thinking about right now are Sun Pharos, Busy Deck, Catwalk, Sea Dog, Swift Abbey, Ginger Brown – I mean there was a slew of ‘em. Some were bred to Quarter Horses, some weren’t.
“Take Catwalk – he was ever so slightly parrot- mouthed, but what the hell. He was a chestnut foaled in 1930, by Wildair by Broomstick and out
of Verdure by Peter Pan, and through Peter Pan, of course, you’re swinging over into Peter’s son, Black Toney, the sire of my Beggar Boy . . . I’ve always been a man who wanted to seek and to know, and there’s many a time when I’ve studied pedigrees all night and all day, looking hard as I could for some secret, some clue as to what made the horses so great.
“What is a Quarter Horse, anyway? They told me it was a horse that could consume
the quarter faster than any other breed. But, I’ve known Thoroughbreds that could do it consistently in twenty-two seconds flat – or less.
“Just because a man thinks he knows his horses better than anybody else doesn’t mean he does. Like, I once gave a Thoroughbred away because I thought he was too runty to do anything. Sugar Brier, was his name. I gave him to Pete Durfey. They went east, and the first thing I know is that the colt’s entered in a race at Churchill Downs. Pete calls and says I ought to lay some money on Sugar Brier, but I wasn’t about to.
“Sugar Brier goes off the board with the
kind of odds that can embarrass the man that bred him. But, then he cuts loose and goes six furlongs in 1:13 3/5, and a $2 win ticket on him pays $101.40. Now that was in November of 1954, and Sugar Brier went on to collect some more notable wins, too . . . if I gave the colt away, it all came back to me in the end. Pete always kept me informed about what was going on at tracks I couldn’t get to.
“Oh – I forgot to tell you when I was talking about Catwalk that he had this Thoroughbred daughter, Fine Girl, and she foaled six running horse winners. One of ‘em was Nowata Dumpy, he being heavy Oklahoma Star on top through his sire, Double Star. Dumpy was another one
I misjudged. I judged him hopeless because he was so close to the ground. So, I named him Nowata Dumpy. Well, he turned into another kind of vehicle when he left the straightaway gate. He won fifteen straight. He looked like a jackrabbit when he ran, but you forgot all about that peculiarity when you looked at the daylight he built behind.
“They say there’s a time to buy and a time to sell. But, some come along. Some came along that I didn’t want to sell, and wouldn’t. I had this Thoroughbred colt, Beggar’s Lad by Beggar Boy out of a little mare from England, Lad’s Run. Carl Hanford came out to the Cross J, and he really liked Beggar’s Lad and wanted to buy him, but I wouldn’t sell. I guess that kinda changed history a little, because Carl went on back east and ended up training the great Kelso.
“It’s been almost fifty years since people started asking me which one I thought was best, Oklahoma Star or Beggar Boy. Questions like that always make me tired. All I can say is that Beggar could do anything Star could do, but
Star had the name. Both studs had real good dispositions, they were something to behold. Some of the men who worked for me back then told me they were convinced that Star talked with his eyes, and that they were convinced that he knew what was being said to him. I just can’t go that far. Beggar Boy, good-dispositioned as he was, could get uppity on occasion.
“All I can say is that Oklahoma Star and Beggar Boy were horses in their own right before I got ‘em. And I’ll say this – once I got ‘em, regardless of all the times, all the chances I had to sell ‘em, I’d have soon as sold myself.
“A lot of bull has come down about Oklahoma Star’s dam. I’ll get to that later. What I saw in Star was his topline, going through
his sire Dennis Reed – he was quite a speedster himself – being by Lobos by Golden Garter by Bend Or.
“After a lot of years, I came to the conclusion that Star’s dam, Cutthroat, was in truth the daughter of the Thoroughbred Bonnie Joe. Bonnie Joe also happened to be the sire of Uncle Jimmy Gray and Joe Blair and Useeit, the dam of Beggar Boy, and his blood brother, the 1924 Kentucky Derby winner, Black Gold.
“To me the letters of a pedigree on paper make a kind of music that only fools ignore. Like I fell in love with the Thoroughbred Discovery. Who didn’t? He was a chestnut foaled in 1931 – by Display by Fair Play and out of Ariadne by the imported Light Brigade by Picton out of Bridge Of Sighs by Isinglass by Isonomy. If you ever wonder how I can remember all those names, it’s because I pored over Discovery’s bloodlines for so long.
“See, I always wondered what made Discovery as great as he was – on the track, in the stud, as a maternal grandsire. I finally
102 SPEEDHORSE, March 2018
LOOKING BACK - AN EXCERPT FROM MAY 1981 ISSUE