Page 164 - SPEEDHORSE April 2018

Sizzler’s Maluna set an 870-yard New Track Record at Centennial Race Track on Oct. 17, 1964.
The colt was a grandson of Mason’s Sizzler (out of Lads’ Run TB by Forerunner), who some believe was Oklahoma Star’s best son.
Champion 2-Year-Old Colt Mr Kid Charge, shown winning the 1971 All American Futurity, was by Kid Meyers, who was out of Miss Meyers out of Stars Lou by Oklahoma Star.
Blackout, Beggar Girl and Baldy Boy. The fourth, Beggar M TB, was out of Poco Ante by Heyday Jr.
Baldy Boy, a gelding out of V’s Peaches (Oklahoma Star-J4), was one of Beggar Boy’s most famous sons. Foaled on the Cross J in 1940, Baldy Boy was injured shortly after weaning. He managed to collide against an iron gate with such momentum that a pipe deeply pierced his neck. For the rest of his life, he held his head a little to the left of center.
Baldy Boy divided his talent between ropin’ and runnin.’ Jess Goodspeed, one of the all-time greats on the rodeo circuit, roped off of him. Maurice Laycock of Laramie, Wyoming, among others, raced the gelding.
Baldy Boy, at the age of eleven, finished 300 yards in the world’s record time of :16.1. The race took place in Bozeman, Montana, in 1951. Baldy Boy shared that record only with Chappo S. and F.L. Kingbee for many years.
Another famous Beggar Boy’s roping gelding was Buster, purchased from Mason by Ide Rude, and known as Buster Rude on
Mason books. Buster, a bay with a star and strip, foaled in 1940, was out of Bay Babe (Old Red Buck-Babe Dawson).
AQHA lists twenty producing mares by Beggar Boy. Nine were out of Oklahoma Star daughters: Begaranna, Keen One, Miss Sarita
C., Sanders’ Brown Peach, Toots B, Beggabird, Beggar Girl, Connie Star and . . . Little Peach . . .
“She went down on AQHA books as Little Peach, but I named her Beggar Peaches when she was foaled and always thought of her with that name after I sold her.”
Beggar Peaches (Little Peach), foaled in 1941, was out of V’s Peaches (Oklahoma Star-J4). The small, black mare produced fifteen foals in her lifetime. Eleven were ROM race qualifiers. She remains an all-time leading dam of qualifiers. Her ROM foals are: Tinky Poo, Vanneva, Peaches Hazer, Gypoo, Tiger Van, Silver Bell H, Peachy Poo, Peaches Vandy, Mr. Magoo, Boojum, Wind Up . . . and the one and only Bill Doolin.
Beggar Peaches was owned by Glen Chipperfield and Son of Phoenix, then later sold
to the O.V. Kelsey stables in Idaho in 1952. She lived there until her death at the age of 25 in 1966.
Thus, they appeared one by one, the Stars and Beggars of Cross J. Only some, not all, have been mentioned here.
By 1942, the Cross J brand on the thigh of a horse lifted eyebrows everywhere. The Mason family had forgotten what it was like to live without plumbing or electricity, and the well that had been their only source of water in the beginning was just a sentimental landmark.
Times were good on the Cross J. Star was twenty-seven, but time’s advance had made a little mark upon him. Beggar was eighteen, still frisky and “uppity” on occasion. Some of the photographs accompanying this article prove that the Cross J continued to flourish, that Star and Beggar, backed up by their sons and daughters and by a stalwart platoon of Thoroughbred and quarter stallions, still had many more chapters to write in equine history. Everything, it seemed, had “come up roses.”
Ron Mason, however, was in for grim times.
Part 3 will appear in our May issue.
162 SPEEDHORSE, April 2018
LOOKING BACK - AN EXCERPT FROM MAY 1981 ISSUE