25 Years Ago
Late Spring/Early Summer 1978
by Maurice Telleen
published in The Draft Horse Journal, Summer 2003

In Zaire (which was part of the old Belgian Congo in the bad old days of colonialism), some 3,000 foreigners from our side were trapped and held hostage by the rebels on their side. Atrocities were committed and as a result French and Belgian paratroopers were dropped into the area to protect the 3,000. Our country quickly dispatched eighteen Air Force transports to aid in the evacuation.

Zaire’s president claimed that the rebels were supported by the Soviets, Cuba, Algeria and Libya. Probably. We accused Cuba of training some of the rebels and providing them with Soviet-made arms. Cuba’s Fidel Castro summoned the top American diplomat in Havana to his office for a cigar and told him that he had done no such thing. Charge and denial, over and over, in place after place.

Iran was another powder keg. Our man in that game was the Shah Mohammed Reza. He was intent on “modernizing” Iran and we were helpful with money and various US AID - type missions. With a powerful army at his command and access to Washington, the Shah was confident.

But 25 years ago this spring, the Ayatollah Khomenie (the Moslem religious leader in exile) was busy stirring this pot. By mid - May, the protests were building steam. All that noise in the street was calling for a halt to the Shah’s modernization plans and for a return of Mosque lands that had been seized for his land reform. I presume Mosque lands meant church-owned.

The Shah had been in power for 37 years, since 1941. So confident was he of remaining so, that he flew off to Bulgaria on “official business.” Probably not a good move, in retrospect. Actually, he had only about eight months to go before he would be the one in exile and the Ayatollah Khomenie would be in charge. I doubt that the Shah settled in Bulgaria – more likely on the French Riviera.

Speaking of those US AID programs reminds me of a cattle judge we had at Waterloo in the early 1960s. He had been in Iran for several months as an advisor. Iran does not put me in mind of either Wisconsin or milk cows, but we were sponsoring a program to help modernize their dairy business. I suppose it was sort of a “goats to Holsteins in ten easy lessons and two billion dollars” type of thing. This judge was fresh back from Iran and he had been there a good long while. Here he was, face to face with a huge and very competitive cow show to judge. He was a good person and a fine judge, but he was “rusty.” It took him over an hour and a half to place the aged cows. No fooling, ninety minutes plus. I was afraid one of them would lie down and calve right there in the ring. The longer it went on, the worse it got. Under normal circumstances, he could have tied that class in half the time–but fresh back from Iran was not normal.

I also remember a horse judge about the same time that simply “got lost.” He was a good enough horseman but that in itself does not make a judge. He had not been in Iran but after a couple of huge classes, he probably wished he were there. It is a pitiful sight to watch–and there is no way to help.

Getting back to the Cold War – confrontations were not restricted to the Middle East, or emerging nations, or former colonies or anything else. Even in Italy, a former prime minister was kidnapped off the street. When the government refused the kidnapper’s demands that communist prisoners be released, he was killed. He had been a good friend of the Pope’s–so you can’t say that he didn’t have connections.

Time to get back home to the USA.

By a vote of 68 to 32, the United States Senate voted to turn the Panama Canal over to Panama on December 31, 1999. Negotiations had been ongoing for 13 years through both Republican and Democratic administrations–so it was not a partisan issue. But that did not mean it was universally popular.

There were protesters on the capitol steps. One woman held up a sign saying, “Save Our Canal – Give Carter to Panama,” and another said, “Look What Castro Did.” Apparently, this action appeared wimpy to some.

One more news flash from a quarter century ago: On April 10, 1978, the first AMERICAN - MADE VOLKSWAGEN rolled off an assembly line in Pennsylvania. The new plant was using engines and drive trains made in Germany. Not to be outdone by the Germans, the Japanese company, HONDA, was coming to Ohio to make motorcycles and possibly cars. The declining value of our dollar against other currencies was responsible for this. As I recall, CDs were paying a very high rate of interest about that time.

On May 17, 1978, the coffin of Charlie Chaplin was found. It was reported missing in this column in the last issue. Whether he was still in it or not, I don’t know.

What I do know is that on June 10, a horse named Affirmed won the Belmont Stakes, making two Triple Crown winners in a row. The previous year, it had been Seattle Slew.

And with that, we will leave the light horses, the grave snatchers, politicians and terrorists and take a look at the draft horse world.

It was 25 years ago this spring that Miss Blanche Schmalzried retired from the Belgian Draft Horse Corporation of America. She had served as the secretary-treasurer since July 1, 1950, but her employment predated that by several years. She had been a full-time Belgian office employee since 1935. She was a part-time employee even earlier than that. She started as a filing clerk, became bookkeeper in 1943, and moved into the secretaryship in 1950 when H.J. Brant moved on to the Berkshire Swine Association.

Blanche’s first employment with the Belgian office came about accidentally. It was during the period just before Christmas. She stopped by to see a girlfriend who was employed there. She pitched in to help and Mr. J.D. Conner, then Belgian secretary, was so taken with her handwriting that he hired her to address his Christmas cards.

Blanche came in on a rising tide for the business in 1935 that crested quickly (in 1938). That was followed by about 15 years of relentless decline to the bottom, referred to in the “50 Years Ago” column of this issue. That was followed by two decades of steady growth, during which time registrations and transfers increased ten fold–or more. The association was in excellent financial shape when she retired. She was a wonderful person and the Belgians were fortunate to have her on their team.

Blanche was replaced by Rollin Christner of Syracuse, Indiana. Rollin became only the fourth secretary-treasurer in an organization that was then 93 years old. Not much turnover in that job.

Over on the Percheron side of the street, Dale Gossett, their fine secretary, passed away. His wife, Lucille, became the secretary-treasurer. And in that same breed, Bob Jones, Farmer City, Illinois, passed away–a real leader in the Percheron breed. The Clydes lost their long time president, Floyd Jones from Bangor, Wisconsin, as well as Ray Emmons, also from Wisconsin, and Ed Claussen from Iowa. These people had helped pull those breeds and associations through some mighty rough weather. Lots of leadership lost in a hurry in both those breeds.

For the last mile in this thing, we will take a look back at our own Summer 1978 issue. The cover picture shows four chunks pulling a binder in a field of rye hay in the state of Washington. They fit our all-breed, no-breed format. There was one grey, one sorrel, one blue roan and one black and they looked like they might weigh 1,400 to 1,500 pounds apiece. Gary Eagle, Bearpaw Ranch, Chesaw, Washington, is driving. He and Mary Lyn were operating the Chesaw Singletree Company, along with their 400 acre ranch at that time. The Eagles had a good five or six page article in the issue on collars and hames and fitting them to the horse. I guess that was our main “how-to” feature.

That issue was 116 pages and we considered it good-sized. Our main working horse feature was about the extensive use of horses and mules in main - taining the trails in Yosemite National Park in California. That was written by two fellows, James Snyder and Walter Castle, both longtime employees at Yosemite.

Our main historical or pedigree-type feature was an extremely long - winded article about the Singmaster family at Keota, Iowa, and two great grey stallions, Lagos and Jalap. Those two stallions played a prominent roll in their story. It ran about ten pages long and, naturally, I wrote it. Jeannine and I even made a visit or two down to the old J.O. Singmaster farm at that time.

Those were the three main articles in that issue.

The shorter items included an account of Gene and Vicky McCaffrey’s visit to the National Shire Show at Peterborough, and the big Regent’s Park Parade in London–sort of the British version of our Milwaukee Circus parade. McCaffreys still have the same address, Schoharie, New York, and are still championing the Shires. We will run a couple of pictures from their account.

Up in Quebec, the Clydesdale fraternity lost a great sire when Doura Perfect Motion died of a ruptured bowel. His death took place shortly after winning his final championship at the Lachute Summer Fair. Any of you who read Bill McGillivray’s story on John “Junior” Heatlie in the last stallion issue, will know about that horse.

There was a little export news. Lloyd and Phyllis Paul from Roanoke, Indiana, had exported their black Clyde stallion, Chief Wildflower, to a coffee grower in South America. Bill Yoder from LaGrange, Indiana, reported that Japanese buyers had taken 32 head out of that Amish community, most of them registered Belgian mares. Indiana seemed to have a lock on export shipments.

The National Clydesdale Sale was held in conjunction with Arnold Hexom’s horse sale in April. The sale took place on the National Dairy Cattle Congress Grounds in Waterloo, Iowa. Bill Dean had conducted the old Waverly Sale, renamed the Midwest Sale, a few weeks prior, in Waverly. The Clydes were making a real run for public favor. With fifty-plus horses in their sale, about half of them brought $2,000 or better. The top gelding sold for $6,300, the top stallion - $6,100, and the top mare-$4,500. Just ten years prior to that, maybe five, a sale of that size with those prices would have sounded impossible. And would have been impossible.

The photographs suggest that it was a dark, wet, cold day. To spare the photographer embarrassment, we will not run any of them. The horses are not standing badly, but they all look like they were taken at dusk–in a cold drizzle. As for the Clydesdale folks, they were grinning from ear to ear. LaMar De Phillips, from Louisiana, found the temperature absolutely ridiculous for mid-April.

That’s about it from late spring to early summer, 1978. It was a hopeful time in a born - again draft horse trade.

An Afterward to The Days Before Yesterday

This issue marks 39 years of writing these time-specific columns. With three per issue, four times a year, that makes a total of 468 such columns. I wrote the first batch to fill space, but as with a lot of bad habits they became an addiction.

Do any of you recall those old programs called You Are There? I think it was Edward R. Murrow’s magic bass voice intoning, “You Are There,” to open every program. You wound up in some strange company: Like Hannibal crossing the Alps to threaten imperial Rome; the Wright brothers on the beaches of North Carolina; or Clarence Darrow making a fool of Wm. Jennings Bryan in a Tennessee courtroom. Darrow lost the case but it virtually destroyed Bryan. And on and on. There was no shortage of material for that series. Murrow put you in touch with people who didn’t live in your neighborhood or century.

Well, starting with this issue, I can honestly say, “I WAS THERE” for all three segments. It was on the 8th of May, 1928. My dad was tending to business, planting corn. Old Doc Lundvick was in the house, also tending to business, helping my mother birth another child, something the folks really didn’t need. They already had three and, unbeknownst to them, were heading into those grim depression years of the 1930s. I did my best to be inexpensive – most of the time.

This magazine has put us in touch with a lot of wonderful people too, but in the flesh. I’ve known a lot of great horsemen. Some were old when I met them and others have become old on my watch. I’m reminded of the late Herb Schneckloth who once mused, “If I would have known I was going to live so long, I would have taken better care of myself.” Me, too. Maybe.

Henry Ford is supposed to have said, “History is bunk,” even as he was making it, and on another occasion described history as “Just one damn thing after another.” Henry was wrong. The past configures the present and shapes the future.

Perhaps Henry had been handicapped by one of those history teachers who was big on the memorization and recitation of dates, places and names. That is just one damn thing after another. That kind should be barred from school houses. When it is a search for connections, co-incidental intersections and cause and effect, it becomes a different sort of tomcat altogether. Maybe even useful.

It was a wiser man who said, “The past isn’t even past–” but I forget who he or she was. I’m going to continue to call them “The Days Before Yesterday” rather than “I Was There.” Take 1928 for instance. I have no memories of it at all.

And one more thing. It shouldn’t be called History. It really should be called HisandHerstory. But that would be awkward.