Page 22 - The Game April 2006

22 The Game, April 2006 Your Thoroughbred Racing Community Newspaper
Lloyd Jones - An Oldtimer Remembers
By Peter Gross
Lloyd Jones has horse racing memories that go way back. Way back to 1926. Jones was a hard-scrabble seven-year-old who grew up on Awde Street, a tiny north-south route, which happened to be right across from the old Dufferin Race Track, south of Dufferin and Bloor. Jones loved horses as a kid and saw lots of them from his trackside perch.
"Some trainers were not able to house their horses right on the track, "he recalls, "so they rented garages alongside. There was a gentleman named Harry Peirce (Silk Hat Harry) who was one of those trainers whose horses were stabled close to my house."
Silk Hat Harry would let Jones walk a horse or two after it had galloped. One day, the trainer had an idea that excited Jones.
"It was the thrill of my young life," he says, "He let me sit on a horse called Captain Stevenson."
That was pretty well Jones' cue to begin a life-long relationship with thorough- breds. Over the next few years, he began to learn how to gallop horses.
"There was a man by the name of Bill Reddy," recounts Jones, "I galloped a horse for him. Her name was Lady Awake and the odd time, I worked a mare called Jub Jub who was owned by a man from Buffalo. He would show up each Saturday and pay me in Bugler Tobacco and the papers to roll them."
In 1935, Lloyd Jones was 16, but he weighed just 97 pounds. It was typical for him to be getting on five or six horses a day. Jones' mother had died when he was a baby, and he was brought up by his father, who did not approve of the racing or the gambling that went with it.
"My father was vice-president of a company and thought I was better off working with him so he could keep an eye on me."
But the lure of the racetrack was too much for Jones.
"I had a friend that had a paper route. I used to tie a string around my wrist and hang the other end of the string out my bedroom window. My friend would come each morning to pull on the string to wake meupandoffwewouldgotothe racetrack."
Jones saved what he earned and in 1940 bought his first horse.
"I bought it from Bill Bovaird in Brampton," says Jones, "I stabled her in a barn one block south of the Dufferin Track. We had to walk her through the city streets to the track to gallop her."
Sadly, that first horse died of colic, but Jones was determined to stay in the game. "I became good friends with a jockey,
Jimmy Lynn who was the leading apprentice in Canada. He and I bought another horse from Bovaird. His name was Bobby J. After a few seconds, thirds and fourths, I sold him back to Bovaird and got another one from him, called Mother's Wish."
And then began an adventure that now seems hilarious, though, at the time it must have been equal parts frightening and desperate.
A man named Joe Woods took Mother's Wish to Blue Bonnets Race Track in Montreal, but when the meet moved to Connaught Racetrack, Woods abandoned
the mare.
"Luckily, the Humane Society in
Montreal checked the barns after a race meet and they found Mother's Wish with- out food or water," says Jones.
Jones got a phone call from 365 miles away telling him about his horse and that he was the one who would be charged with abandonment.
"My father was not at all pleased," remembers Jones.
Jones and a friend, Tucker Sullivan, had to drive to Montreal to appear in court on the charge. When the case was delayed for two days, Jones, with pretty well no money, had to find a place to stay.
"A trainer by the name of Earl Harbourne let us sleep in one of his stalls." According to Jones, this was not the
Harbour Castle Hotel.
"You break open a bale of straw and put
a horse blanket over it and another blanket over yourself and you have what is known as a shake down."
What few coins the two young men had went to buying some stale buns from a local baker. But they had nothing to drink and necessity, not to mention dire thirst, is the mother of invention.
"I saw a nanny goat," says Jones ruefully, "So I told Tucker Sullivan to grab the goat and milk it. And that's what we did!"
Goat's milk might have been flowing that week, but the milk of human kindness, at least in the Montreal Criminal Courts, was not.
When the abandonment case finally came up, Jones was frustrated to hear the charges read in French. Even though he was unable to understand the proceedings, he was fined $60. Jones was given ten days to return to Toronto to get the money. There remained still, the oppressive issue of gas money.
"In those days gasoline was 20 cents a gallon," says Jones, "Tucker sold his mouth organ for $2, but $2 wasn't going to get us home."
Off Jones went to the Blue Bonnets track to check out the quality of charity in the backstretch.
"I saw a man that I knew named Sammy Kaplan and I mentioned to him about needing $10. He said, 'Jonesy, $10 won't get you back - here's $20!'"
Back in Toronto, Jones arranged to have Mother's Wish shipped by rail, in a boxcar, to the Stamford Park Race Track in Niagara Falls. A few days later, the mare was put on a train for Toronto. Jones had to walk the horse from the Parkdale Station under the railway bridge at Queen and Gladstone, then another mile and half up Dufferin until they reached the racetrack.
Needless to say, the stay at the Dufferin track was not without incident. Mother's Wish, a tad annoyed at her constant travelling, kicked out a few boards in the aging Dufferin stalls and Jones was asked to relocate his horse to Long Branch Race Track. Perhaps this was when Jones decided no more mister nice guy!
"I went over the stall man's head to the owner of the track, Mr. Fred Orpen," says Jones, " He could see my problem - Long Branch was far away - so he gave me a note to give to the stall man telling him my horse could stay."
After all that, Jones eventually gave Mother's Wish back to Bill Bovaird, but
with his sharp memory recalls a series of racehorses that he subsequently owned. He rhymes off Butterpat and Up Front and Calusa's Chief.
"Calusa's Chief won six races and $20,000, which was a lot in those days," says Jones, " One day at Old Woodbine, a horse broke the record for six furlongs - I think it was 109.4 - and Calusa's Chief finished a close fourth earning a 100 speed rating."
The 'Chief', as Jones recalls, was retired at stud as a six-year-old and lived to be 23. The next horse Jones bought was a three-year-old named Mencheval, which was trained by Earl Harbourne, who had allowed Jones and his friend to bed down
in his stable.
"Mencheval won ten races," laughs
Jones, "Nine of them with jockey Sam McComb, who would often comment he won in spite of the rider."
Jones then bought a horse called Cozy Joe and was so pleased with that one, he purchased another colt by the same sire and that one went by the name of Cozy's Cousin.
"This colt turned out to be the best horse I have ever owned," says Jones, "He won the 1973 Gold Cup and Saucer, beating Lord Durham, the two-year-old champion and Victorian Queen, who was the filly of the year."
It's a race that occurred 33 years ago, but clearly it's fresh in Jones' mental archive.
"They're off," he bellows, channelling Darryl Wells, "Cozy's Cousin is never more than two lengths off the lead. These are two-year-olds going a mile and an eighth, but they set very nice fractions of 22.4, 45.3, 1:10.1, 1:35.3 with Cozy's Cousin winning by five lengths in 1:48.4. The jockey was Wayne Green and he said we could have gone around again and they were never going to get him."
Jones insists that his lifetime of extraordinary experiences at Canadian racetracks was made all the sweeter because of the beautiful relationship he had for 58 years with his wife Lorraine by his side. When the two of them would walk through the stable area, they would often be referred to as 1 and 1A, simply because people rarely saw them apart.
Jones met Lorraine when he was 19.
"When I was about 18, I had to go into the Hamilton Sanatorium because they suspected I had TB, says Jones, "At the time I was going with a girl named Connie Parkinson. When I got out after 7 1/2 months, they told me I couldn't go back to work for two months - I had to take it easy. Connie only worked half days and
we'd go for a drive in the afternoons. One day a friend of mine who had a broken leg joined us for a drive and I asked Connie if she had a friend who would come along for Ross. Connie's friend was this young woman named Lorraine. When she got into the car, I thought to myself, she is really pretty. After the day was over, about 7 o'clock that night, I phoned Connie and told her that Ross was very interested and could she give me Lorraine's number. Truth was it wasn't Ross who was interested and the next week, Lorraine and I went for a drive.
Lloyd and Lorraine dated for four years before they were married and they enjoyed a great union for 54 years.
"Lorraine agreed with all my horse decisions," says Jones fondly, "Even when I refused $100,000 from Warren Beasley for Cozy's Cousin."
Lorraine passed away in 1997 and that was a powerful blow to Jones.
"I was a basket case for about three years," he says, "But I finally figured out that life goes on."
In fact, now in his 87th year, Lloyd Jones is still in the game. Four years ago, he had a mare called Fredina that made some money.
"She won about five races," says Jones, "She loved the mud and Helen Vanek rode her to perfection. The first time she won on her, I kissed her and that's the first time I ever kissed a jockey."
His most recent success has been with a horse named Believer's Dolly.
"Believer's Dolly is such a happy horse. She squeals and plays as she walks," says Jones, "So Marilyn McMullen liked the horse so much, she approached me and asked if she could train the mare for me. Last year she ran ten times. She had two wins, a third and five fourths. The only reason she didn't pick up a cheque more than that is that a lot of the races we entered her into didn't fill so we had to put her in two five-furlong races, which aren't for her. She doesn't get started until about six furlongs."
Lloyd Jones could talk about horseracing, well, probably forever. To close out this chapter, though, he remembers a very funny moment with a man named D.O. 'Dave' Brown, who trained the successful Cozy's Cousin.
"One day I was telling Dave about my experience in Montreal years before. When I told him about the two of us milk- ing the nanny goat, his eyes opened wide.
'So you were the guys!' he shouted, 'I always wondered who did that!'"
Lloyd Jones and his wife Lorraine
Photo Left - A young Lloyd in an undated photo