25 Years Ago
Late Winter/Early Spring 1979
by Maurice Telleen
published in The Draft Horse Journal, Spring 2004

(From general news sources, the Spring 1979 DHJ and breed papers)

The year started out with USC beating Michigan in the Rose Bowl which did not have much real effect on anything. The losing coach didn’t even get fired. Of course, I imagine that Bo Schembeckler was probably Athletic Director, as well as coach, by that time. I don’t recall coaches being saddled with such unrealistic expectations then. There was even sort of a general understanding that (a) if one team won, the other would lose, and (b) it was a game.

The Shah of Iran got kicked off the throne he had occupied, uneasily at times, for 37 years. That was not a game; it was serious and it did have a lasting effect on several things, right down to the present. During the early years of his reign, the Shah was one of our pals and Iran had been one of our pet projects. One “program” in Iran that I remember (the only one, actually) that struck me as outstandingly stupid involved dairy cattle and, no doubt, a considerable amount of our money. What was wrong with milk goats? This was arid Iran, not Wisconsin.

Our real, not missionary or political, reason for being palsy-walsy with the Shah of Iran was their abundant oil reserves. But by the dawn of 1979, strikes and political turmoil had reduced that output by 90%. They barely had enough to gas up their own pickups to make it to the next demonstration.

The Shah read the handwriting on the wall and scheduled himself an extended vacation, leaving the country on January 16. The makeshift government he left in place was forced by “the streets” to allow the return to Iran of the Ayatollah Khomeini, the religious leader who had been in exile for fifteen years.

The prime minister warned the returning Ayatollah that he would take strong action to prevent the establishment of an Islamic Republic. It was like a rabbit telling a lion what to do. I suppose he thought he had the army behind him. But it, too, was divided with its allegiance. In almost less time than it takes to tell, the Ayatollah was in control with every intention to be the religious, political, military, economic and social leader–the whole enchilada.

Of course, it was a whole lot more complicated than that. An armed band attacked the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, two of the attackers were killed and two Marines wounded. Our state department suddenly had a new job to do–evacuate thousands of Americans from Tehran. We had become the enemy, and the infidel to boot. Iran had taken a giant step backwards to a rigid theocracy.

At about the same time, another war was going on in southeast Asia, and we were not involved. On February 17, of that year, China invaded Vietnam (or vice-versa, depending on who you believe) and incurred the wrath of the Soviet Union. It was a family feud involving three countries from the Soviet bloc. And the Soviet leader at that time called China “the most serious threat to peace in the whole world.” Figure that one out if you can.

Jimmy Carter had a rough watch at the helm. So it was kind of nice when, on March 31, he could announce having done the impossible. For on that date, President Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Begin of Israel signed a peace agreement. Carter had served as the honest broker on this deal. But Carter carefully called it “a first step on a long and difficult road.”

It might have even been less than that for the foreign ministers of eighteen Arab countries promptly met in Baghdad to form another agreement–namely to break diplomatic and economic relations with Egypt.

The whole scene resembles a can of worms. It is little wonder that we take refuge in football and baseball games, and showing and pulling horses. At least there is a beginning and an end to those things.

That spring will also be remembered for the scariest nuclear accident in the U.S. It was at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in eastern Pennsylvania. The plant began emitting radiation when the cooling system went on the fritz and exposed the core. They shut her down. There were several doomsday scenarios floating around for a few days. We got lucky. Only a small amount of radiation was released outside the plant, but there was considerable contamination inside the plant buildings.

President Carter, who had commanded a nuclear submarine during his Navy years, said, “There is no way for us to abandon the nuclear supply of energy to our country in the foreseeable future.”

Not surprising, given his background and training and his up-close-and-personal experience with oil embargoes. Not everyone agreed with him and I think it did slow the movement to nuclear down quite a bit.

Every president has terrible decisions to make and problems that just won’t go away. Carter had an unusual one in his kid brother, Billy. Lots of people have forgotten all about Billy, but I think he is worth remembering.

Unlike his brother, Billy didn’t go to the Naval Academy. He didn’t go to Harvard, either. I don’t know where he went, but he was President Jimmy’s brother and occasionally an embarrassment to the chief executive of the United States of America.

He was, as the saying goes, “plain spoken.” At a reception given by the Libyan delegation to the United Nations, Billy was asked about Jewish criticism of his friendship with the Libyans. His reply was, “They can kiss my ass as far as I’m concerned.”

How Billy wound up being pals with some Libyans is unknown, but the president was quoted as telling a close associate that “Billy doesn’t tell me what to say and I don’t tell him what to say–those comments don’t reflect my feelings.”

Everybody needs a brother, neighbor or friend like Billy. They keep you humble and honest. And if you are president, kind of worried about what they will say next. As you can guess, I admired Jimmy Carter even though he won’t wind up in a pantheon of “great presidents.” I thought he had a fine mind and a good heart–and a brother named “Billy.”

The lead-off article in our Spring 1979 issue was an introduction and an invitation to the Kentucky Horse Park just north of Lexington, Kentucky. It was fairly new at that time. The piece was written by a good friend of ours, the late Francis Eustis from Cincinnati, Ohio. Francis was an animal sculptor who had also been a breeder of Belgian horses and Jersey cattle. He had also studiedartatYale University–an unusual combination. Eustis helped at the big draft horse show at the Ohio State Fair for years and also designed the logo for the ClydesdaleAssociation. Good guy, Francis Eustis.

Francis had served as a sort of advisor/consultant putting the draft horse end of things together at the Park. Early on, it was decided to have all five of the major draft breeds in this country represented, as well as a team of big mules. The first two teams of Belgian geldings were purchased at the Eastern States Sale in Columbus, Ohio, along with some harness.

The Park’s aim, from the onset, was to use their draft horses daily for horse-drawn tours of the place, which is over 1,000 acres. These horses were not to be mere ornaments. Theybecame “staff.” The Park owned a few vehicles at that time and added several moreoverthe years.

The Horse Park also served as the site of the great WheelHorse Belgian show for a few years. That provided us with the necessary excuse to go look it over. A NationalBorder Collie Dog Trial served as a serviceable excuse on another occasion. But you don’t need an excuse to go. It is a beautiful place with a rich equine history of its own. It had once been the home of the Walnut Hall Stud, famous for their Standard-breds.

THE HORSE AUCTIONS

By that time (1979) a lot of draft horse sales had come into being and we weren’t really looking for one more to attend! But there was a full page ad for a sale in that issue that turned our minds around.

It was for a productionsaleof “Ranch-Raised DraftHorses” ownedbythe Haythorn Land and Cattle Company out in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. The Haythorns were/are an oldandjustly famous Nebraska ranching family.

The offering consisted of twelve broke teams, one pair of bred and broke 3-year-old fillies, one pair of broke 2-year-olds, four bred mares, ten matched weanling colts and three teams of mules. Also selling were 75 head of Longhorn cattle and 75 head of registered Quarter Horses.

The ad said, “The Sale will be held at the Ackley Valley unit of Haythorn Land and Cattle Company, 16 miles north of Ogallala, on highway 61. All the broke teams will be hitched all morning before the sale and prospective buyers will be welcome to drive them. The sale will begin immediately following a noon barbeque.”

We could not resist. We had lived the first year and a half of our married life in Nebraska and we liked the state. This sale bill made it sound like pure fun. So off we went. We drove and drove, until finally all we had seen for miles were those wonderful Sand Hills, occasionally some cattle, lots of windmills and lots of big sky. The windmills were not tall, nor the wells deep–they didn’t need to be. Those sand hills sit atop the great Ogallala Aquifer–life giver to that region.

And suddenly, there it was, the biggest red and white tent this side of Ringling Brothers Circus, or so it seemed. Out in the middle of those hills, 100 miles to the nearest traffic light. Before the sale had even started, we ran into Jim and Maxine Kruger, Percheron horse breeders and good friends from “back home.” They were drawn here like we were–just sounded like fun.

I have absolutely no recollection of what any of the stock sold for, but we had new things to ponder on the way home. Like, for instance, how many Longhorns could you get into a boxcar at Abilene to be shipped east, probably to St. Joe. And how did they keep from mutilating each other en route. The horns take up as much room as a rich woman’s luggage going on a long trip.

By the late ‘70s, the draft horse market had really come alive. It had been working itself higher, bit by bit, for at least a dozen years. But from 1978 to the 1979 sales, it took a huge leap. So we will take a look at how those sales went 25 years ago this spring.

The first sale of the year was the 26th annual sale in Toronto, Ontario, on January 31. The 125 head of draft and commercial horses sold for an average of $1,461, and that included only 23 registered drafters. The top of the sale was a Belgian mare at $6,400. Thirteen more went off at from $3,000 to $4,650; one stallion, three geldings and ten mares. Mares were the price leaders at most of the sales then. I guess raising colts looked like a good proposition.

There were three big, well-run, breeder-sponsored sales at that time; the Eastern States Sale, Columbus, Ohio; the Indiana Breeders Sale, Indianapolis, Indiana; and the Tri-State Breeders Sale, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. All three held in little more than a month’s time, they provided the “Dow Jones” average for registered draft horses and top geldings. And was it ever bullish 25 years ago.

They all three had a similar format with a show on Day 1 (partly to establish selling order and partly just because they loved to show) and the sale the next day. There was also a banquet on the night between the show and sale.

Columbus: 298 head sold, averaging $3,279, up more than $1,000 from 1978. 37 head from $5,000 to $10,100; 98 from $3,000 to $4,975; 142 head from $1,000 to $2,975; leaving only 21 at under $1,000.

Indianapolis: 171 head averaged $3,401, a jump of over $1,000 from 1978. 31 head went off at from $5,000 to $10,000; 68 from $3,000 to $4,975; 66 from $1,000 to $2,975; leaving only a half dozen colts to reach $1,000.

CedarRapids:151headof Belgians (no Percherons at this sale) averaged $3,090, up $944 over the prior year. 21 head sold from $5,000 to $10,400; 66 head from $3,000 to $4,975; 43 from $1,000 to $2,975 and 21 failed to reach the four figures.

We will run several pictures of the sale toppers and some high sellers in other sales. I was surprised to see that we (The Draft Horse Journal) had boughtthegrandchampion Percheronmareoutofthat Columbus sale. I’d kind of forgotten about it. We paid $3,500 for her and she did well for us, in terms of work performed and colts sold. She was one of the best workers we ever owned, a very ambitious mare who liked to work. A nice horse to be around. We never showed her, so that ribbon from Columbus was her one and only. She died at our daughter and son-in-law’s place about five years ago.

Our two youngest kids, Camille and Lynn, were at the sale with us when we bought her, so Camille was in on both the purchase and the burial.

New sales were sprouting up all over. Michigan held its fourth annual sale at Lake Odessa; Topeka, Indiana, was in its third year; Pennsylvania was just holding their first one, and of course, here in northeast Iowa, we had two big sales close by–one run by Arnold Hexom and the other by Bill Dean.

Thatissuereportedthat Anheuser-Busch, Inc. was putting one more hitch on the road–this one based in California. So then there were three great hitches with home bases in Merrimack, New Hampshire (since 1973), the new place in sunny California and the original base in St. Louis.

Speaking of hitches, there was an announcement in that Journal from Roy Rieman, editor of Farm & Ranch Living, that the second annual reunion of the 40-horse hitch was set for June 16, 1979, at the Agricultural Hall of Fame in Bonner Springs, Kansas. Dick Sparrow was going to put a reassembled “40” together one more time. The previous year, a crowd estimated at from 8,000 to 10,000 had assembled there for a similar deal.

The heavyweight article for that issue was a fairly long one called “AgriculturalSolutionsfor Agricultural Problems,” by Wendell Berry. It was, essentially, a speech he had given to the ag engineering students at the University of Kentucky, probably not the most receptive audience. It was a reprint from The New Farm magazine in Pennsylvania. I’ve read it over and doubt that he would edit it much now, if at all. I believe he would stand by it, paragraph by paragraph.

It was a 124 page issue and the public sales used up an awful lot of those pages. I suppose bull markets are always fun while they last. If Spring 1979 wasn’t a “bull” where drafters are concerned–I don’t know Ferdinand from Isabella.

Taking those two kids with us to Columbus was quite an experience. We were often flying in those days to conserve time. We would ship the merchandise and hope it arrived when we did–and it always did. We got into Columbus in the evening and drove to our motel which was a smoldering heap of ashes. It had burned up. It was getting late and rooms were scarce. We knew whereHowardandGlenna Johnstone, our fellow venders and great good friends from Kansas were figuring on staying, so we went over and moved in with them. It was quite cozy, six in a room. Lynn and I slept on the floor. Actually, it turned out to be kind of festive.

After the sale, we all went to a fancy joint to eat. Howard, being chairman of the entertainment committee, ordered something that the waiter set on fire just before he put it in front of him. It was a “flaming” something or other. Our kids were crazy about Howard anyhow. They had thought he was wonderful before, but so did we. After that, they also regarded him as a magician.