Page 144 - Speedhorse November 2019

anything to do with her. Ed and I had a talk about that. Apple Sauce finally got a stall for herself, and Ed finally gave her a race to run in. She won it and a few more before she left Los Alamitos and came on back home to Oklahoma.
“I sold Apple Sauce for around a thousand dollars. She had several owners during her lifetime, and I know she did them all proud. She was always well cared for and lived a long life – died in her late twenties.”
During her lifetime, Apple Sauce foaled Apple Leo, AA, by Buddy Leo; Spanish Cavalier, AAA and stakes winner, by Spanish Fort; Miss Round Rebel, AAA, by Rebel Cause; Captain Top Deck, AA, by Top Deck (TB); Go Three Chicks, si 82, by Three Chicks; and Ranch Sauce, si 82, by Boy’s Ranch.
“The 1950s were just a special decade,
any way you look at it, and the year that
was special for me was 1955. I owned a very pretty, dainty little thing called La Galla Win.
I had purchased her from Frank Vessels at Los Alamitos. She only weighed about 850 pounds. She was by the Thoroughbred, Direct Win, out of La Gallina V by Peppy.
“Ed Burke wrote a maiden race at Los Alamitos, and I put my filly in it. She ran third to a lanky roan called Go Man Go. It was his first out. If he had been broke, he had forgotten most of his lessons. He ran every way except backwards to take the win in AAA time.
“Somebody called a foul on him, maybe more than one foul was called, I don’t know. All I know is that I was quizzed about it, and I said that I had run closer to him than most, and he sure hadn’t fouled me.
“So many people who feel like Go Man
Go is their hero like to tell stories about him and his independent way of going, but most of the people are too young to remember his first out. He turned himself into a legend in the few seconds it took him to win it. It was announced over the loudspeaker that Go Man Go would receive a schooling lesson after that last race. I’d wager that half the people in the grandstands stayed to watch him.
“Throughout all his years of championship racing, that horse used whatever schooling he got only when he wanted to. Nobody bossed him unless he wanted to be bossed. Of all the horses I have loved and known, he is first.”
La Galla Win, “that pretty little thing,” would also have a turn at Jack Nelson’s emotions. After her stint at Los Alamitos, she was hauled back to Oklahoma, where Jack entered her in a race soon enough.
“It was at Enid, and Vandevar, a son of Vandy, was the favorite. That was back there when the law didn’t bother us, and I gave a hundred dollars to the bookie at the track and said to put it on my filly’s nose. He took my money eagerly, since he felt the same as
everybody else, that she didn’t have a chance. But she won and nearly broke everybody present in the process.
“I sold the filly to Wandel Cox, manager of Pontiac Motor Company, in Oklahoma City. She didn’t accomplish too much for him during her second campaign at Los Alamitos, so I bought her back. When I thought she was ready, I sent her to Bay Meadows, where she won a couple of races. A songwriter fell in love with her, and I sold her to him.
“Well, the filly didn’t win for the songwriter, and he went in debt trying to keep her on the track. So I went out there, bailed him out and repurchased my filly and brought her home. She won a lot of good races in Oklahoma, and then I took her to Les Gosselin, with a dream in mind. I wanted to see La Galla Win bred to Go Man Go. Les had him at the time. Instead, Les offered me $4,000 for the mare. That was good money in those days, and I took it.
“Les didn’t breed La Galla Win to Go Man Go that year, he bred her to another horse. Then the next year, 1961, he bred her to Go Man Go, and she came with a filly called Go Galla Go, AAA, a stakes winner, a multiple producer – just everything.”
La Galla Win’s daughter by Go Man Go, Go Galla Go, is the dam of Go Galla’s Lady (si 95, $19,814), Go Galla’s Man (AAA), Go L’il Galla (AAA), Rings And Things (si 93), and Speed Scene (si 94).
Go Galla Go is also the dam of Rocket Wrangler, si 97, 1970 Champion Two-Year-Old Colt, a Leading Money Earner, Stakes Winner, and the sire of, among others, Dash For Cash.
The same year that La Galla Win was bred to Go Man Go, 1961, Jack “Big Train” Nelson “got a yearning.” It was to establish his own horse farm.
“I was sitting in my office in Oklahoma City one day, wishing I had me a horse farm. I saw an ad in the paper that said they were auctioning off a quarter section in the valley flats that begin due west of Norman, Oklahoma, and stretch north for about ten miles. I went to the auction and was high bidder on the land, paid $40,000 for it. I sold my elevator company, moved to the valley and called my spread Canadian Valley Farm.”
The decade of the 1960s marked tremendous growth in the running horse world, and Oklahoma emerged as the hotbed of the breeding industry. One by one, elegant breeding farms were established near Canadian Valley, until the entire ten-mile strip was populated, and known as stallion country. The first to join “Big Train” in the valley was Carroll Boyington, who brought in Scooper Chick and established Golden Valley. He later sold the spread to Paul Travis, who stood Three Chicks. Boyington transferred Golden Valley operations to another location in the valley.
142 SPEEDHORSE November 2019
LOOKING BACK - AN EXCERPT FROM JULY 1980 ISSUE
Apple Sauce wins at Los Alamitos on April 27, 1955
Little Bay Lady, with L. Littell up, wins on June 22, 1954 in Pleasanton, California
La Galla Win
Cockleburr Downs