DHJ:: The Days Before Yesterday

25 Years Ago
Late Autumn/Early Winter 1978
by Maurice Telleen
published in The Draft Horse Journal, Winter 2002 - 2003

(From the Draft Horse Journal, the Belgian Review and general news sources of that period.)

Just to take a different path for a change I’m going to do the horses first. The world news was a lot less inspiring – and much bloodier. It can pull up the rear in this case.

The Belgian Review for that year was very upbeat and had every right to be. They had recorded 2,133 horses in fiscal 1977, issued 2,484 transfers and en-rolled 242 new members. Increases respectively of 376, 230 and 73 over 1976.

That is an amazing 25 years since that rock bottom year of 1952 when 171 horses were registered and new memberships totaled 18. It puts you in mind of the biblical story of Lazarus – raised from the dead. So far as Lazarus is concerned, two of the five draft horse associations in our country did, for all practical purposes, die during that period. The Shire and Suffolk associations literally ceased to function for awhile in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s.

Here is the photo of Herbert Schneckloth that appeared in the Review of 25 years ago. This marked his retirement from 37 years service on the Belgian board, the last 20 as president. That framed photo on the wall is an aerial of his farm, home of Sunny Lane Belgians since 1928, and the home of an Iowa Master Farmer.

This one shows Ralph House, who succeeded Herb as breed president, presenting Contilda at Waterloo that fall. She was grand champion and Best of Breed at Waterloo and had been senior and grand at Ohio earlier in the year. She was one of the great show mares of that era. But it was the legacy of Ralph House and his father, C. O. or Charley House, that was important – not Contilda. Charley carried that Belgian standard as proudly in Indiana as Herb did in Iowa. And so did Don and Ralph, in their turn.

And here is Darrel Eberspacher, current president of the Belgian Corporation, as he appeared in the ad for Elmer & Darrel Eberspacher, Seward, Nebraska. The filly in the photo had been orphaned at two weeks. As a yearling (in this photo) she had won her class at the National in Davenport and been junior and grand champion mare at Missouri and Nebraska. Darrel’s father, Elmer, was of the same vintage as Herb and Charley House. All three of them started breeding registered Belgians in the 1920s–blood tells–in people as well as horses.

The Belgians, outnumbering the combined four other breeds, set the pace in this amazing recovery. Herbert Schneckloth, long time Belgian breeder from Davenport, Iowa, chose this occasion to retire after serving as president of the corporation for seventeen years–which had been preceded by twenty additional years on the board. This ended 37 years of unselfish and continuous service to the breed. He had bought his first registered Belgians in 1928.

His public service extended much farther than the draft horse business. He was a community leader and was honored by Wallace’s Farmer magazine with their highest award: Iowa Master Farmer. He was a great citizen.

His son, Donald, was elected to the board and Ralph House, another son of an equally unselfish and dedicated man, Charley House from Indiana, was elevated to Herb’s old spot as president. In due course, Don would also serve as president.

There are many similar situations in the breed such as the McGrews in Illinois, the Eberspachers in Nebraska, the Ellers and Whismans in Indiana, Sparrows and Curtises in Iowa, Doc Allen and his father in Ohio, the Orndorffs in Pennsylvania and on and on. The list wasn’t intended to be inclusive – just a few who came to mind.

And there, in a nutshell, is what brought the great draft breeds through their “thirty years – or whatever – in the desert.” It wasn’t a case of following a heavenly ball of fire or some artful public relations campaign. It was a small band of determined men and women – and in a lot of cases their sons and daughters – that brought the nucleus of breeding horses through the desert. Abandoned for dead they simply said, “No – the draft horse is not dead. Not on my place or on my watch.”

I’m going to run a handful of pictures from that particular Belgian Review to put faces with the facts.

Our winter issue was, then as now, called the Stallion Issue. The cover was a photo from Hardware Ranch in the Cache Valley of northern Utah. It is a winter elk feeding scene at the ranch, owned and operated by the Utah division of Wildlife Resources primarily as a big game refuge. The sleigh ride end of it has since been privatized. We included a feature article on it in our Winter 2001 - 2002 issue.

So far as stallions are concerned we had two long features. One was written by an old friend of my dad’s who bred Shire horses in our community in the ‘20s and ‘30s. His name was Albert McCracken and while Albert had left farming behind years ago, he never left the horses behind. He remained vitally interested in them until his death and enjoyed being a spectator to their remarkable comeback.

His subject was a Clydesdale stallion from here in Iowa named Prince Cedric 3rd. Purchased by the Stringham family from down around Des Moines as a 3 year old, he lived out his long life as “their horse.”

Prince Cedric 3rd was a fantastic horse. But he would not likely be a major factor on today’s Clydesdale scene. I doubt that his name appears in many of today’s extended pedigrees. A lot of useful bloodlines in all the draft breeds simply vanished during the ‘40s and ‘50s. When breeding and recording cease, and they really did in the majority of cases, bloodlines die. It is that simple. Gene pools are about more than just numbers.

Prince Cedric 3rd was a perfect fit for his times–the 1930s. In the cities the battle with the trucks was basically over. They were no longer crying for thousands of big, sturdy geldings on the docks, railroad stations and on the streets. Often overlooked is that the origin of the modern draft horse breeds owes as much, maybe even more, to the city demands to move huge loads as it does to the farms and fields where such animals were reared. It was the top of the market for commercial horses–and the cities grew and grew.

On America’s farms just about everybody was broke or, at least, hard up. Gasoline costs money. Grain was cheap. Labor was abundant. That was the dirty ‘30s. So the drafters made a substantial comeback on our farms. While the mechanization of agriculture was well underway, the machinery was still of modest proportion. Corn was still planted two rows at a time in relatively small fields. And every farmer and his sons knew how to put a harness on a horse. But very few saw much sense in pushing it up on an 18 or 19 hand horse weighing about a ton when a smaller model would do just fine for the farm work. The future for the draft horse appeared to be strictly agricultural so there was a deliberate attempt to downsize the draft breeds here in the U.S. The professors, who were doing much of the judging, started judging them with that in mind. Not all of them, but most of them. It was a lively debate.

This is the period that Prince Cedric 3rd was born into. He was not a big horse, but had superlative underpinning. He had very little feather. For a Clyde, he was on the thick side – also often called “easy keepers.” His neck was long enough to reach the grass and wear a collar. That was considered long enough. His disposition was out of this world. Ralph Stringham needed nothing more than a halter on Cedric when breeding mares. And he was durable, the even tempered kind that rarely had a sick day. He was exactly right for his times. Take a look at his photo from the 1933 International when Prof. C. F. Curtis from Iowa State made him grand champion.

There was a female line in that Stringham stable that was equally outstanding, coming down directly from Ben Stringham’s foundation mare, who was a “grading up” mare. She had been graded up to make it into the stud book, but three of her descendants were good enough to wear the purple at Chicago.

So what happened to those Stringham horses that were so right for their times when the big melt down of drafters came in the ‘40s and ‘50s? Well, a few of them were sold to the Boyt Harness Company at Des Moines for their Red Rock Ranch. Post WWll, that ranch became the bottom of a reservoir behind Red Rock Dam and Boyt forgot about making harness and turned to leather sporting goods. Also moved to Iowa Falls. You gotta do what you gotta do. Others went west to Utah and Wyoming–and mostly disappeared. Oh yes, and a few of them succumbed to Encephalitis or Sleeping Sickness during a major outbreak of that equine disease in 1937-38. And thus, the tribe of Prince Cedric 3rd sort of vanished.

I found the other stallion feature from that 25 year old magazine equally interesting in an altogether different way–a different horse for a different era. But like Cedric 3rd he, too, was in the right place at the right time. And like Cedric, he was “one man’s horse” throughout his whole breeding career.

Both stallions started out with a bit of a handicap. Prince Cedric 3rd was an orphan foal. The Belgian, Marquette du Marais, was a fall born foal–not likely to attract a lot of attention as a yearling against colts six to eight months older. But his breeder, Elroy Brass from Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, saw something in this autumn accident and recorded him.

How Elroy came to breed this horse is interesting in itself. He bought the mare from a killer buyer when she was eleven years old and had never foaled. It was in 1961 when Elroy got the word that a killer buyer had a bob tailed (i.e. docked) mare that might be of interest to him. So he and Dick Sparrow, who happened to be with him, went to take a look. And that is where and how Brass found the dam of Marquette. She had placed 2nd as a yearling and 2 year old at the Wisconsin State Fair for Hubert Kipp, North Prairie, Wisconsin, but that was in 1950 and ‘51. Tough times for draft horses. Horses were almost impossible to sell and difficult to give away but he found a buyer and bid her good-bye. She was a good looker and the guy thought he might get her in foal. He didn’t but she did manage to run off on the mower, giving him two reasons for sending her to the kill.

Then along came Elroy Brass who gave her a new lease on life and got the fall foal born out of her. A few years later, thinking she was bred back, he took her to the Cedar Rapids Sale, but she checked empty. Harold Clark bought her and did manage to get two fillies out of her by Conquest. Ultimately Harold sold her and her two fillies to a Michigan buyer. So much for Marquette’s dam–she was, as they say, a high-spirited horse. Her name was Victoria Farceur.

In the fall of 1964 the draft horse business was again stirring. Elroy took the fall born colt to the Waverly Fall Sale. And I’ll be darned if it wasn’t Dick Sparrow (who was with Elroy when he bought Victoria) and his dad, Ross, who bought him. So Dick must have seen something about Victoria that tripped his trigger too.

Here is a photo from the Schneckloth ad in that review. It shows Don and daughter Lori, on the box seat. The horses are Ben and Bud and they had been 1st in the team class at that year’s Wisconsin State Fair. Don also served a long stretch on the Belgian board and president during part of that time. These four photos can almost remind you of that stirring old hymn that goes, “Faith of our Fathers, living still, in spite of etc., etc.,” doesn’t it? It did take faith as well as determination, to provide that necessary continuity that great enterprises demand.

The big new sale barn in Waverly was completed and Bill Dean’s full page ad welcomed the faithful back to the Spring Sale. The Fall Sale had been cancelled due to construction. This was also when the ownership passed from Arnold Hexom to Bill Dean.

The following March along comes Jack Wood, Aurora, Ontario, another sharp horseman, who bought him. And there he stayed, literally. As John Lester, who wrote the article stated, “Marquette stayed home a lot.” So there are no good pictures or even poor ones, of the horse at places like the International or the Royal Winter Fair. Jack bought him to be a breeding horse and he shared him generously with this fellow Canadians. During the 1970s, Harold Cline and I were generally in attendance at the Royal taking pictures in the ring. The offspring of Marquette were so dominant in that ring–shown by so many different people–that one had to be blind, deaf and dumb not to notice. They blazed a trail of purple ribbons at that great show year after year.

By that time I was getting a little weary of celebrating dead stallions in our Stallion issue so John Lester, Listowel, Ontario, and I started corresponding and digging around in the Marquette tale. John was keen on Belgian pedigrees and located right in the heart of Marquette country – so he nailed it together. Did a good job too. We were both pleased to be presenting a living sire for a change. Less than a week after John posted the completed version to me, Jack Wood found Marquette dead in his stall. The great 15 year old stallion was dead. His bedding was undisturbed indicating that he had not thrashed around at all. We were right back to featuring dead stallions. I hope John and I were not responsible.

The Royal Winter Fair and the new (second year) Michigan Great Lakes International Show, then held in Detroit rather than East Lansing, were the capsheaf shows of that era–replacing Chicago. There were a lot of fall sales by that time and the draft horse market was brisk. It had reached the point where it took a $2,000 sale to get your serious attention with the camera.

That is probably about enough verbiage from our Stallion issue of 25 years ago so I’ll close out the horse end with a number of pictures from that issue.

NOT ALL OUR SALE REPORTS WERE BIG CONSIGNMENT SALES – THERE WAS FOR EXAMPLE THAT “SALE IN THE BLIZZARD” AT THE SPARROW FARM NEAR ZEARING, IOWA.

The weather was terrible. Bill Sassmann picked me up and off we went into the blowing snow. We left two wives and eight children at home between us. Bill’s father-in-law, Everett Steege, was also on board. It was really stupid to be out on the road, but we got there and so did a lot of other people.

A Texas cattle feeder, visiting in Pittsburgh, made a phone call and screamed his head off when the operator told him the charge was 60 cents.

“Wow,” he roared. “Back in Texas I could talk to hell and back for 60 cents.”

“Maybe so,” replied the operator politely, “but from Texas that would be considered a local call.”

Terrorism was alive and well, as I suspect it has been for thousands of years. This time frame 25 years ago had its share. While airplanes heavily loaded with aviation fuel and passengers had not been used as missiles guided into buildings by suicidal fanatics–they were being hijacked and used for extortion with regularity. Either ante up or accede to our demands or we will slay the passengers was the method. The political agenda bears some similarity to 9/11.

On October 18, the government of West Germany had finally had enough. Four terrorists had seized a Lufthansa 737 jet on a flight from Majorca to Frankfurt. The demands of the hijackers called for the release of eleven members of the Baader-Meinhof gang imprisoned in Germany and two Palestinians held in Turkey–or else–they would blow up the plane, and its 86 passengers.

West Germany’s record with these situations was nothing to brag about up to that point. That changed when the Germans sent a unit of their commandoes to Mogadisho on the shores of the Indian Ocean where the jet liner was refueling. They stormed the jet, killing all four hijackers. None of the 86 passengers (hostages) were harmed. Helmut Schmidt, the German Chancellor, said “The government had no real choice. Releasing these terrorists would have only led to new crimes. We weighed the risks as thoroughly as we could.”

The government in Bonn had reason to feel better about themselves. In February of 1972, they paid five million dollars to Arab Terrorists for the release of passengers on another jumbo jet. Then in September of that same year, with Germany hosting the Olympic Games, the same group that had extorted five million out of them gained entrance to the Olympic Compound where 10,000 of the world’s athletes and their coaches were staying. Two Israeli coaches were shot to death and nine athletes taken hostage. By the next morning the compound was surrounded by 12,000 police officers and several sharpshooters. The demand was for the release of 200 Palestinians from Israeli jails and safe passage out of West Germany.

Shortly before midnight the terrorists (also called guerrillas) and their hostages were flown by helicopter to Munich where a plane was waiting to fly them to Cairo. When two of the terrorists emerged on the tarmac German sharpshooters opened fire. All nine hostages were killed, along with one German police officer, and four of the seven guerrillas/terrorists. Now that series of events, while not nearly as dramatic or destructive as the Twin Towers, was also a fair way of turning the world inside out. The Olympic Games are something of an icon too.

At the same time (1977) if there was a better or braver man anywhere on this globe at that time than Egypt’s President Anwar el-Sadat, I don’t know who it might have been. In November of that year he made a precedent breaking visit to Israel and addressed their parliament in the interest of peace. He was pushing for a peace conference but his willingness to “talk instead of terrorize” caused a furor in that region. Hard liners in the Arab states hated him. Four years later the hot heads got him. He was slain on the streets of his own city during a military parade. If blessed are the peacemakers is true, then no one–in any nation, had better claim to it in 1977 than the then president of Egypt.

I suppose I should mention some deaths that weren’t murders. Guy Lombardo, “the sweetest music this side of heaven” died at 75 years of age. But we still listen to him on public television every now and then.

Bing Crosby, with the mellow voice that was so perfect for “White Christmas” that he just about owned that song, died at 73 years of age. Not a bad actor either, although he made it look totally effortless. He was especially good at playing a priest and golf. As a matter of fact that is where he died – on the golf course.

For some reason his music hasn’t lasted as well as some of his noisier comtemporaries.

The New York Yankees beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in four out of six to take the World Series. Fifty years ago they had also beaten the Dodgers but they didn’t have to go clear across the country to do it. Then they were the Brooklyn Dodgers.

American farmers were unhappy with grain prices so they took to the roads with their tractors and trucks–in Washington, D.C., and several (about thirty) state capitals. It was an unusual way to display poverty, but they were angry. A severe drought didn’t help. Drought and low commodity prices are supposed to be natural enemies. President Carter was catching a lot of hell about everything, even the weather.

As “golden ages” go I don’t think it qualified. But I kind of wonder if many of them do.

At least he signed legislation ratcheting the minimum wage from $2.30 an hour up to $3.35 by 1981. That will give you some idea of wages a quarter century ago. $2,000 was a lot for a horse. Definitely worth taking his picture at a sale.