50 Years Ago
Late Spring/Early Summer 1954
by Maurice Telleen
published in The Draft Horse Journal, Summer 2004

(From breed publications and general news sources of the period)

I’m going to open this up with an item from the world of music. On April 4, 1954, the curtain came down on the magnificent career of Arturo Tuscanini when he conducted, for the last time, the NBC Symphony Orchestra in an all-Wagnerian program. The fact that this was his swan song was kept secret until after the performance. Toscanini was 87 years old and had requested that his retirement be kept secret until after the concert. He had been wielding the baton since one night in Brazil in 1886. The Italian Opera Company was on tour in South America and Arturo, a 19-year-old cellist at the time, mounted the podium to lead from memory, the entire performance of the opera, “Aida.”

Toscanini relinquished the baton because “his memory was not what it once was.” I can relate to that, even though my baton has been a combination of pitchforks and typewriters. But the real reason I want to mention this is a quote from Mark Twain that I have wanted to use for years. The fact that Toscanini’s last concert was made up entirely of Wagner’s music affords me the opportunity. I may never get another.

Personally, I hate Wagnerian operas and find nothing much to like about the man himself. His ideas of Teutonic or German superiority shaped the music which, in part, fueled the fantasies and insanities of Adolf Hitler. I associate Wagner with the Third Reich.

And now, finally, for that priceless quote from Mark Twain (Sam Clemens) that I have been holding in reserve for so long. Twain shared my dislike for Wagner. He once said ”Wagner’s music is not as bad as it sounds.” That was very generous. Tom Sawyer couldn’t have said it any better himself.

As long as we started this column in Brazil, that great soybean growing nation, we may as well stay in South America for a few paragraphs.

Juan Perot was re-elected president of Argentina. He was a bully and a bum. After the election, he arrested most of the opposition leaders and threw them in jail.

Amazingly enough, the opposition had run a close second - in a country where it was a crime to speak disrespectfully about Peron. How can you even mount a campaign if it is a crime to speak disrespectfully of the other side? With the other side defining what is disrespectful.

I suspect Peron liked Wagnerian music.

As for the rest of the globe - both sides were making all the usual noises of the 1950s - most of them disrespectful. In the Soviet Union, Nikita Krushchev was working his way to the top of that heap. Our Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, was voicing his concern that if the French failed in Vietnam that all of Indochina would “fall like collapsing dominoes.” I think he was the author of the collapsing domino theory.

On May 8, the communist siege of Dien Bien Phu ended in a bloody defeat for the French. This was not simply another defeat. France had lost that war. Two months later they signed a truce splitting Vietnam into a north and south on the 17th parallel. Shades of Korea with its 38th parallel...and it would prove to be another Korea in some respects.

In another game of dominoes, the British were facing a rebellion in Kenya that would not go away. The British response was saturation bombings of the jungle strongholds of the Mau-Mau. As General Erskine, leader of the British troops in Kenya, vowed to “hit these people like they’ve never been hit before.” But the saturation bombings of a jungle did not have the same effect as the saturation bombings of European cities in WW II. The casualties were probably as great on the monkeys, snakes and birds as on the insurgents. The old colonial order was under attack in both Africa and Asia. No amount of Wagnerian music would change that.

And down in Central America, in both Nicaragua and Guatemala, the same old, same old struggles were going on. Put in those terms, the spring and summer of 1954 sounds like nothing was going right for us. But a good many things were. And for most of us, you still went to work in the morning, put in a crop, milked the cows and went to church on Sunday - at least, now and then. I suppose if you were a news junkie, you were at serious risk of a nervous breakdown. But most of us weren’t headline junkies.

In living rooms and dens all across America there was a different sort of invasion taking place. Color television had arrived for the masses. On April 1, 1954, Westinghouse cut the retail price of its little 12-1/2 inch screen TV sets from $1,295 to $1,110. They had been the first to market color TV and had found their price was discouraging buyers. That decision was, I’m sure, helped along by the fact that RCA was fixing to come out with their 15 inch version for a measly $1,000. Still too high - much too high. Screens larger than 15 inches were “not planned at the time.” That “planning” probably survived for about two weeks. Or at least until they sold a lot more of the small screens.

On May 6, Roger Bannister, an Oxford medical student, became the first of us two-legged types to run the mile in less than four minutes. That didn’t “make up” for Kenya and the fact that Brittania no longer ruled the waves, but I’m sure it gave our British cousins a bit of a lift. Now we had to find one among us who could do it even faster.

But maybe the most significant single thing that happened during that period took place on May 17, 1954, when the United States Supreme Court, with a unanimous decision, ordered our public schools integrated by setting aside the “separate but equal doctrine” handed down by an earlier court in 1896. At the time there were about 8.5 million Caucasian kids and 2.5 million African-Americans attending segregated schools. Of course, saying so didn’t make it so. It was a first step in what would be a long and disputatious journey.

It would make and break a lot of political careers, particularly in the South. Senator Eastland from Mississippi said, “The South will not abide by nor obey this legislative decision by a political court.” That has a very “today” sound to it with “activist judges.” Now, pray tell me how any court or judge can be completely neutral or without bias or opinion on matters political, economic or social. Sounds almost like brain dead, doesn’t it?

And with that I’m ready to go to the Belgian and Percheron publications of that place in time.

The Fall 1954 Percheron Notes was 20% larger than the Spring issue, going from 8 pages to 10. Don’t scoff. Those breed associations were struggling for their very lives and there are times when ten pages comes a lot harder than forty, or more.

A dependable feature in those Notes was something called “Our Percheron Family.” It was a profile of a couple, a family or an extended family that were breeding Percherons and making a significant contribution to the breed. It was a very good idea and a nice feature, particularly in those lean times when the very future of the draft breeds was in serious doubt. It was a little like a small community of loyalists stretched tissue-thin across the whole country. It was a means of introducing like-minded community members to one another.

In the Fall 1954 issue, it was Mr. and Mrs. Val Bast and their three sons; Ray, Art and Rollie, from Wisconsin. Ray had just been elected to the Percheron board, a position he would hold for many years, serving as president for a good bit of that time.

The firm name was Val Bast & Sons. They bought their first registered Percherons in 1934 and ‘35. They were plain vanilla Wisconsin dairy farmers so they didn’t spend a fortune on Percherons. But they made up for that with good judgement and became regular exhibitors at the Wisconsin State Fair, the Washington County Fair and the Waukesha Dairy Show. As time went on they also showed at the Minnesota and Indiana State Fairs, Waterloo and the National at the Ohio State Fair and even a couple of those immediate post-war Internationals in Chicago.

In that article, they credit a stallion named Darius with much of their early success. He was a son of Cy Laet, an International grand champion. He was purchased in 1937 from Frank C. Rathje, a Chicago banker with a farm at Palatine, Illinois.

Interestingly enough, at the time of this publication (1954), Ray was standing another stallion purchased from Rathje. He was then 15-years-old, snow white and had been grand champion for Ray at the 1953 Wisconsin State Fair. His name was Silver Dawn Koncarno. More on him under his picture.

Another famous stallion, this one owned by brother Art, was Maverick, a three time grand champion at the National Show in Ohio in the 1970s. So both those sons stuck with their own breeding plans and produced a lot of champions as well as just plain useful horses for the remainder of their lives. And their children are still interested and involved with the breed.

That leaves only Rollie, the youngest son out of this commentary. Well, Rollie started out like his brothers with his own Percherons, but got sidetracked. He got interested in big yellow buses and started a bus company. Then, he did something even more out of character. He switched to Clydesdales. His son, Ron, was draft horse superintendent at the Wisconsin fair for a long time. They are all fine fellows - whether you needed a horse (black, grey or bay) or a yellow bus - they could fix you up.

The bulk of that issue was made up of show results. Interestingly enough, it carried the winnings of the sale horses at the Indiana Spring Stallion Show & Sale - but not the prices or list of buyers of the eighteen registered horses that went through the sale. There was simply no mention of prices in either the Percheron Notes or the Belgian Review. Prices were, like, taboo.

The death of the famous Percheron stallion, Don Again, at the the age of 23 was noted. Bred by G.A. Dix, Delaware, Ohio, in 1931 and sold to Lynnwood Farm, Carmel, Indiana, in 1936 where he was the main herd sire for most of his life. He was a Premier Sire of the breed four different years. He died at Lynnwood.

Over in the Belgian camp things were a little bit livelier, but the problems facing both breeds were the same. Drafters were few and getting fewer, but so were farmers as agriculture continued to consolidate and mechanize, although the mass exodus off the land was not yet so evident. The dribble had not yet turned into a torrent.

Since Ray Bast provided us with an excuse to picture the champion Percheron stallion at the 1941 International, we will now find an excuse to picture his Belgian counterpart. I think the similarity in type of these two breed champions from 1941 is striking.

Here is Silver Dawn Koncarno as he looked as a 3-year-old when he was grand champion at the International. He was the surprise of the show. He had been only recently purchased by Frank Rathje and his manager, Paul C.H. Engler, from his breeder, Guy E. West of Kokomo, Indiana. West had shown him as a yearling, a 2-year-old and 3-year-old at the Indiana State Fair, but never placed higher than third. He had been worked in harness as both a 2 and 3-year-old and had the collar marks to show it. This horse bred well for Rathje, siring a couple of winning “gets” in those immediate post-war Internationals. I don’t know when Ray Bast bought him, probably about that time, and he was still fresh enough to be grand champion for Bast at the 1953 Wisconsin State Fair–a 15-year-old, snow white grand champion.	Maverick, one of the stallions that put Art Bast & family in the front row. Foaled in 1971, Maverick was grand champion at the National Percheron Show in Ohio in 1974, ‘75, ‘76 and ‘77. He was bred by Bob Eschrich, Jr., Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Bob was another Wisconsin breeder who kept the lamps burning in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Maverick was sired by Drake Farms Chief, one of the breed saving sires of that period. His owner, Sherman Read from Michigan, was very generous with the horse and Art got several offspring off of him before he bought his son, Maverick.
Having run a picture of the grand champion Percheron stallion at Chicago in 1941, I suppose we should give the Belgians equal space. This is Kenfleur’s Jay Farceur, who as a 2-year-old, dethroned his own sire as grand champion. His sire, Jay Farceur, had been three times the champion in Chicago. But in 1941 this 2-year-old was the junior and grand champion, and his dad, old Jay, had to be satisfied with senior and reserve grand. Another son of old Jay won the yearling stallion class and went on to be reserve junior champion. His name was Jan Farceur. He went on to be a great breeding horse as well. This 2-year-old was owned by Ohio State University. Ohio State and Cornell were the only colleges showing drafters at that last pre-WW II Chicago show. By 1954, Kenfleur’s Jay Farceur was owned by Lawrence L. Kramer from Centralia, Missouri. He had gathered quite a few of the jewels of the breed together at that time.

We will carry a number of photos of the Belgian winners from 1954 in the next 50 Years Ago column. They had considerably more shows in that year to look forward to than the Percherons. The Clydes had only a handful of shows and the Shires and Suffolks had none.

Things being what they were in 1954, draft horse-wise, I think it is reasonable to close the column with a funeral and a little story.

Bob Porteous died late that summer. He was the horseman that Harold Clark followed at Meadow Brook. He had come to this country from Scotland, that land of great stockmen, as a young man. Since he no doubt came over with a load of Clydes, he stayed on for years, first at Brookside in Indiana, and later with Green Meadow Farms in Massachusetts–both breeders of Clydesdales. He was later with Meadow Brook Belgians for a number of years. Following that he wound up his working life with Polled Hereford herds in Kentucky and Ohio.

His death came, however, in Wisconsin. He was doing what old horsemen do. He had gone to visit an old friend - Mr. Peter Templeton, a distinguished Percheron breeder from Evansville, Wisconsin. So I presume they told each other many things they both already knew. While there he fell ill and was taken to the hospital for examination. He was waiting in his room, up and about, when he died suddenly. Seems as though Mr. Porteous had just had enough.

For some reason this reminds me of a different, but similar in some ways, story. In the early ‘60s I was a young secretary/manager of the Dairy Cattle Congress in Waterloo. The board president was “Doc” Miller, a great guy in every way who treated me so well...almost like a son at times. He had played football at the University of Iowa in the early ‘20s, but rarely talked about it. One weekend in October he called me at home saying that his wife had something else to do and asked if I wished to use her ticket to go with him to Iowa City for the Notre Dame game. They had season tickets about half way up on the 50 yard line. It took me all of two seconds to say “yes.” Best seats I had ever had–and in the most unusual company. It seems about half of his teammates from 1924 (or thereabouts) also had season tickets right there. Those old jocks sat there and replayed “their game” with Notre Dame. It was quite a gathering including Duke Slater, an African-American (yes, he was wearing the black and gold at Iowa in the ‘20s), who went on to law school and by that time was a judge in Chicago. I think he had also been an All-American - or perhaps “should have been.”

I believe Notre Dame beat Iowa that afternoon - but who can remember everything, or wants to. For it was hard to keep track of two games at once - played some 40 years apart.

By the time we headed for home it was dusk. We hit a deer. I think it was about midway in the third quarter. Damage to the car was minimal so we proceeded north. I don’t know how the deer made out.

As you may have guessed, 50 Years Ago is the most difficult of these 75-50-25 years ago columns. Simply because the draft horse business was so discouraging in the 1950s.