COVER 1 - NMHBA SUMMER 2017 low res

1947 Champion Stallion Pelican, shown here under
jockey Tony Licano, was the first horse Walt ever ran
at a pari-mutuel racetrack.
and came back the next year with a
combined harness and Quarter Horse
meet. Bay Meadow’s Bill Kyne helped
Frank Vessels to open the doors of Los
Alamitos in 1951, and Quarter Horse
racing began to prosper.
In the summer of 1950, Walt and his
wife Dorothy went to work for Lewis
Blackwell on his ranch property near
Tucumcari, New Mexico. He did all types
of ranch work for Blackwell, including
the care of his racing stock. But when
Blackwell held a dispersal and sold all but
two racehorses, Walt decided to quit.
Still, Lewis had other plans for Walt. He
gave him a new pick-up truck and a twohorse
Miley trailer, and packed him off to
Bay Meadows for the Fall meet.
Lewis Blackwell may have only kept
two, but what a two! These two with lots
of ability between them were Hard Twist
and his lightning fast daughter, Legal
Tender B. Hard Twist had devastated his
opponents as a young horse, and ended
up being named Champion Running
Horse of 1946-47. He was retired from
racing, and Blackwell bought him to
stand at stud. The year Walt took Hard
Twist to Bay Meadows he had been
bred to thirty mares, and even had colts
running at the track. The horse was
nine years old when Walt put him back
into racing condition, and Hard Twist’s
first out at Bay Meadows left a lot to be
desired. Then old Hard Twist turned it
around in the Barbara B Handicap when
he set a new track record for 400 yards in
:20.3. Legal Tender B took more time,
and Walt didn’t start her until her threeyear-old
season at Denver. She won her
first out there, and would later do well
at Los Alamitos. She was the first big
name filly Walt ran in California, but she
was only the beginning. During this time
Walt’s stable was growing, and 1951 also
brought the year that J.C. Skirvins and his
partner V.F. Yorba brought their horse
to him. After making a trip to Tucson to
run Hard Twist, Walt took the Skirvins/
Yorba grey and bugboy Tommy Chavez
back with him to California. So two more
champions made the return journey to
the sunny clime with the Harris stable:
Tommy and Bart B.S., The Grey Ghost.
Of the many good horses Walt
trained, Bart B.S. keeps a special place
in his trainer’s heart. Bart knew he was
a racehorse, and he was a big mischiefmaker,
too. He was a horse of
tremendous strength and a rogue’s
manner which required some special
handling. Bart was ridden around the
barn area instead of walked because of
his free spirit, and he ran in a Citation
overcheck bit every race. He was a
very popular campaigner with betting
crowds in California, and they would
clap for him as he paraded to post.
Tommy Chavez was bugboy that
year, but Walt knew talent when he
saw it. The only problem was the other
jockeys at Bay Meadows saw it too, and
contrived to get Tommy days so that
he was unable to ride Bart B.S. in the
Shue Fly Purse. So, Walt made a trip
to Santa Anita to get well known Las
Cruces born rider Jimmy Nichols. Even
though Jimmy hadn’t ridden a Quarter
Horse since he’d been a kid, he accepted
the mount on the big grey. It was the
only time Jimmy ever rode Bart B.S.,
and they won by daylight going the 330
yards in :17.2. Jimmy lost both stirrups
coming out of the gates at the start, but
neither he nor Bart lost one stride.
Bart got left at the gate his next
trip, and was narrowly beaten by gutsy
Clabbertown G. Clabbertown G. was
the type of horse who ran every step of
the way, but it was a different story in
the Northern Handicap (T. Chavez up)
where Bart got another bad start. Left at
the gate packing 128 pounds Bart B.S.
ran like a big freight train to easily collar
Clabbertown G. and Barbara L. in the
time of :18.3. He ended out the year with
a world’s record effort at Los Alamitos
going 400 yards. Throughout his racing
career, Bart B.S. was plagued with calcium
in a knee, and Walt only started him a
total of seventeen times in three years.
The horse won the Rocky Mountain
Championship the last year he ran.
It was during this stay in California
that Walt first saw Monita. She had
made an auspicous start in Del Rio when
she set a world’s record in her first out
as a two year old, but things had started
going wrong. Walt told Lewis Blackwell
about Monita and, after she flipped in
the gate at Bay Meadows, Blackwell
bought her for five thousand dollars.
Walt turned her out immediately, and
the only time she spent indoors off her
grass paddock was when she was put up
at night.
Monita’s kind nature began returning
under Dorothy’s watchful eyes. Dorothy
Harris and Monita got along famously.
Monita wasn’t a big mare, and she was
a finiky eater. It took a very quiet barn,
and races spaced comfortably apart, to
cater to her. In Walt she had someone
who understood her, and for him she did
some of her best running. She became a
good gate horse, but couldn’t stand to
be roughed coming out of the gate so
racing in California suited her very well.
Pari-mutuel racing was a better regulated
sport, and Quarter racing benefited from
the bigger, well run tracks giving them
racing dates. It would be of interest to
New Mexico horsemen to know that
although Monita ran well for her regular
rider, Israel (Ike) Garza, someone else also
got considerable run from her. Almost
everyone in the local racing business knows
valet Dell Jessop, and respects this avid
fisherman very much. Walt told me that
Dell and Monita made a very good team.
Horses he
loved with
a passion,
and racing
became
his life.
SUMMER 2017 49