This cover from the May 19, 1927, Breeder’s Gazette tells you what kind of spring most of the Upper Midwest had experienced. So the injunction was to “Put headlights on your tractor and plow all night–just get the seed into the ground. Time was of the essence.”

I’m sure tractor salesmen used the situation for all it was worth. For them it was a sound argument and a sales opportunity. Just as Sleeping Sickness would be in the 1930s (tractors don’t get sleeping sickness). For the farmer the cold, wet weather with the mud sucking at your gum boots as you went about your work was simply one more vexation. As for the copy under the picture about this business of being “master of his fate and captain of his soul,” that probably sounded at the least, boastful, and at the most, arrogant, to the guys actually trying to get the seed into the ground.

That is the entire 75 YEARS AGO segment for this issue. Instead, I’m going to do as I did with Knute Rockne a few issues back and devote the whole space to one man and his Belgian horses–a man who was in his prime during the 1920s.

This story is about Earle Brown from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and his Brooklyn (and Burklyn) Farm Belgians. Brown probably was the master of his fate and captain of his soul more than most, for he was a captain of industry–big time. He was not a typical Minnesota farmer. He was a gutty child of fortune with a flair for horses.

And so, on with the show. It will, doubtless, meander around a bit for that is its nature. It doesn’t lend itself to a neat chronology or a narrative form.

EARLE BROWN AND HIS BROOKLYN FARM BELGIANS

Carl Sandburg, Illinois-born Swedish poet and writer, immortalized Chicago as the “Hog Butcher of the World” and “City of the Big Shoulders.” Had he been a son of Minnesota and gravitated to the Twin Cities, he might have called them the “Flour Miller of the World” and “Home of Big Lumberjacks.” The great grain elevators were to Minneapolis-St. Paul what the Union Stock Yards were to Chicago. Both were inland ports with Chicago on the shores of Lake Michigan and the Twin Cities with barge traffic on the Mississippi that ran clear to the Gulf of Mexico. Both were manufacturing centers for farm machinery and both produced bumper crops of multi-millionaires. Most of those early family fortunes were founded on grain, livestock, real estate, railroads and, in Minnesota’s case, iron ore and timber. It was commonplace for heirs to those hefty bank accounts to indulge themselves by breeding fine livestock on their nearby farms. Both Chicago and the Twin Cities were ringed by palatial-type homes and outbuildings housings how herds and flocks of dozens of breeds.

Earle Brown was exposed to good horseflesh as a child on the farms owned by his grandfather, Captain John Martin, and his uncle. In the 1890s that included everything from work horses to roadsters to saddlers. He was raised and educated by his grandfather. In 1905 he became the heir to his grandfather’s flour milling, lumber and land fortunes. One of the crown jewels of that inheritance was the aforementioned Brooklyn Farm. It would become his main lifetime home. The other was Burklyn Farm in the hills of Vermont.

Imbued with a sense of civic duty, he entered public life as a fairly young man. He served as sheriff of Hennepin County during the Prohibition years and ran for governor of Minnesota in 1932. Republicans didn’t do well in 1932–so he did not become governor. Brown is, however, credited with establishing the first state highway patrol during his tenure as sheriff in a metropolitan area. Perhaps it was to better apprehend bootleggers. He was not a “sit in the office” type of chief.

Just the other day, Jeannine and I helped Everett and Mata Steege (Chickasaw Belgians) celebrate their 67th wedding anniversary. Everett was reminiscing about Brown. Seems our local area had produced an up and coming gangster type during that era, a lad headed for the Most Wanted Hall of Fame, for sure. He drifted north and robbed a bank in Sheriff Brown’s jurisdiction. Everett claims the sheriff, Brown himself, nailed him with a slug from what now would be called a deer rifle, this at a quarter mile away. Everett said our local boy was convicted, incarcerated and experienced pain in one shoulder for the rest of his life and added that “Brown must have been a damn good shot.” Stories surrounded Brown. He was that kind of a man. In such cases some of them are true and others could be.

When Brown died in 1963, he left Brooklyn Farm to the University of Minnesota. The University sold some of the assets off to fund the Earle Brown Convention Center on the campus. The buildings and some ground were sold to the city of Brooklyn Park and have become a convention and tourist center. But that is another story.

I know far more about Brown’s Belgians than I do about Brown. I think, however, I know enough to see a number of parallels with August A. Busch, Jr., another heir to a great family fortune in another of our great inland cities. Both men had an affection for the land and the outdoors, both were drawn to horses early on and both became good horsemen in their own right. They both liked to drive, and to ride, and both were good at it. Both Brown and Busch were involved with light horses before they became movers and shakers with the heavies. If Earle Brown (the Belgian man) and August A. Busch, Jr. (the Clydesdale man) were not kindred spirits, at least in terms of breed loyalty, temperament and bank accounts, I simply don’t know how to read the record.

Earle Brown’s first interest in breeding and showing horses was with the gaited American Saddlebreds. One can assume that with the great Minnesota State Fair close at hand and with evening Society Horse Shows the standard fare at such places, he rode a few in that ring. But he didn’t stick with the three and five-gaited models long.

He was basically in business and the business interests of the country such as farming, lumbering and heavy dray work in the city didn’t call for gaited horses. They did call for draft horses. Bear in mind that this was around 1920. The equine population in this country was at its peak with about 26 million of them, many of them working on city streets as well as on the nation’s farms and ranches and in the timber.

Brown was attracted to the Belgian breed. He resolved to become a breeder, to own the best, to campaign them at major shows and to call further attention to the breed via a six horse hitch–something no other Belgian breeder was doing at the time. Here was a man who was determined to make a splash that would be heard from sea to shining sea and maybe even back in Brussels. And he proceeded to do all of those things.

Truth to tell, Brown’s Belgians were not on my list of things to do. Partly because I no longer keep such a list and partly because it was so long ago. I had encountered the man in some of the other little stories I’ve done such as my biographies of Pervenche and Genese de Ergot and a short little piece about Conrad Kohr’s Ranch in Montana, etc. But I was content to leave Brown’s bones alone.

Then Earl “Bud” Sorensen from Goldfield (there isn’t a gold field within 600 miles) ruined everything by loaning me a 73 year old catalog of a sale Brown held on the day following the Belgian showing down at Waterloo in 1929. Now, Waterloo isn’t just someplace down the road to us, nor is that fairgrounds. Jeannine and I spent from 1959-72 working for and at that show. Our kids did considerable growing up on those grounds. And along came Bud with this catalog, in near pristine condition, of a sale held there 73 years ago. It contains many photos I have never seen and his father had noted the selling price of most of the animals. Now that sort of custodianship deserves to be rewarded. I decided to “do Brown.”

Since making that reckless decision, I have spent hours that grew into days and nights in the old Belgian stud books, the old Belgian Reviews, a couple old Breeder’s Gazettes, and the International Livestock Show albums from that period. I’ve also listened to and corresponded with a few old time Belgian breeders from Minnesota and Iowa, talked with the people at the Ag School Library at the U. of Minnesota, and perused some information sent to us by Linda Mainquist from St. Paul. While they have all been helpful, it was the old publications of the Belgian Corporation and the services of Vicki Knott, their secretary, that provided the critical backgrounding information on the horses. Without the Belgian Association records and help of their office, Earle Brown would still be resting in peace. Since there is nothing typical about this story, I’m going to present it in a haphazard way, subject by subject, rather than in any narrative form.

FOUNDATION ANIMALS

Brown’s dream to champion the cause of the Belgian breed found expression in his initial purchases in 1921 and ‘22. In August, 1921, he purchased his first herd sire from A.L. Halver, Leroy, Minnesota. He was a ten year old red roan named Bienfait De Louvionies. He was affectionally called “Big Ben.” He had been imported by Truman’s Pioneer Stud Farm in Bushnell, Illinois, in 1913.

For most of his foundation mares he went down to the Holbert Horse Importing Company in Greeley, Iowa. By that time it was headed by Fred Holbert, the eldest of the four sons of A.B. Holbert. A.B. was a pioneer stallion importer. He died while presiding over the annual meeting of the German Coach Horse Association during the 1916 International in Chicago.

Brown fit in with the Holberts socially like cream goes with coffee. They were both upper crust, both gentry (as the word was better understood then than now). I’m not sure there even is a comparable rural gentry today.

A.B. Holbert, like many pioneers and entrepreneurs, was sure that his creation would withstand the ravages of time and tide. So, he insisted that his two elder sons, Fred and Tom, be partially educated in Europe. He wanted those boys to know not only the horse business but the language, the culture and the people. There would be no dependence on translators and other intermediaries when Holberts bought horses! Which he apparently expected them to be doing during most of their lifetimes. Which they did, but neither Fred nor Tom lived extremely long lives. The younger sons escaped this indoctrination.

Fred married a French girl. She was a Parisian he met during WW I when he was an officer in charge of horse procurement for the American Expeditionary Force. Tom, the second son, graduated from the Harvard Law School and married a high spirited girl named Marjorie who was very involved with the horses. Brown must have been kin to the Holberts politically, too. For just as Brown was defeated in his 1932 bid for the governorship of Minnesota, Tom Holbert met defeat in the Republican primary for governor down here in Iowa in 1936.

Jeannine and I visited the vacated old house just prior to the final sale of contents. It must have been in the late ‘60s. I can still see the huge railroad map of the United States and Southern Canada in what had been Tom’s office. It covered the entire wall in a not small room, and they had shipped draft stallions and to a lesser extent, mares, all over that map.

Earle Brown’s first champion Belgian mare was named Marjorie Holbert. She was a winner and champion at the Minnesota State Fair, off and on, from 1923 through 1927. But she was not in the first big batch he bought from Holbert which was in April, 1922. Marjorie came as part of another group in May, 1923.

Brown never stopped buying mares but after those first two big drafts from Holberts, the purchases were more likely to be limited to anywhere from a single animal to three or four. He would also have Holberts import for him now and then. It would be foolish to catalog all the mare purchases made by Brown from 1922 up to the late ‘30s–data for the sake of data. Suffice it to say that he sought two kinds: those that had won for others and those that could win for him, and sometimes, as in the case of Genese de Ergot and Pervenche, he had it both ways. As for bloodlines, they appeared to be of lesser consequence or maybe even interest. If there was ever a serious breeding program, I failed to see it. But to say that he bought the best mares he could buy from people like Eli Sprunger & Son, Clare, Michigan; Evert King, Chicago, Illinois; Ohio State University; Harry Stamp, Roachdale, Indiana; Michael Meyer & Sons, Elwood, Indiana; Michigan State College and C. G. Good & Son, Ogden, Iowa, as well as Holberts, is to say that he wanted to own the best.

As for the majority of those early purchases, both imported and American bred mares, they and their offspring were sold to Walter J. Hill, Wilsall, Montana, in 1925–two big batches, one in July and the other in December of that year, about 25 mares in all. Then in October of 1928, he sold a few more to Hill.

I presume it was considered the foundation for a great new stable in the Northern Rockies. And I’m also going to make a guess that Walter J. Hill was a son of James J. Hill, the mastermind behind the Northern Pacific Railroad – just as Earle Brown was the grandson of a financially famous and successful grandsire. Like Brown, and with pockets that were maybe even deeper, he was buying the cream of the crop wherever he could find them. And he had obviously discovered that while Montana may be a wonderful place to raise them, it was not the best place to market them. The great Belgian nursery in the Rockies didn’t last long.

In February of 1929, Hill shipped the whole lot back to Waterloo, Iowa–home of their National Belgian Show since 1919, and sold them at public auction. Charles Irvine, great auctioneer, Belgian breeder and past president of the Belgian Corporation, managed the sale. (Note that for the four days prior to the sale he could be reached at the President Hotel in Waterloo, rather than at Irvinedale Farm near Ankeny.) It was a logical thing to do. Waterloo was a mecca to Belgian breeders. There was adequate stabling for a couple hundred or more horses within a stone’s throw (by a small child) to a heated hippodrome. Hundreds of Belgian breeders had led their hopefuls through that door to the judging. There were good unloading facilities and a big “feed barn” just west of the barns. The great majority of Belgian breeders lived in the Midwest. When you cannot expect all those Mohammeds to go to the mountain–you bring the mountain to Mohammed. That is just what Hill did. If all those midwesterners won’t come to a ranch in Montana, bring the horses to the buyers. The fact that they were a good lot is indicated by their buyers: Gib Arnold took several to Quebec; Julius Porath & Son, Detroit, Michigan; Gluek Brewing Company, St. Paul, Minnesota (they were buying good mares like mad); Ternes Lumber Company, Detroit, Michigan; Holberts themselves and the newly established Boulder Bridge Farm, Excelsior, Minnesota. You can’t say the horses were piddled away. Nor can you say that they served as the genetic basis for anything at Brooklyn Farm.

I’m inclined to think Brown was at the sale—but not as a buyer. And you can surmise that the idea to hold a record breaking auction of 25 horses here, at this same place, the day after the National Show in the fall would be a jolly good thing to do. So, eight months later, this is just what he did.

I suspect there might have also been an element of “Anything Walter Hill, Charley Irvine and Fred Reppert, the best known auctioneer of purebred livestock in the nation at that time, can pull off, I can do better.” I don’t know, that is pure conjecture. But I note in Bud’s catalog from the Brown Sale in October that the auctioneer was Carey Jones from Chicago. Jones was no amateur, he had his following too, but Reppert was the Babe Ruth in that business then.

By the mid-1920s, Brown was firmly established as one of the great show stables in the country. Rather than recite those victories, I have chosen to picture many of them with captions concerning each one.

THE STALLIONS

The Brooklyn story is more one of mares than of sires. The parade of stallions included some great names but with no particular continuity. We have mentioned his first one, Bienfait De Louvignies, who didn’t stay there long. He was succeeded by Ermite de Or, purchased from Holbert in May, 1923, and sold back to Holbert in September, 1924. He wound up with the Rolfe, Iowa, Belgian Colt Club in 1927.

Then there was Orange, another import who went from Holbert to Brown in April, 1925, only to go west with a second shipment of mares to Walter J. Hill, Wilsall, Montana, in December of the same year, then back to Brown and thence to Evert King, wheeler-dealer from Chicago.

There was also the great Marquis de Hemel, purchased with a mare or two from Harry Stamp, Roachdale, Indiana. He lived at Browns for almost two whole years before going west to Hill–from January, 1924 to December, 1925. The herd sire proposition during the early ‘20s appeared to be sort of a here today, gone tomorrow proposition of highly regarded studs.

In December of 1927, he bought old Ergot from Charley Jones at Livermore, Iowa. The previous March he had bought a few mares from Jones, including Genese de Ergot, who he would show to four Chicago championships. In late 1929, he sold Ergot back to Jones. In 1928, he cut a wide swath at the shows with the two year old, Mendo de Ergot, a son of Ergot, that he acquired from Evert King in the fall of 1927. Sounds like a triple play–from Jones to King to Brown. That retired the side and he sold him to Holbert at the National Show in Waterloo in 1928.

If you are looking for a stallion with a long term contract, you just about have to go to the imported horse, Espoir d’Ath. Brought over by Holbert in September of 1927, he was sold to Brown in 1928. Brown showed him to his first grand championship at the Minnesota State Fair, transferred him back to Holbert in September, just long enough to win the three year old class for them at Waterloo, and then it was back to Brown right after the show where he stayed for five whole years. I think Brown must have liked that horse! That was a mighty long tenure for a stallion at Brooklyn Farm.

Espoir d’Ath was followed by another imported horse named Conde de Zerke. I don’t know what the herd sire situation was in the late ‘30s. By that time I suspect Brown’s level of interest in the thing had diminished. Eugene Schrader, longtime Belgian breeder from Minnesota who bought one of his original mares from Brown, said he thought Brown used the University stallions, Lowenstein and Renfrew toward the last, or maybe sons of them.

THE SHOW RECORD

The first show report I have from the Minnesota State Fair is 1924. Brown stood 1-2-3-4 in the aged mares; 1-3-4 in the three year olds and 1 and 4 in the two year olds. The two year old filly, Waynedale Marguerite, a filly purchased from S.H. Schmalle, Thornton, Iowa, was junior and grand. Marjorie Holbert and Holbert’s Marjorie de Voorde won the produce. He had four foals in the show, winning 1 and 2 on stud foals, and 1-2-4 in Mare and Foal. With the exception of the Schmalle mare, they had nearly all come from Holbert. Most folks would regard that as a pretty good start. The following year almost all those females were sold to Walter Hill in Montana, Ermite de Or had been sold back to Holbert and he had bought Orange–the horse that had beat him. So, impressive as it is, as the beginning of a breeder’s story it was almost a total washout.

The following year, 1925, he did a little less well at Minnesota, but his then favorite, Marjorie Holbert, did win her class again and made reserve senior champion. And in the groups he claimed the “Best Three Mares,” a class that he almost had a lease on during the rest of the decade. He also ventured a little further afield, going to Des Moines where even Marjorie and Marguerite had to settle for third in class, but Marjorie’s sister made it into second in the four year olds, as did Marquis de Hemel in the aged stallion class.

1926 was more of the same and he confined his showing to Minnesota. Orange made it into second among the aged stallions and Marjorie Holbert did likewise in the aged mares. And that was about it for Brown. I don’t think this is what he had in mind. One of the show strings that beat him solidly was that of C.E. Jones from Livermore, Iowa. By the following year he would own several of those Ergot mares, as well as old Ergot himself.

From 1927 up through 1933, Brown’s show string was about as close to invincible as one can get in this game–particularly with mares. About this same time (1926-27) a new cross town rival called Boulder Bridge Farm from Excelsior, Minnesota, would enter the fray. Boulder Bridge was owned by the Dayton family who also happened to own the greatest department store in Minneapolis. Their pockets were probably as deep as his. The Minnesota State Fair became a mini-world series, like the Yankees and Giants of old. Brown was not about to hunker down. He went on another buying binge similar to what the Yankees do. Both stables became regulars at the two greatest Belgian shows in the country, the National at Waterloo and the International at Chicago. Minnesota Belgians had not been particularly prominent in the winner’s circle prior to that time. For the next several years they would be very prominent.

In 1934 Brown skipped Iowa, managed to keep the mare championships away from Boulder Bridge at Minnesota, sprung a surprise at Waterloo with an imported stallion and did okay at Chicago, where he had to stand second to H. C. Horneman’s new stable down at Danville, Illinois, on two of his favorite group classes, Stallion and Three Mares and Best Three Mares owned by exhibitor. In 1935, for the first time since he plunged into the business, Brooklyn Farm did not show at any of his four favorite shows. But he had become an importer in his own right–that is one thing he hadn’t done–yet.

Thus in 1934, Brown went to Belgium himself. This was not a case where Tom Holbert was an order buyer for him. He tried the role of importer, bringing over nine head, all mares. There were five mature mares and four filly foals in the group. The following year he imported nine more for a total of 18 head. And so, in 1936, he took a batch of his own imports into the Minnesota State Fair. He did right well on them, first and reserve senior and grand on a four year old, and second in both the three year old and yearling classes. And true to his style, a couple of them had colts sucking and he won first and second in the stud foal class. That reserve champion mare, along with another one or two, was sold to Boulder Bridge Farm, his cross-town rival. That pretty well ended the show ring adventures with Belgians of Earle Brown.

But things were never dull at Brooklyn Farm, for about the same time that he was winding down the showing he was making some more huge sales to the West, just as he had done with most of the initial animals he bought from Holbert. Three buyers from the Golden West found Brooklyn Farm in the ‘30s and took a lot of the good young animals he had produced home with them. These were not sales of a good colt or a team of mares, they were volume sales. The buyers were Conrad K. Warren, Deer Lodge, Montana; Roy V. Morledge, Billings, Montana; and E.G. Stinson, Orange, California. It was a little like his sales to Hill in Montana about ten years before except that his horses were probably even better in this second migration west. Many were, in fact the toast of the breed.

The best way to handle the fantastic show record is with pictures of the critters themselves and that is what I’ve tried to do.

THE AUCTION AT WATERLOO IN 1929

The year is 1929 and Earle Brown, breed promoter and a director of the Belgian Corporation had another idea. A star-studded sale from his stable that would astonish the draft horse world, establish a public price for the breed exceeding that of other breeds and win new people to the Belgian horse. And maybe because he just felt like it. It was a sale of 25 head on the day following the Belgian judging at the National Show in Waterloo. Several, maybe most, of the consigned horses were also entered in the show.

Here are some quotes from his statement that appears at the beginning of the catalog:

“In announcing my first public auction of Belgian horses, it would not be overstating the case to say that this is the most valuable lot of animals that has been put in a sale in the country during the past decade.

“There have been attractive auctions where most of the animals were related but nowhere else in America has a Belgian breeder offered so many show horses by so many of the leading sires of the breed.

“Most of these outstanding show mares and tops of the breed have been bred to my imported grand champion herd stallion, Espoir d’Ath, and are going into this auction mainly because I want to have the satisfaction of boosting the breed by setting a record of value for Belgian horses at public sale. These mares have cost me a lot of money because I bought the best individuals of the breed regardless of cost.

“This sale should go down in history as containing more animals of ideal type than any auction of this breed ever held.

“If you will come to my sale you will be convinced, as I have been, of the superiority of the Belgian as a farm horse and of the profitability of owning some of these valuable animals.”

I think his motives were clear, and it appealed to the showman (not just of horses) in him. Take a look at the way it was promoted. A full page in Breeder’s Gazette in partnership with the Belgian Corporation. Brown was a director. His friend Fred Holbert had succeeded Charles Irvine, both from Iowa, as president in 1922. The annual meeting and election was held during International week in Chicago. Two years later, at the 1924 International, Earle Brown was elected to that board and served through 1937. The joint advertising was unusual but I think the other directors were comfortable with it. It was an impressive group of horses. A ripsnorting sale average would boost the breed. And , besides, a clear majority of them had sold horses to Brown. It looked like a good thing to do, with maybe not a good way to say no. Nobody knew the stock market was going to fall out of the 25th floor window just a couple weeks after the sale.

It was a great week for Belgian horses in Waterloo. R. B. Cooley’s (from Purdue) lengthy report in the Gazette was full of praise for the breed, the show, Brown’s sale and the visit of the Belgian Ambassador to the United States, His Excellency Prince Albert de Ligne. The Ambassador presented the Hynderick trophy for the best animal in the show to Brown on his grand champion mare, Range Line Marie and last of all the Prince himself conferred knighthood (as in the storybooks) on Mr. Ed Estel, the longtime secretary/manager at Waterloo and my predecessor in that job slot. I was hoping to get knighted before I left but Waterloo was allowing Clydesdales and Percherons to show there on my watch and maybe Belgium was short of Princes to send to livestock shows in the U.S. So I never got knighted.

The sale average was $600, now that is not bad in 1929 dollars. I don’t know if that met Brown’s expectations or not. In terms of distributing horses of quality to a cross section of people, it didn’t cut the mustard. One man, William Pearson Hamilton, proprietor of Thirlstane Ranch, Inc., Bar Harbor, Maine, bought 15 or 60% of them. The following year he recorded quite a few foals. Within three or four years tops he and his Thirlstane Ranch were history. The grand champion mare topped the sale at $1,850, going to Mr. Hamilton.

Other buyers were Julius Porath, Detroit, Michigan (Water Cress Belgians), Boulder Bridge Farm, Excelsior, Minnesota, C. G. Good & Son and Holbert Horse Importing Company from Ogden and Greeley, Iowa, respectively. I don’t think that sale did what he wanted it to do.

CONCLUSIONS

Brown was in no hurry to get married. He waited until he was 41. Her name was Gwen Foster and she accompanied him to Belgium on a horse buying trip, according to Linda Mainquist. Gwen Brown died in 1947 and Earle died in 1963. They had no children.

Gene Schrader, in his letter, states that after the Belgians were gone from Brooklyn Farm, Brown had a hitch of four Morgans which he drove on a stagecoach at the state fair, parades around town, etc. So the man’s love for horses never abated, but the terrible post WW II slump in draft horse values sunk his Belgian enterprise, as it did most of them.

In May of 1964, less than a year after Brown’s death, Jeannine and I came out with the very first Draft Horse Journal. On page seven of that issue is an interesting story sent in by the late Gordon Fickett, a Belgian breeder at that time from St. Paul and a good friend. It is a report of the final sale of horse equipment belonging to the late Earle Brown. Gordon said there was a huge crowd, estimated at from 7,500 to 10, 000 people there for the sale, including horsemen from several states. Top price for a vehicle was $1,250 for a Victorian Carriage. The six horse set of brass harness with wooden hames (no collars) sold for $1,050. I guess his last hurrah was a good one. Gordon thought the stuff sold very well.

Our friend, Gene Schrader, was also at that sale. Gene confirms that since Brown had no heirs, the estate went to the University. On that no heirs business, Gene says, “There were a lot of people named Brown at that final sale, many claiming to be relatives, but not offering any proof.”

I understand that place has been converted into a museum and tourist attraction. All the descriptions of the beautiful red and white buildings almost make you want to go there. It isn’t every old Roman (or Greek) that had their very own hippodrome to practice drive in. But then, their winters in Greece and Italy weren’t as harsh as Minnesota’s.

Post Script/February 28, 2002: Doc Neumann stopped by yesterday afternoon shortly after I had finally finished this thing and gotten Earle Brown out of my system. Doc inquired as to what I’d been doing besides babysitting a bunch of ewes and newborn lambs. So I both told him and showed him – Brown’s catalog from 1929 and a copy of the sale bill of that estate sale on Saturday, April 4, 1964. The farm machinery, including five tractors, and scads of machinery and tools had been sold on the preceding day. On the second day everything relating to horses, including his last three equines–all Quarter Horses, were sold. It was a huge list of horse related items... both light and heavy horses.

Much to our amazement Doc said, “I’ve got that brass show harness for six up, the old Brown show wagon and a bunch of the nicest horse blankets that were Browns that you ever saw. They are so nice Mary keeps them in a cedar chest.”

“Did you attend that sale?”

“No, didn’t even know about it until I read it in your magazine and that was after it was over.”

“Then where did you get all that Brown stuff?”

“From Fickett.”

“Oh.”

And that is absolutely the end of this story. No more PS’s accepted.

Post Script II/March 1, 2002: I retract that last statement. It was made in the heat of the moment, was not premeditated at all, and I beg the jury (that’s you–the readers) to ignore it.

The very night after Doc’s impromptu visit I came into the house after taking the dogs out for the night and Jeannine was on the phone, talking with Bud Sorensen.

Bud had another P. S. He said he found another old catalog of his dad’s, even older than the one he had left me. It was a catalog of Walter Hill’s sale, also at the Cattle Congress grounds, about eight months prior to Brown’s sale in that same place. And the lights went on in my head. Right then, I knew I’d have to go back and make revisions.

When I kept running into all those transfers from Hill to everybody in 1929, I had wondered just how a man in Montana could find so many buyers from so many places without a sale. Well, turns out a sale “back here,” rather than “out there” is just how he did it. So Detective Sorensen had turned up the evidence we needed to convict Walter Hill of holding a dispersal sale a long way from home. That, in turn sent me back to my 1929 Breeder’s Gazettes, where I found the ad for it that has been reproduced here.

So, once more, no more post scripts. And this time I really mean it.