Harness horse passion goes from generation to the next
Editor’s note: Linda Rhodes James, a graduate of Charleston High School and Eastern Illinois University now retired and living in Nampa, Idaho, submitted this story with Coles County Fair harness racing scheduled for next week.
BY LINDA RHODES JAMES
Sitting on my desk is a cherished trophy.
The base is made of hard, black plastic; the upper part depicts a standardbred pacer hitched to a sulky with a driver sitting in the seat. This part of the trophy was so intricately constructed that the reins going from the bit in the horse’s mouth to the driver’s hands are thin golden hued wires.
The sulky wheels have six spokes respectively and the hat on the driver’s head clearly shows a hand around the brim with a bow in front.
The horse’s ears are alert, his eyes are wide open, the nostrils are flared and his mouth is slightly agape.
Of significant interest is the inscription etched on the plaque attached to the base. It notes that this trophy was won in 1950 in Macomb by a horse named Edward Abbe in the outstanding time of two minutes 12 and 1/5 seconds and that the owner/driver was LA. “Bud” Rhodes.
He was my dad and I was 7 years old at the time.
I and the rest of the family, which consisted of Mom and my four siblings, were not in attendance at the race as we had yet to accompany Dad on the racing circuit during the summers.
When he returned to our home located in Allerton, Iowa and presented us the trophy I was so curious as to whether or not those sulky wheels would actually turn that the first chance I got I broke each of them away from they base.
Yes, they turned. I don’t know if this was the first racing trophy he had ever won but it is the oldest still remaining in the family.
In 1942 Dad, who was 31, in partnership with his father, Edward Rhodes, bought his first harness horse.
The following year they bought another horse even though they had not had much success with the first one.
Although Mom was less than elated with the purchase of a second horse, she didn’t complain because Dad continued to earn a decent living by farming.
After a few years my grandfather sold his share in the horses to Dad, became very religious and forever more shunned horse racing. This did not deter Dad, and his stable continued to grow.
The earliest I remember anything about his racing stable was when I was 5. The stable was located at the fairgrounds in Corydon, Iowa, about seven miles away from our home in Allerton and every Sunday evening the whole family would go to the fairgrounds with Dad to feed the horses and clean the stalls.
However, once we got to the fairgrounds I headed for the adjacent pond to do a little cat fishing. I don’t recall paying any attention to the horses until a few years later.
During most of the 40s, Dad did not have much luck with his stable of horses. However, he continued to put in the hours and by 1950 the horse business began to come together for him.
In 1950 he quit farming and began to haul lime and rock for various customers, which he did during the day, thereby keeping his evenings open for training horses.
The entire family had begun going with Dad during the summer racing circuit in 1952.
All of us were involved in the business by then with Mom managing the purse strings and making sure everything got done. We kids handled the grooming, harness washing, cooling out the horses after the races, grassing them in the evenings, putting on racing bandages or stable bandages, feeding and cleaning stalls.
During those years I often grumbled about not being able to stay in Allerton during the summers so I could be with friends. We raced at county fairs in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan leaving just after school was out in the spring and coming back home early in September.
When it was our respective senior year, we got to continue on the circuit with Dad through October.
I didn’t realize until much later how invaluable the upbringing was. I met people from all walks of life, some good and some not so good. I learned how to read people pretty well and how to interact effectively with them, lessons that have been so helpful to me throughout life.
In 1954 Dad had an outstanding trotter named Dr. Athlone. That year he won more starts, 19, than any other horse in the United States.
I remember sitting in the back seat of our ’49 Buick heading for the fair in a town in Michigan. As we neared the town the announcer on the local radio station continued to “talk up” the fair, which was featuring an exhibition race between the “great trotter” Dr. Athlone and a pacing horse.
I was so used to The Dr. winning that the announcements were just pretty much ho hum to me.
Pacers are usually faster than trotters. However, when the dust had settled on the exhibition race, Dr. Athlone had prevailed.
On the November 1960 day that John Kennedy was elected president, my parents with me and two siblings still in tow moved permanently to Charleston.
Dad not only trained and raced his own horses but he took in “pay” horses, too.
He often bought horses that were considered broken down or too high string to race. He was a genius at turning those horses into reliable, often times gifted, individuals.
His patience and kindness toward them always paid off.
Midwest Zinna, a horse that was considered so uncontrollable that she had to be led to the track with a log chain around her neck, was one of the first pay horses that he acquired after moving to Charleston. That chain that came with her never saw the light of day once Dad took her on.
In 1961 she held the world record for aged trotting mares for having won the most races on a half-mile track. None of those races required a log chain to get her to the track.
So many of Dad’s acquired rejects raced until they were 13 and were only retired because it was the rule.
The horses of today may be faster than any that Dad ever had but it was unheard of for them to race at the ripe old age of 13.
The 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s found Dad racing most of the time at pari-mutuel tracks which included Chicago; Columbus, Hamilton and Lebanon, Ohio; the Meadows in Pennsylvania; Detroit; and St. Louis.
He even shipped his stable by rail to Hollywood Park in California for one nice winter season.
The Dec. 1, 1973 fire that destroyed the horse barn at the Charleston fairgrounds almost brought Dad’s racing career to an end.
The huge barn that housed all the horses for every respective trainer – at least 40 stalls – was the only barn on site.
The barn and all of its contents, including all of the horses, were burned. With one exception, all of Dad’s horses and equipment including an outstanding 2-year-old trotter and his aged racing horses were lost.
While the fire was raging, Dad was racing a 2-year-old pacer we called Little Red at Cahokia Downs near St. Louis.
When he returned from Cahokia that night he found nothing but ashes and smoke. Little Red, a trunk with racing equipment and a sulky were all that was left.
Somehow, he was able to bring his business back and continue on with many good racing years.
In 1990 at the Charleston Fair, Dad drove his last race. He was 79.
He continued to train until one week before his death in August of 1993. He and Mom, who passed away in 2006, had spent 51 years of their lives as partners dedicated to his passion – harness horses.
But Dad’s memory still lives on in all of us and maybe especially in his granddaughter Jill James White. Jill, a graduate of Charleston High School and Eastern Illinois University with a sociology degree, inherited the same passion for the horse business that her granddad had.
She acquired so many of his “old-timer” training beliefs and methods, especially his patience and kindness toward horse.
Jill is licensed by the State of Illinois as a harness horse trainer and single handedly trains a stable of seven at Balmoral racetrack in Chicago.
As special horse in her stable Wazzup Can Man is owned by Dad’s grandson, 12-year-old Nathan White, who can be found assisting his mom in the paddock on race nights that don’t conflict with school.
So it is most fitting that on Tuesday during the 153rd continuous running of the Coles County Fair, Jill is to present a blanket in honor and memory of her grandparents bud and Mary Ellen Rhodes to the winner of one of the Illini trots.
