Director Dean was owned by Hank Killdeer of Killdeer Ford in Chance Rapids. Hank Killdeer kept talking about selling Director Dean. I said, You don’t want to sell him, he’s going good.

Hank Killdeer says, I’m offered a good price for him.

Oh sure, I say. They seen him in the workouts. They seen him training like a bear. He’s stake horse material.

Hank says, Are you sure he’s good?

I say, He’s very good.

Hank says, Well, it’s kind of nice. It’s a lot of money they’re offering.

So I stick my neck out. I say, You do what you want, but come over tomorrow morning, I’ll have Billy Fargo come. You take a look at him. I think you’ll be sad if you sell him, I say.

So Hank Killdeer kept him. Director Dean ran third his first time. You need to give them a race just to get some air pumped into them — but he came in third. After that he ran out $130,000 as a two-year-old. He won the stakes.

Hank Killdeer says, I’m so glad. He says, I was ready to sell him for five thousand.

After that, Hank Killdeer of Killdeer Ford sold my dad a brand-new truck for five thousand dollars.

BOBBLE, BOBBLE

You spend hours and hours with a horse — you fall in love with them. They run their hearts out for you. You know when they’re hurting.

Janet M — she’d run like a house on fire, but she was getting sorer and sorer. I told the owner, We need to blister her and give her some time, bring her back next spring.

Oh no, the owner says, she wants to race — she’s better than ever.

You’re not there in the morning when she can’t even stand up, I said. So I refused. I said I wouldn’t train her no more.

The owner — Tricky Ricky people called him — he found somebody else to do it. Next time Janet M ran I was there, watching the race. Bobble, bobble — she busted her leg clean off.

I found Tricky Ricky afterwards. I said, You call yourself a horseman?

YOU CAN’T BLAME A MAN

Bob Bozeman was an owner who’d been a jockey. He weighed maybe 120 pounds soaking wet. His wife Charlene was a big woman with blonde, fluffy, weird hair like a movie star’s. They had two grown daughters and then they had a little gal, Bebe, who was an accident — Charlene got pregnant when she was forty-four years old. The squirt was spoiled, spoiled, spoiled. She was a little friend who’d help me sometimes with the horses.