Buckeye Side Wheelers & Keystone Tail Sitters: Reflections on Harness Racing’s Glory Days. By Ralph Jones as told to Kimberly Rinker. 64 pages. $9.95 @ The Harness Racing Museum.
By Ralph
Jones
Harness Racing
lifer, Ralph Jones, who has been to every Little Brown Jug since 1947, recently
published a memoir—as told to Kimberly Rinker—about the various roles he played
during “Harness Racing’s Glory Days.” Rinker notes in her Foreword that the 86-year-old
Ohio native has served “as a judge, as Deputy Executive Secretary for the
Pennsylvania Harness Racing Commission, and as a harness racing journalist,
publicist and photographer.” He gives us a personal survey of his eighty years around
the sport.
Mr. Jones was
introduced to racing at the country fairs around his native Delaware County as
a small child. At that time it was pretty much a free-for-all out on the track
as there were no cameras and the judges were generally in no position to catch
a driver cutting another’s tires off. Fellow Buckeye Steve Phillips didn’t introduced
the mobile starting gate at Roosevelt Raceway until 1946 so Ralph spent his youth
tolerating the helter-skelter running starts that were the norm back then. Many
of the starts were handicapped, and sometimes handicap barriers were used,
while at others the horses scored out Indian-file. Ralph’s reminiscences about
the various games played by the drivers in an effort to gain an edge and the countervailing
measures the judges employed to insure a fair start are very amusing.
Ralph spent
a lot of time at the Delaware track around the time it was built in 1939. He
got to watch great horses like Adios, Nibble Hanover, King’s Counsel and Little
Pat. Eddie Cobb, Dick Buxton and Gene Reigle were regulars. World War II kept
Jones from the first Jug, won by Ensign Hanover in 1946 for Curly Smart, but he
hasn’t missed one since.
The book is
full of anecdotes culled from Jones’s seven year stint working for Bowman Brown
at The Harness Horse, another seven
years as Publicity Director at Hempt Farms and fifteen years with the
Pennsylvania Harness Racing Fair Commission. Many pertain to horses but those
involving people always stress family connections: Gene Sears, his son Jay and
grandson Brian; Roy Reigle, his son Gene and grandson Bruce; Billy Haughton and
son Peter. He does the same with regard to the bloodlines of the horses he brings
up. Harness racing is all about the bonds formed between people and horses for
Ralph Jones. One of his prized possessions is a stopwatch given to him as a
young man by Sep Palin, the trainer-driver of Greyhound.
In a chapter
on speed, he marvels at how fast today’s horses go. He tells Rinker, “Of course
back then if you had a horse that could go in 2:10, you had a world beater….If
you could beat 2:20 you had a pretty decent trotter or pacer.” Later on he
shakes his head over Rock N Roll Heaven’s twin :49.2 heats at Delaware.
The Chapter
on “The Little Brown Jug: Through the Years” offers his recollection of Knight
Dream, Tar Heel, Adios Harry, Bret Hanover, Hot Hitter and numerous other Jug
winners. Many of these call up his personal relationships with owners, drivers
and trainers. His observations on these colts, and a filly, and the
circumstances of their triumphs are informative and entertaining. There is also
quite a bit about the Red Mile and some of the exceptional performances he witnessed
there. Pictures from Mr. Jones own collection as well as the USTA archives are
interspersed throughout the book. If you approach harness racing from a long
term perspective you might want to check it out.
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