Page 161 - January 2019

“Doe . . . along with his parents, five sisters and one brother, headed west in covered wagons in 1899.”
toward New Mexico were the turning point
in Doe’s life. He became involved in the most momentous race of his life. They had camped by the railroad track for two days or more, hoping to catch a glimpse of a train. They had never seen one before. When the train finally got there, the cattle, horses, chickens . . . and Doe .
. . all stampeded. It took longer for his family to gather up Doe than it did 50 head of livestock. He’s been involved in racing ever since.
Doe’s family homesteaded southeast of Elida, and he began working for some men by the names of Grigg and Miller, who wanted Doe to break their colts. Within a couple years, Doe got a chance to ride in a match race on one of the colts he had broken. He won. One of the gamblers slipped Doe $20 for his win and to Doe, who had done nothing but break horses and herd goats all 12 of his years, this was the only way to make a living. He vowed that horse racing was to be his way of life.
MEATHEAD AND DOE
Doe kept his eyes open for match race horses from then on. He went through a few that ‘weren’t worth a plug nickel,’ but finally he bought for $80 a colt which grew up to be a good all-around match race horse. He ran at anything from 220 yards to a mile. People got to saying, ‘Heck, man, you can’t outrun that meat-headed horse of Doe Bowman’s,” so he acquired the name Meathead.
Meathead and Doe became a famous pair
in the horse circles of the Pecos Valley, so when the Fair Committee of Artesia decided that they should spice their fair with some good horse
races for the public, Doe was recruited. He contacted some friends in El Paso and Juarez to see if they had anything to match at Meathead. Sure enough they did, so the race was matched
at $1,000. The border bunch arrived with bags full of money on the day of the race and with them was their rider. This was Doe’s first glimpse of jockey silks . . . and he declares they were the ‘purtiest’ things he’d ever seen a man or woman wear, but he resolutely declared that he’d have no part of dressing like that. So, Doe wore his bib overalls and blue shirt with a red bandana tied around his head. He carried a willow switch. On this one race, Doe declares that he witnessed over $60,000 in one bet, and that there must have been at least $200,000 bet on the race.
Doe and Meathead, not the classiest to look at, out-classed the border boys’ horse and silk-suited jockey by five lengths and sent them back to El Paso . . . broke and with their ‘tails between their legs.’
There is more than one kind of match maker, Doe found out. He had a little money, so friends began encouraging Doe to marry and settle down. He ought to become a good husband and a solid citizen, they said. Inspired by well-meaners, he set his course toward solid citizenship. He traded off old Meathead for some farm equipment and work horses, then leased some land where he put in 40 acres of sweet potatoes. Doe says that
he never knew you could grow so many sweet potatoes on just forty acres! The problem was not raising them, but selling them! He couldn’t find
a soul he could even give them to, so he bought some hogs and tried to get them to eat his crop. After one season of repairing farm equipment, herding hogs and smelling rotten sweet potatoes, Doe gave up ‘solid citizenship’ and swore he could make more in three weekends of racing than he could in 20 years of farming. He never went back.
DOE GETS HYOTHEN
While Doe was working for his brother Buster, they followed the racing news avidly. They read in the paper where a horse by the name of Hyothen, which had set a world record for a mile and a quarter, had broken down. They contacted the owners and made a deal for Hyothen, and the big Thoroughbred stud was shipped on a passenger train to Artesia where he was put in Doe’s care.
Doe worked with the old stud for a year or so and finally got him sound enough to win a race now and then with him. He bred quite a number of mares to Hyothen, but ones of note were mares belonging to a musician by the name
of Robert Burns, who lived in Alamogordo. One of the mares was a big bay mare called Bonnie Bird, who was bred and raced by W.W. Lock of Kyle, Hays County, Texas. She was 26 years of age. She was a full sister to a horse called Blue Jacket, who was by Rondo by Whalebone and out of May Lee by Joe Lee. W.W. Lock had raced Blue Jacket in Mexico City, where he ran a quarter in 21 seconds flat. Bonnie Bird was once owned by Andy Locklear of San Saba, Texas, who sold her to Robert Burns around 1912.
Burns left his mares with Doe after they were bred to Hyothen and as the foals from these mares were coming at two, Doe began breaking them. Doe was particularly high on a little filly by the big mare Bonnie Bird. As luck would have it for Doe, when Burns came to get the colts, he wasn’t very impressed with the Bonnie Bird filly, so he leased her to Doe. Says Doe, “She wasn’t much to look
at I guess, but that’s what made her such a good match mare. You could match her at anyone.” He named her Bonnie Bird, after her mother.
BONNIE BIRD HEADS WEST
When Bonnie Bird was three years old, Doe set his sights on some races that he had been hear- ing about at Magdalena, New Mexico. There was a young boy in town by the name of Derwood Mills, who was later to become a very successful distributor of medicines back East. He was light as a feather and a fine rider. Doe asked the boy to go with him. He agreed. Doe had two other race horses, so they hooked them to the buggy, tied Bonnie Bird on behind and headed westward.
Foaled in 1989, Bonnie Bird is the dam of Little Bonnie Bird, which Doe Bowman trailed throughout the southwest and Mexico. Bonnie Bird is a full sister to the great Blue Jacket, who was so well loved in Mexico City that his mounted likeness graced the halls of Sanbourn’s, at that time the Jockey Club of Mexico.
SPEEDHORSE, January 2019 157
LOOKING BACK - AN EXCERPT FROM SEPTEMBER 1969 ISSUE
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