50 Years Ago
Late Summer/Early Autumn 1953
by Maurice Telleen
published in The Draft Horse Journal, Autumn 2003

The summer of 1953 was both lively and dangerous as the face off between ourselves and the U.S.S.R. ground on and on. Berlin, the former capital city of Germany, lie deep in the eastern or Soviet zone of occupation. So it, like the country itself, was partitioned into different zones with ourselves and Britain administering West Berlin and the Soviets administering East Berlin.

When the Soviets upped the production quotas for construction workers in East Berlin in June they had gone a mile too far. They had a full scale uprising on their hands. The police were quickly overwhelmed and the rioters soon faced Soviet tanks and troops. That was pretty much the Soviet response to any unrest in the eastern European nations that they occupied in the ‘50s.

Naturally this trouble in Berlin was blamed on the U.S. and Britain. For one thing, our distribution of free food in Berlin was driving the U.S.S.R. nuts. Thousands from their eastern zone of the city would cross over into the west to get a handout. It was a constant irritant.

Much closer to home, down in Cuba, a few hundred revolutionaries attacked a couple of army barracks during a carnival in Santiago. Some 55 people were killed and the rest of the insurgents taken prisoner. That included their leader, a young lawyer named Fidel Castro. Batista (our man in Cuba) was contemptuous of the effort, calling it a “crazy attempt.”

And in Iran the push and shove between the Shah and the clergy was getting nastier by the month. We were very cozy with the Shah. When things got too hot, he would go to Baghdad. We bet on quite a few losers during that period–but so did the Russians.

But these were all sort of minor events and irritants. Our main focus was on Korea 50 years ago. In June of that year, as the so-called “peace talks” ground on, the Communists launched a serious offensive against two South Korean divisions and the American 3rd Infantry division. This last minute show-off offensive didn’t change the real estate map much, maybe a couple or three miles deep along a thirty mile front. Was this someone’s notion of gaining “last minute”prestige?’ Sort of like charging up a hill in France at dawn, six hours before the armistice on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of the year, 1918. This big push in Korea seemed stupid then. Seems stupid now. Other animals must look at us and shake their heads at times.

In any event, the Korean Armistice was signed a couple of weeks later, on July 28, ending the three year conflict. American dead totaled 25,000; South Koreans, more than a million (civilians and soldiers) and I suspect the North Koreans and Chinese had close to that number.

Believe it or not, not all the P.O.W.’s wanted to be repatriated. Twenty-three Americans and one Brit chose to stay with their Communist captors, along with 355 South Koreans. On the other side of the bull pen, 27,000 North Koreans refused to return to their homeland. That might have included some Chinese, too.

President Eisenhower asked Congress for $200 million in emergency aid for South Korea. This was on top of the $60 million he asked for in April to support the French in their effort to hang on to their empire in that region. But in Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia, the French were frustrated at every turn and it was beginning to dawn on Paris that French Indo-China might well be another Korea–a stalemate. The Cold War of the ‘50s was a constant hemorrhage of money. It was almost more of a drip, drip, drip than a boom, boom, boom.

A couple of big things happened in the Republican party during that summer of 50 years ago. Robert Taft, longtime senator from Ohio and long known as “Mr. Republican” died on July 31. He was considered the patron saint of the conservative wing of the party. In the 1940s, he had been thwarted by the “Dewey wing” of the party, then in 1952, he lost the nomination to General Eisenhower who was pushed by the same folks who had supported Dewey in 1948.

Taft died on the last day in July. Two months later, on the last day of September, President Eisenhower made an appointment that would have given Taft one giant stomach ache. He appointed Earl Warren, the moderate (even liberal) Republican governor of California to the Supreme Court, replacing the recently deceased Chief Justice Vinson.

Earl Warren would serve as Chief Justice until his death on July 9, 1974. Warren’s 21 years on the court reshaped both the court and the country. Earl Warren made a real difference. So did Eisenhower. And so did Taft.

All things considered, in terms of leadership, we didn’t do so badly for ourselves during the 1950s. Better than our arch enemy, the Soviet Union.

Let’s take for instance, their man, Lavrenti Beria and our man, Senator Joseph McCarthy. Beria was the Minister of Internal Affairs and in charge of their secret police. He was regarded as the second most powerful man in the country. Not only that, he had been in that position for 25 years. And I’ll be darned if they didn’t discover that all along he had been attempting to implant capitalism into their system. He was put on trial and executed.

Contrast that with the saga of Joe McCarthy, the junior senator from Wisconsin who, lacking anything significant to do, started waving around wild charges about communists in our midst. Joe saw them in government, in our Army, in our colleges, in the entertainment business, probably even in our day care centers–if we had any then. There were all these people trying to implant communism into our system.

It didn’t take 25 years to put him away. It took less than five from the time he started his harangue until, hung by his own excesses, he was condemned by his peers for conduct unbecoming a senator. There wasn’t any point in shooting him. It would take all of another year (1954) but he would be done in by himself.

Joe wasn’t “house broke” so we just kicked that dog out of the house and eventually ignored him. Much better than the Soviet way. He did, however, damage a lot of reputations and diminish a lot of lives.

The draft horse business barely existed, but you wouldn’t have known it by the depth and quality of the Belgian and Percheron shows at the major state fairs in the Midwest. While the market had largely evaporated, there was little slackening of effort to present your horses as professionally as you could. It was more about pride than potential sales. In areas and breeds where competition lagged, so did the effort. The Clydes had small shows in Iowa, Wisconsin and Michigan. Believe it or not, there was still one agricultural college showing in 1953–Penn State with Elmer Taft in charge.

So while the dairy, beef, swine and sheep shows got the attention of the farm press, the horsemen just might have had the most fun off in their section of the fairgrounds. For one thing, they had their harness classes, which can get your blood pumping–more than leading a cow backwards as slow as possible, for example. And both Herefords and Holsteins tend to look awkward, rather than awesome, on the trot. As for sheep (and I’ve shown quite of few of those too), have you ever seen a sheep with “the look of eagles?” Or a hog, for that matter. So that is why, in the face of dismal prospects, the draft horse shows of 1953 were surprisingly strong. They may have been unemployed but, by golly, they still had some style. Showing them was fun.

In another respect, they were depressingly weak. We will use the Iowa State Fair records as an example. In 1941, the last state fair before our involvement in World War II, there were 36 exhibitors of 4-H draft colts at Des Moines. In 1953, there was one. That one 4-H exhibitor was Don Sorenson of Goldfield, Iowa. His colt was named Dick Farceur. When I told Earl (Bud) Sorenson about it, he said, “He wasn’t Don’s colt–he was mine! But I was in the Army at the time.”

I said, “O.K., O.K., Bud–you don’t need to get all worked up about it.”

Anyhow, just ONE KID showing a draft colt at the state fair did not auger well for the future. The light horse involvement in 4-H hadn’t kicked in yet. There were only three kids with light horses in the 1953 4-H show, but they had American Saddlers or Palominos. The Quarter Horse and Shetland Pony binges had not gotten underway in 1953. Years later, our oldest daughter would show an Appaloosa in a big 4-H show in Des Moines and there wasn’t a draft colt 4-H project in the whole state.

I think getting 4-H colt judges in 1953 was sort of an impromptu thing. For instance, Ray Bohan, Belgian exhibitor from Shell Rock, judged the one Belgian. I wonder what he was paid to do the job. And those three kids, with maybe five light horses, they were judged by Vernon Tice, a Clydesdale exhibitor. He probably got paid five times as much as Bohan.

In the 1960s, we were host to the state 4-H dairy show at Waterloo. It was a big junior show–serious judging, none of this one or two in a class. I would do just as the horse superintendent in Des Moines obviously did. I would hire an exhibitor. It was no big deal. We had lots of exhibitors that included an abundance of good judges. But it drove some folks nuts to NOT KNOW who was going to judge. I think we paid our 4-H judges fifty bucks apiece for a morning’s work. Not bad for the early ‘60s.

I want to run three pictures from the Belgians shows of that year. The two headliners were a full brother and sister. Small wonder that they were undefeated as the produce of dam for two years.

THE UNBEATABLE PAIR AS A PRODUCE OF DAM IN 1953

Conquest, as a 2 year old. He was junior and grand champion at the National in Davenport, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and Saginaw. He won his class at Toronto, but did not win any championships at that show. But he did go undefeated in class at the biggest and best shows in North America	Linda, his 6 year old sister. She was senior and grand champion at the National Show, Illinois, and Indiana. She won the brood mare class at Toronto and was named reserve senior and reserve grand at the Royal. At Ohio, she stood second to George Harkness’ mare, Victory. Then Victory was defeated for grand champion by Water Cress on Lady Ellen Farceur. I suspect they were the three best Belgian mares in America at the time.	When you put Conquest and Linda together, you had a produce of dam that went undefeated in both 1952 and 1953. Ken Pritchard, Manotick Station, Ontario, is one exhibitor who got the best of this pair in 1953. His 3 year old mare, Sharon Kay, beat Linda for senior and grand at the Royal. As for Conquest, he got beat for junior champion at Toronto by his younger stablemate, Contender.

For the Percherons, I will simply mention two horses and the people who owned them–one old horse, one young horse. As for the old horse, that was Silver Dawn Koncarno, the grand champion stallion at the 1941 International, the last big Chicago show before the war. Through most of the ‘40s, this horse stood at the head of the stable owned by Frank Rathje of Palatine, Illinois. After the war a young breeder from Wisconsin, Ray Bast from Richland bought him. And in 1953, white with age, Silver Dawn Koncarno was grand champion stallion at the Wisconsin State Fair.

The other Percheron was a two year old stallion named Woodland Enchanter. He was reserve junior champion at the National in Ohio and junior champion at Chicago in one of the last Percheron shows held there. The following spring he would be sold into Canada at Charley House’s big Indiana Spring Sale. He was bred, owned and exhibited by P.T. Brown and Sons from Indiana. The junior member of the firm, Parke, would eventually decide that he preferred bay to grey. He switched to Clydesdales and carved out quite a career for himself when the drafters came back into favor. Woodland worked equally well as a prefix for both Clydesdales and Percherons.