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“Frank is so attached to his animals...Frank loved racing but he also loved his horses. He didn’t want to see any of his horses hurt.” - Dr. Bowman
trains to the Kaiser steel mills in California and industries in Colorado.
The Macaron kids began school at St. Patrick’s Catholic elementary, moved on to Longfellow Elementary and later Raton High School.
Going to La Mesa Park to watch the horses run was a given for youngsters in Raton back in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Frank told a newspaper 20 years ago he started going to the races when he was about 10 years old and sometimes, he and one of his aunts would split $2.00 bets.
Frank was in high school in the mid ‘50s when his brother George Jr. was drafted. With George Jr. in Germany, it meant Frank had
to help run the family’s expanding businesses. By then, his dad had built a nine-unit motel within a half mile of La Mesa Park racetrack. He also opened a restaurant and bar.
Frank took care of the grocery store
Frank had a 20-year career with the railroad and eventually was promoted to conductor. In 1986 he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. He recovered and then took a buyout from the railroad.
That led to his first racehorse.
A friend Frank met at his dad’s restaurant bought a filly in Kansas and offered Frank a half interest. Frank bought in for $1,250, then later paid his partner $4,000 to assume full ownership of the filly.
The filly/mare was Jesta Performer, the eventual dam of Yulla Yulla and nearly a dozen other foals that Frank raised and raced over the years. Jesta Performer was a solid racehorse who was a consistent winner at La Mesa Park. In the summer of 1990, the mare won four of her starts by a combined winning margin of 30 lengths.
Five horses born from Jesta Performer
treatments and antibiotics and finally got the infection down. But it took a lot of after care nursing for him to recover.”
Dr. Bowman said without Frank’s diligence and care, Agiba Yulla probably would not have survived.
“It would have been very difficult,” Dr. Bowman said. “Most people would have given up on the horse and put him down. Of course, that wasn’t in the book with Frank.”
“Frank is so attached to his animals,” says Dr. Bowman. “His horses were fed regularly to the hour every day. Frank loved racing but he also loved his horses. He didn’t want to see any of his horses hurt.”
It’s been several months, but Frank still finds it difficult to talk about Yulla Yulla’s passing without getting emotional.
Tough to handle and ornery from the time she was a yearling, Yulla Yulla lived her life on
while his dad, his mom and Shirley ran The Westerner Motel, restaurant, and liquor store, all located close to the racetrack.
Running the store took precedence over basketball and the other trappings that come with being a teenager. And when the family closed the grocery store, Frank took a paying job at Safeway, earning $1.35 an hour.
After Safeway, Frank got a job with the railroad as a brakeman. It paid a heck of a lot better than Safeway and gave him a daily view of the scenery between Raton and Las Vegas, New Mexico, on the southern route, and Raton to La Junta, Colorado, on the northern run.
remain at Macaron’s small farm in Los Lunas. All five are geldings and the youngest is Agiba Yulla, who is 14. The gray horse, nicknamed Blu, was the last of Frank’s runners. His last race was in 2014 at Sunland Park, where he won a 5 1/2-furlong race but suffered a career- ending and near fatal injury.
What started out as a small cut on his right front hoof became infected and it took eight months of constant care from Frank and veterinarian Dr. Marvin Bowman to save the horse.
“It was a secondary wound that had flared-up and gotten out of control,” said Dr. Bowman. “We used an awful lot of soaks and
her terms till the end.
“Oh, she had an attitude,” says Frank. “You
didn’t mess with her.”
But in time, Frank figured out the best way
to Yulla Yulla’s heart was through her sweet tooth. In what became a regular ritual, he would walk out to her pasture with a piece of mint candy. It was love at first sound.
“I’d rub the wrapper, she’d hear it and she’d want the candy,” says Frank. “Then she’d let me pat her on the hind end and put a halter on her. Up to the day she got sick, I had to bribe her.”
Bribery? Or just another version of this thing called love?
Agiba Yulla after winning an allowance race at Sunland Park.
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