Interview with Henry White, September 27, 2007

SMITH: This is Kim Lady Smith, recording, and today is--

WHITE: --27th of September--

SMITH: --September 27, 2007 at the Thoroughbred Club in Lexington interviewing Henry White for the Horse Industry in Kentucky Oral History Project at the University of Kentucky. Okay--Mr. White I ask this, this is the first question I ask everybody and that's to tell me your full name and when and where you were born.

WHITE: My full name is Henry Dulin D-U-L-I-N, Henry Dulin White. I 00:01:00always went by Henry D.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: I was born in Hopkinsville, September the 27, 1927.

SMITH: 1927. Okay.

WHITE: I'm eighty today.

SMITH: Oh.

WHITE: Uh, ----------(??) My father at that time was working for a man called Lucien Mosley. And uh he was living on his father's place. My grandfather lived in Hopkinsville. And uh, I came up here in 19, November of 1928. Daddy and mother moved up here from Hopkinsville.

SMITH: Let's talk about your dad, and your family a little bit. Now, um, what was your Dad's uh, name and uh--

WHITE: He went by the name of, he was called Cy White. Everybody knew him as Cy White. His name was Cyrus.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And, uh, he and mother moved up here from Hopkinsville in '28, the fall of '28. I was eleven months old when they moved up here. We 00:02:00moved out on the Russell Cave Pike to a farm that was called Elsmeade. It's now part of Sahalee and the church has part of it and some lady from New York's got part of it, but it was a good farm. That farm produced a lot of good stake horses for my father.

SMITH: Okay, now, uh, your grandfather--

WHITE: --yeah--

SMITH: --was in the horse business. Is that your father's?

WHITE: My grandfather was John H. White.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: That's where the Henry came from. His name was John Henry White.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And, he was originally in the pony business. He sold his first Thoroughbred in 1898.

SMITH: Hmm.

WHITE: And I think he sold it at the Fasig-Tipton, but those people down there at Hopkinsville used to ship horses by cattle car to Saratoga.

SMITH: Really? Now, Hopkinsville um, Okay, you said you said your dad 00:03:00was in the pony, your grandfather was in the pony business to begin with and then he got into Thoroughbreds?

WHITE: Yeah, he was a, had a few trotters first then got into Thoroughbreds seriously. And, uh, he had a place down there he called Herbert's Stud.

SMITH: Herbert's Stud, okay.

WHITE: Yeah, and uh, he was a friend of a lot of good horsemen. He was a friend of John Madden's.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And, uh--

SMITH: --your grandfather or your father?

WHITE: My grandfather was. And Preston and I laugh about that from time to time. And, uh I'm backing up a little bit--

SMITH: --that's okay--

WHITE: --to just give you an idea. He, uh, and my uncle was George White, George C. White. He was mainly a trainer.

SMITH: Okay, now, he was your brother's your father's brother?

WHITE: Yeah, he was my uncle.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And he lived, uh, after he got started, he lived in Nashville, Tennessee. At that time there was train, there was a pretty good training track down there. He trained down there and then went to the races. He pretty much raced in central like he raced at Keeneland. 00:04:00He raced at Churchill Downs. Then he went to, he'd go to New York, he liked, I mean not New York, he'd go to Jersey. He liked Monmouth, and he went to Monmouth every Sunday, every summer. And then they'd start having, start having a little different thing there so then he went to Detroit.

SMITH: Okay. Now, both he and your father, were they raised on the farm around horses? Is that where they learned?

WHITE: Uh-huh, yeah. They were, they were raised at Hopkinsville.

SMITH: Okay. Ok. Now, uh, did they have other siblings?

WHITE: Have other siblings? My father, I have a sister, and uh, she was born at Elsmeade.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And, fact is, just to give you a little quick history, we moved to Elsmeade in 1928.

SMITH: Uh-huh.

WHITE: He lived there until 1950, I think it was. He moved to town. 00:05:00That was about the time I was getting out of the Air Force. And, uh, Kathy and I got married in '56. Lived at Elsmeade for, until 1974.

SMITH: Oh, okay.

WHITE: In '74 we moved to the right hand side, to Plum Lane Farm.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: See, I was raised on the left hand side of the Russell Cave Pike going north, and thirty-five, forty years later I moved to the right hand side where I lived until they sold the farm in November of '02. That's when I moved to town. That's when I bought my first house.

SMITH: '02. Okay. Okay. Well, uh, I'm going to back up a little bit here to, to your father but, first explain to me, okay, he came up here to work at Elsmeade, but tell me, what was his relationship with Plum Lane?

WHITE: Okay. His relationship came with Plum Lane later, because Plum 00:06:00Lane belonged to Clarence LeBus. And he owned Plum Lane. And, uh--

SMITH: --now, was it close to, it was just across the street from--

WHITE: --right across the road. You know where the Jot'em Down Store is -- out on Russell Cave Pike? You go out there and that's a four way stop? Plum Lane is on the right hand side of Russell Cave and Elsmeade is on the left hand side of Russell Cave.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: We lived back on the hill, back of the Jot'em Down Store.

SMITH: Oh, okay. Now, who owned Elsmeade?

WHITE: Elsmeade belonged to a man named, uh, Skain, John Skain, and his brother owned Elsmeade. And Mr. Skein was the president of, of First National Bank.

SMITH: Okay. Okay. So, he hired your father?

WHITE: No.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: Mr., my, the man that brought my father to Lexington, was Max Hirsch. And he had a client by the name of Morton L. Schwartz.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And Mr. Schwartz wanted a farm manager. And uh, Max Hirsch knew my father through my grandfather. And they brought daddy up to run Elsmeade.

SMITH: Now, how old was your dad about that time?

WHITE: Daddy was a foal of 19, 80, 1998 I think it was.

SMITH: 1898.

WHITE: 1898.

SMITH: Okay, Okay, All right, so, he was pretty young?

WHITE: Yeah.

SMITH: How, uh, how did he develop a reputation at that point, at that young from Hopkinsville to here?

WHITE: Working with, working with my grandfather and, uh, Lucien Moseley, and then there was another, there was the Morgans were down there. They raised quite a bit of horses. Mr. Mosley had a farm right in Hopkinsville.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And, uh, they used to get those horses ready and daddy'd help 00:08:00because of the pony business that's why they were good on fitting horses.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And then they used to ship their horses at that time, most of the times they shipped back early, and I'm talking about 1900's before the, before the war and everything like that. They used to ship those horses to Saratoga, and they sold them in Saratoga. Big price for a yearling at that time was fifteen, eighteen hundred dollars.

SMITH: Oh, my. Times have changed. Now, Hopkinsville was a pretty active area in the Thoroughbred industry at that time?

WHITE: Uh, huh. Quite a few, quite a few farms down there at that time.

There was the Garnetts, the Moseleys, the Morgans, uh, a guy named Ben White, was no kin to us, but he was into Thoroughbreds some, but he was primarily a Quarter Horse man.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And there, the other thing was down there, and I can't give you any names right quick. There were quite a few, oh, was Miss Clyde Smith. Who was a good friend of uh, of uh, Bob Courtney's.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: She, he had a farm right in Hopkinsville.

SMITH: Oh, Okay. Gee. So what happened to all those farms?

WHITE: Uh, the biggest thing happened to them, the owners died off and things like that. And then, uh, during the Depression a lot of them couldn't keep their horses up, and they just got rid of their horses. And then after the war they got back pretty good. All or most of their activity was after the first World War.

SMITH: Okay. What happened to your grandfather's farm?

WHITE: Uh, it went to my Uncle George--

SMITH: --okay--

WHITE: --or he made arrangements to buy it from the estate, I think. And, uh, he lived in Nashville, but he kept, and it was called Herbert's Stud. And uh, you will find some ads around for Herbert's 00:10:00Stud, and that was my grandfather, John H. White.

SMITH: Okay. Did you know your grandfather very well?

WHITE: Yeah quite well. He, uh, he died while I was in the Air Force, he died in 1955,

SMITH: Oh, just before your father.

WHITE: 'Bout the same time.

SMITH: Yeah.

WHITE: See my father died in '56. See, my father was only fifty-six when he died. Heart attack. If they'd had open heart surgery, he'd probably still been around here straightening everybody out.

SMITH: (laughs) Uh, now, your father's interest in horses led him into being a farm manager.

WHITE: Right.

SMITH: What, what was it that he enjoyed about working with horses?

WHITE: He, he just enjoyed horses like most of us in the White family did. I start, I started, actually, I was thirteen when I had first, my first mare, barn with five or six mares in it to take care of. And, uh, he, uh, he was a good horseman, because he'd worked with his grand, 00:11:00with his father.

SMITH: Uh, huh.

WHITE: John H. White was a good horseman. He started out being an excellent pony man. Then he became a Thoroughbred man. He got lucky and he raised a horse that was my Uncle George trained called Diamond Dick. Diamond Dick was named after his champion show pony.

SMITH: Oh. Huh.

WHITE: So that's, how, how that came about.

SMITH: So did your, um, grandfather, did he race horses?

WHITE: Race? He used to, he and Uncle George, we all did when I, when I was racing horses, we used to trade horses off. And we'd go in business with Uncle George. And Uncle George would take the horses to the track. And he usually would try to keep them and develop them. And if he didn't keep them and develop them, he'd, he'd sell them as he went along. And he'd always had, he'd leave Nashville with fifteen 00:12:00to twenty horses.

SMITH: Huh.

WHITE: And then he'd start his, when I was with him, we went up Nashville. We went from Nashville, we went to Detroit. That's when the DRC was open. We raced Detroit all summer. In the fall, we came back. We went to Nashville. We left Nashville with twenty-six or twenty-eight horses. And when we got back to Nashville in October, we had one pony and six horses left. We'd shot one, because he broke his leg, and we sold all the rest of them.

SMITH: Gee. So that was the plan. That was how it worked?

WHITE: Yeah.

SMITH: Hm. Hm.

WHITE: And then he'd take his horses and race at Churchill Downs. Soon as Churchill Downs was over, well, he'd come to Keeneland, and we'd go from Keeneland to Churchill Downs, and we'd ship from Churchill Downs down to Nashville and Hopkinsville. We turned all the old horses out. The two and three olds, I mean the three, two year olds, three year olds, four year olds we had left. He had, he always tried to develop 00:13:00fillies. He got lucky. They bred to Princequillo. When Princequillo came to stud he stood for five hundred dollars.

SMITH: Gee.

WHITE: And he was down at Hancocks. Now, he was also an old buddy from Saratoga of Mr. Hancock.

SMITH: Your

WHITE: Grandfather.

SMITH: Your grandfather was. Okay.

WHITE: My grandfather. And he, daddy, of course, that's how he got to know Mr. Hancock, too.

SMITH: Okay. Now, that would be Bull Hancock's father, right? Was that Arthur?

WHITE: Bull? Yeah.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: Yeah. That was Arthur Hancock's grandfather.

SMITH: Okay. Okay. Um, so it sounds like, uh, your grandfather was a pretty important influence on--

WHITE: --oh, yeah, the whole thing--

SMITH: the whole family.

WHITE: Yeah.

SMITH: Uh, did he, was he someone that you worked with much?

WHITE: I went, I worked for him one summer. He 'bout killed me one summer. I hated a baler worse than anything in the world, but I helped 00:14:00bale a lota. Course, now, at that time they weren't baling hay.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: They had hay mounds. Suppose they cut the hay, let it cure, pick it up, bring it in, and put it in the big barn, and then you'd fish that hay out of there to feed the stock with. You had, we had two big hay barns, and that would carry the horses all winter. And he had barns, and he had places, he had straw, and produced his own straw. And, uh, he didn't produce a lot of his own horse feed. And he always had a few cattle around. Always had a bunch of damn geese around. (Smith laughs). Always had a bunch of guineas around. He liked guineas, because guineas were the best watchdog you ever had.

SMITH: Oh, really?

WHITE: Aw, anything strange'd show up, they'd jump up on the fence and go to hollering. And you could hear 'em at the house. (laughs)

SMITH: So, he had a pretty big operation?

WHITE: Yeah.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: He lived right on the outskirts of Hop-, actually he lived in a place called Cadiz, Kentucky.

SMITH: Yeah, I know where that is.

WHITE: He lived at Cadiz.

SMITH: Okay. Um, so, your brother, your father came up to Lexington to work as a farm manager.

WHITE: Yeah.

SMITH: Now, was he older than George?

WHITE: Um, hum. Daddy was, daddy was the oldest. Then we had an outlaw brother Uncle called Jack White, and then George White was the baby.

SMITH: Okay. Did Jack White not get involved in horses at all?

WHITE: Uh, only to bet on them.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: (laughs) He was a handicapper.

SMITH: All right. (laughs)

WHITE: He was a crap shooter, handicapper, and a card dealer.

SMITH: Okay. So, he had fun.

WHITE: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, and loved to fish. I used to go fishing with him. We always went fishing together when we were up there with the horses. And one thing Uncle George would always let me off to go fishing, 'cause he knew when Jack and I came back that we'd have plenty enough fish, and we'd have a big fish supper.

SMITH: Oh, now, where did he live, Jack.

WHITE: Jack lived in Detroit.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: He, that's where they got to know the Grossfields and Grissons 00:16:00and all those people that were big in the horse business then. And Mr. Bishop was at that time, uh, I said Bishop, uh, oh, wait a minute, I'm having trouble pulling the name up. Aw. His grandson, his son, is a trainer at the present time in California. And I'll think of it in a minute.

SMITH: Well, let's, uh, let's talk a little bit about George and then we'll get back to your dad.

WHITE: All right.

SMITH: So, when did he start training horses? Can you remember about what time period?

WHITE: He, he was training horses probably, aw, I'll have to think about the year on that, because he went to Virginia and trained for Milky Way Farm.

SMITH: Okay. I've heard of that.

WHITE: In Virginia, and uh, then uh, they, they did pretty well. They raced around, mainly around Maryland and uh Jersey, occasionally went 00:17:00to New York. And they were mainly developed horses and sold them. They didn't go to the sale with anything much. But they'd go through and weed out all the yearlings they didn't want. Uncle George would train 'em, break 'em in Virginia, and then they'd start running in Maryland. And they was racing then in Virginia, and West Virginia, and New Jersey and Pennsylvania, all up through that part of the country.

SMITH: Okay. So, uh, was he a trainer all his life?

WHITE: Primarily.

SMITH: Was he pretty successful? Would you consider?

WHITE: Yeah. He had a lot of well, I mentioned Diamond Dick.

SMITH: Yeah.

WHITE: He developed that horse Diamond Dick, and then they took him to stud, and he developed quite a few horses and most of his, a lot of his good horses with that.

He had a good horse with Mr. Scott called War Trouble. And, that was Harrie B. Scott. That's C. Scott's out here father. When, that's 00:18:00when Mr. Scott was the manager of uh, one of the managers of Man o' War Farm.

SMITH: Faraway Farm.

WHITE: Faraway Farm. Right.

SMITH: I tell you, your history covers a lot of, brings up a lot of names that I hear about. Who, uh, who were some of the clients for George.

WHITE: Uh, George had a client called Mr. Rose, Mr. Rose from Detroit, and he was a great supporter of Uncle George. He always called him Bubby Rose, and Buddy Rose always had six or eight horses in training. And these are horses that usually, that were bred by Mr., by uh, Papa John, my grandfather.

SMITH: Oh, is that what you called him?

WHITE: They were bred by Papa John and Uncle George would buy the horses for Mr. Rose, and they, well, to give you an idea of the year, one of the years I was with him in Detroit, he took us twenty-eight horses up there. We won four stakes and twenty-nine races. And we went up there 00:19:00with twenty-six horses and we came home with a pony and five horses, two of which were Princequillo fillies.

SMITH: Oh, okay.

WHITE: that we kept and won stakes with both of them.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: One was, one was a three year old and one was a four year old. Then we raced them next year as a four year old and five year old. One of them, Princess Trace, just loved the mud. Every time it'd get muddy he just run Princess Trace about every six days and she'd win. And, uh, Trip Lightly was the other one, and she turned out to be the best broodmare of the group.

SMITH: Now, you said he, he ran a lot of fillies? Is that--

WHITE: --uh, huh. He was a good filly trainer.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: He was a good filly trainer. He, uh, I'm sitting here trying to come up with some names. Uh, he had a lovely wife, and they had one daughter. And they always stayed down the edge of Detroit at the same apartment house. And I can't remember the name of it, but we always, 00:20:00he always stayed there. We always had somewhere to go to eat. Course one of our favorite habits in the White family was eating.

SMITH: (laughs) So he'd move around a lot with his family. Did they travel with him?

WHITE: Uh-huh. Soon as school was out in Nashville, Bonnie and Aunt Nella would come to Detroit. They'd spend the summer in Detroit.

SMITH: But Nashville was where he was based.

WHITE: Uh-huh. They lived out there on uh, they lived right up the street from Bethel. Uh, what's the big girls' school down there? Belmont College. They lived right up the street from Belmont College.

SMITH: Now, did he continue to uh, work with your father and--

WHITE: --they worked back and forth together. Then, uh, after daddy uh, daddy got into the horse business pretty big, because, well, let me think a minute. Let me see, let me see where to start. 'Course now, 00:21:00Morton L. Schwartz, you understand him. He had Bold V', daddy, they bred and raised Bold Venture.

SMITH: Right. The Derby winner.

WHITE: The Derby winner. And, that's when daddy got involved with King Ranch. And he got involved quite a number of years with King Ranch. In fact he went to King Ranch once and he went down there and he looked out, said I walked out of that office and looked across this field and said there must have been, he looked at the guy and said, "What is there, six thousand acres in that field?" and he said, "No, ten."

SMITH: Oh, my.

WHITE: They had the yearlings in the ten thousand acre field, and they'd see them about every day or two.

SMITH: My goodness.

WHITE: And, so, that when they started building paddocks, and started to handle their horses more. And that's when they started Bold Venture. 'Course they took Bold Venture to Texas, and that's where they bred Assault.

SMITH: Okay. Now, uh,

WHITE: Assault won the Derby.

SMITH: Okay. That's right. That's right. Um, so, uh, was the King Ranch one of Mr. Schwartz's clients, as I understand?

WHITE: He was a friend of Max Hirsch.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: Max Hirsch was one of our big promoters. See, the trainers that my father was associated with, well, we'll start with Uncle George and then there was Max Hirsch. And then after that there was Preston Burch, and there's Elliott Burch, and then there was Maje Odom, George P. Odom. And George P. Odom was, his father is one of the only people, I think, that ever trained and rode a Preakness winner.

SMITH: Really? ----------(??)

WHITE: Not at the same time, but--

SMITH: --yeah. I'd not heard, heard that either.

WHITE: Um-huh.

SMITH: Hm.

WHITE: And, uh, Okay. Let me see who else there was. There was a bunch of little trainers in there. He had a guy named Lutz, daddy had. And Lutz was kind of a shady character around New York. And he had this one mare that nobody could get in foal and he sent her to daddy and he 00:23:00got her to foal. And, I've forgotten the filly's name, but as a three year old, he told daddy, he said, "Now, you're going to watch," and says, "I'm going to call you, and anytime I call you and tell you to pick up Suzy at the train, you go bet on my filly." One day, he called daddy. That's back in, probably the, let's see, the '30's probably, late '30's, early '40's just before the second World War. And Mr. Lutz called daddy. He was an ex-prize fighter. And he called daddy about 7o'clock, 8 o'clock in the morning, says, "Pick up Suzy at the train." And about 11 o'clock he got another one and it says, "For God's sakes pick up Suzy at the train." About 2 o'clock he called and says, "You'd better take a car and go get Suzy." That means to bet on her.

SMITH: Um-huh.

WHITE: So he went to the bookie at the Drake Hotel, and bet a hundred dollars across the board on Suzy, and she paid sixty dollars. (laughs)

SMITH: Oh, my goodness.

WHITE: (laughs) So, Suzy--

SMITH: --Suzy did well. (laughs)

WHITE: Suzy came home. Oh, there was a few times he called and said, in fact, I, I used to go up to the Drake Hotel to get my haircuts. 'Course Drake Hotel was, you know, for uh a lot of the madams' uh, hang out.

SMITH: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

WHITE: And I used to go in there all the time and get my hair cut. I'd just go and get a hair cut and they'd put it on daddy's ticket, and then daddy'd bet on horses, and they'd bet on--

SMITH: --is that where people went to bet on horses at other races?

WHITE: That's one of the places that people went. That was there and then up at the Zebra Bar was uh, the big bookie.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: Uh, what was his name. He was the lay off man. When people would bet too much money they would go to him and give him the bet through him and get different odds. Every time you bet you either got more money or less money, and the guy at the Drake Hotel, oh, golly, 00:25:00I'm pulling a, uh, ask Ed. He can tell you that quick who it was.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: But that was at, that was at the Zebra Bar. Aw, and then there was a, there was a big bookie down at the Golden Horseshoe. There was a small bookie at the Phoenix Hotel. Let me think where else we used to go. (laughs) I always had to stand at the door and wait for them to come out. They wouldn't let me in.

SMITH: You were too young?

WHITE: Yeah, I was probably thirteen or fourteen years old.

SMITH: Hm, hm.

WHITE: And , a story, I'll give you a story you can probably use. At the Jot'em Down Store at that time, the Terrell's still operate, starting in 1935, the Terrell's, L.C. Terrell's bought the, bought the Jot'em Down Store. Didn't buy it, they rented it. And one of the things that went with it was a nickel slot machine--

SMITH: --okay--

WHITE: --and Mr. Terrell told me, and they had a son named Bob, and Bob and I grew up together. He was a good baseball player. But uh, he should have done better than he did, but he just didn't do real well. But, anyhow, to make a long story short, there was an old guy, Mr. Terrell's brother was there, and everybody called him Goo-Goo. And Goo-Goo always sat behind the stove, and he'd count the rotations on that god damn slot machine. And he'd go back there and he'd get up there close to the time when he thought it was going to pay off. He'd go back there and push everybody out of the way and put a nickel in there or two and he'd collect. Mr. Terrell told me when Bob and I, we were both in high school then. He says, "You know, Henry, we lived off that slot machine for almost three years."

SMITH: Really?

WHITE: "If it hadn't been for that slot machine," said, "it paid the rent. It paid for the beer. It paid for everything."

SMITH: My goodness.

WHITE: And my sister used to go in there. She was the luckiest thing 00:27:00in the world. She's go in there with her nickel, and damn she'd hit that thing and get twenty or thirty nickels every time you turn around. (Smith laughs) We used to always be playing with the slot machine.

SMITH: Huh.

WHITE: And people would come in and put their nickels in there.

SMITH: Was it legal then, I guess?

WHITE: Well, let's put it this way. It wasn't legal, but it wasn't illegal.

SMITH: Okay. Okay. (White laughs) Now, this was the one that was right by the farm.

WHITE: Right there by the Jot 'em Down Store. The store's still there.

SMITH: John, how do you--

WHITE: Jot 'em. J-o-t-e-m Down. Jot 'em Down Store.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And the boy that is running it is the grandson of the Terrell that I'm talking about. Robbie is the grandson.

SMITH: Really?

WHITE: Uh-huh.

SMITH: Okay. Okay.

WHITE: But they've had the store since 1936.

SMITH: My, gosh.

WHITE: You could go in there and get a slice of bologna and three crackers for a dime.

SMITH: Huh. Not anymore. (White laughs) Not anymore.

WHITE: I think Cokes were a nickel.

SMITH: Well, who were some of the other people, I mean, uh--

WHITE: Okay.

SMITH: Your dad, I'm assuming that your father developed a pretty good reputation for taking care of the horses. So, were people coming there because of him?

WHITE: Probably. What it was, he was, he was probably one of the first nutrition nuts.

SMITH: Oh.

WHITE: He was very much into nutrition, and he liked it. And, we were always, 'course my grandfather was a good feeder, too. He used to feed his yearlings like he used to raise three acres of corn. And like, for human corn.

SMITH: Yeah.

WHITE: But he raised it for his sales yearlings. As it'd get over ripe, they'd go cut it. And they had a big box they'd lay that corn down in, and each horse got a bucket full of chopped green corn every afternoon.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: Well, his yearlings were always bigger, and fatter, and ran better than a lot of other peoples' horses. That's what helped us -- helped the Whites more than anything else. We were, my grandfather was 00:29:00known, and Uncle George was known for having runners.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And they, they liked it. That's what Mr. Hirsch liked, because he'd bought a yearling or something off of my grandfather at Saratoga, and that's where it all got started.

SMITH: And you think how they were fed had something to do with it?

WHITE: Uh-huh. Oh, it does. It does. You can almost follow the horses around. 'Course everybody's into nutrition today. And, when I went, (laughs) when I went to U.K. I went with intention of being an animal husbandry major, but organic chemistry took care of me. (both laugh)

WHITE: So I just graduated with a BS in Agriculture.

SMITH: Okay. I was going to ask you about that. You, uh, uh, let's go back to uh, I'm sure we'll get back to your father and grandfather as we talk.

WHITE: Okay.

SMITH: But, uh, uh, so you guys moved here in 1928, and you were not even--

WHITE: --eleven months old--

SMITH: --okay. A year old, almost.

WHITE: I was a year old after we moved up--

SMITH: So, you've been raised in Lexington, and, and Elsmeade.

WHITE: Elsmeade. Right there on Russell Cave, on the left hand side of Russell Cave Pike. That's where I grew up.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And then Kathy and I, when we started, when my father died in '56, we had a real good bunch of horses for a lot of people. We had a, after Mr. Schwartz got out of the business, we had a lovely, lovely lady come in and rent the farm by the name of Mrs. Ambrose Clark. She's Clark thread people. And they were the ones that made the baseball, basket, Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: That was that one and she and my father were great friends. Fact is, during the war, to justify the war effort and everything, we had horses, we had cattle, we had hogs, we had chickens. We raised two 00:31:00acres of potatoes. Uh--

SMITH: This is at Elsmeade?

WHITE: Uh-huh, and daddy was a friend of Mr. Keller whose son owns, grandson owns the Keller Farm Machinery Store in Paris. And he had a potato digger, and we at that time, we were working horses. We had one old tractor. Wasn't old, it was a new tractor, but it was not old to us now, it was really an antique. And uh, we'd go out there and plow those potatoes up. And daddy had all the oat sacks that we'd collected, and we had the help come in, bring their families in, we picked up potatoes, and we graded them, and they got so many good ones, daddy got so many good ones. And then we just let them all take them home. And they'd go out there and we'd pick potatoes up out there for ten days after we'd gotten through plowing. They'd come over there, bring the family, the kids. They'd get a half to three quarters sack of potatoes. They learned to lay them out so they would dry. They'd 00:32:00keep.

SMITH: Now this was during the war?

WHITE: During the war.

SMITH: World War II.

WHITE: Yep. This was like '42, '43, '44, '45, '46. My father had a good friend named Baylor Van Meter. And Baylor Van Meter owned Van Meter Feeds. He was one of the big oat dealers in Lexington.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: But he also, my father, was a very, very good shot with a shotgun. He was, he learned to be. And he had accumulated three good shot guns from different people. Like Mrs. Clark one year gave him a Parker. And Parkers at that time cost about one hundred and fifty dollars. Well, Hecht, I, I sold the gun for $700.00.

SMITH: Oh, my.

WHITE: (laughs) Back in '02.

SMITH: Yeah.

WHITE: But we raised all these things. We raised hogs, chickens, we had corn, we had potatoes.

SMITH: And that was to help with the war effort?

WHITE: Uh-huh. My father also had the dogs and we'd go to the 00:33:00university. Take the old van and go out to the university and get a quarter off a posted horse. We had an outside cooker. We'd cut that meat up and put it in the cooker and build a fire under it and draw all the broth we could off of it. I'd skim all the fat off, and I'd take that over to the Jot 'em Down Store and turn it into red stamps so we could buy beef.

SMITH: Okay. (White laughs) You've got lots of stories.

WHITE: I have. When you get ready, I'll stop.

SMITH: No, you, yeah. I want to talk to you again.

WHITE: That was during the war.

SMITH: You were still raising horses at the time, too?

WHITE: Yeah, oh yeah. We had horses at that time for Mrs. Clark, Deering Howe. Uh, right after the end of the war we got Mrs. Bigelow who was George Widener's sister. We had Mrs. Dodge, Isabel Dodge Sloane, because of Preston Burch. And uh, let me think a minute, now. 00:34:00Who else did we have at that time? That's when Kathy and I first got started going to Saratoga, because Mrs. Sloane liked Kathy and I. I mean Mrs. Sloane liked Kathy and I, because Kathy was, got to be a pretty good bridge player.

SMITH: Oh, okay. (laughs)

WHITE: Because everybody up there played money for bridge, bridge for money.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And, uh, we'd go to Saratoga for six or seven, six days. Drive take two and a half days -- two days to get to Saratoga. Wasn't no ----------(??).

SMITH: Let me take you back again to um, your education. So, you, you were raised here--

WHITE: I was raised here.

SMITH: Where'd you go to school, elementary?

WHITE: I raised, I was raised, I went to school, I started, the first year I went to school I went first grade, I went to Sayre.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And about half way through the next year, I got pneumonia real bad. I was in the hospital twenty-eight days.

SMITH: Oh, my.

WHITE: And I came out of there and I, boys said I was kind of a pitiful 00:35:00thing, I guess. And I got involved, and I got typhoid fever. And I made it. And, let's see now, after I got typhoid. I lost two years. So, I was always two years older than everybody in my class. When I graduated from high school I was twenty-one years old.

SMITH: Oh, my. That had to be hard.

WHITE: Yeah, and then as I grew up, when I was fifteen, my mother and father got divorced, and I went with, I was ----------(??) with my father, and Benny went to Hopkinsville with mother. That's why I went to Hopkinsville quite a bit in the summertime, was to visit with her.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And then that's when my father put me to work in the barn. I had a barn of horses to take care of.

SMITH: Prior to that had you worked out with the horses much?

WHITE: Huh?

SMITH: Prior to when your fath-, dad gave you an actual responsibility ----------(??).

WHITE: Oh, some.

SMITH: Did you like the horses?

WHITE: First job I ever had was driving the muck wagon.

SMITH: Oh, really?

WHITE: That's when we used to hand pick all the pastures.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: We had a big wagon, big horse to pull it. Needed a driver. So I was the driver.

SMITH: It was called a muck wagon?

WHITE: And we'd take the muck wagon, and we'd go out in the fields, and we'd pick up the manure around the fields.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And we'd take it back and pile it. And anybody'd come along needed some fertilizer for their flowers, they could go back and get the muck out of the muck pile.

SMITH: That was your first job on the farm?

WHITE: First job on the farm was taking care of those horses.

SMITH: How old were you then?

WHITE: Uh, twelve, thirteen. And, then, course a lot of the good help, white and black, went to war during the Second World War and we had, course, we had some older people working for us. The one thing that we always had at the farm, with my father and me too, we always had a night watchman.

SMITH: Okay. You mentioned that in the other interview, and you thought 00:37:00that was so important. How come?

WHITE: Because we, as my father said, I liked to go to bed at night and know that my horses are being watched and if they get in trouble then we can do something about it. That's back when we used to have terrible colics.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: Because of the worm thing. We'd treat the horses, uh, daddy got in real big with the University of Kentucky. Dr. Dimock.

SMITH: Dimock.

WHITE: Dimock. And then Dr. Hull. And that's where I got interested. And the fact is, up until organic chemistry, I'd thought about being a vet. (laughs)

SMITH: Oh, okay.

WHITE: We decided I was too dumb to be a vet.

SMITH: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

WHITE: So, so I went to, and I needed uh, I did some special projects over there with Dr. Rooney.

SMITH: Dr. who?

WHITE: Dr. Rooney, James Rooney. He was a lame, became a lameness special. The fact is I've got a horse leg, front leg, back leg, that I processed, took off a horse and processed, painted and mounted and all--

SMITH: --oh, really? (laughs)--

WHITE: --in my office.

SMITH: (laughs) I'd like to see that.

WHITE: And then I've also got the, I had saved the feet, and the great thing about it was that I didn't realize when I did it, when my, I did the feet, the laminae, that's what the lamin is that holds the horses' foot on, laminae stayed in the horses' foot.

SMITH: Really?

WHITE: In the heart, in the heart in the foot. And when, I used it quite a bit, at different times--

SMITH: Really?

WHITE: when I was talking to people about foot trouble and things like that. My father was also a good feeder, but he was also a good footman.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: He used to take when it'd get wet, dry like this, he'd always, we were hauling water from Russell Cave to the farm, because the well at the farm wouldn't carry anything but the two houses. So, we'd haul water every day. And we always had to take the last twelve or eighteen inches and we'd run it off on the ground around the watering trough to make mud to keep the horses feet pliable.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: But these are the kind of things daddy was famous for.

SMITH: So, really taking care of the horses and providing the proper kind of nutrition. Okay, um, now, you went to Lafayette High School, is that right?

WHITE: I went to Russell, I went to, I went to Sayre, I went to U. High two years, then I went to Russell Cave. I went from Russell Cave to Bryans Station two years. I went from Bryans Station to Lafayette, and from Lafayette to U.K.

SMITH: Okay. Well, in one of the newspaper articles I was reading you mentioned a couple of your classmates from Lafayette -- Ed Fallon--

WHITE: Ed Fallon

SMITH: -- and George, uh, Glenn Greathouse.

WHITE: Glenn Greathouse. And fact is, Glenn's gonna be at my birthday. We're having a little birthday party for me tomorrow.

SMITH: Aw.

WHITE: And he and his wife are gonna be there. He was my blacksmith.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And daddy always got associated and always, he used to always have dove shoots. The best way in the world to have dove shoots was 00:40:00during the war. The hardest thing you had to do was get the shells. You'd take those hemp phlox, and drop that hemp out there and knock the seed off of it. You really didn't need a shotgun to shoot doves during the war. You needed a dip net, 'cause those doves would come in there for that hemp seed.

SMITH: Really?

WHITE: They'd be so thick you couldn't see the ground.

SMITH: My goodness.

WHITE: And we'd shoot doves, and daddy'd had a crew about, and he'd made a deal with the black men that were working for us that for every twelve doves they cleaned they got a dove.

SMITH: Oh my.

WHITE: So one day I think, I think one day he killed eighty doves in one, in one day. And they cleaned them. And he bagged them up and took them in and gave them to his different friends, gave them to the men on the farm. We had dove, man we had dove for nigh on a year. (both laugh) And he also hunted a lot of quail with Baylor Van Meter. And then Mrs. Clark once took him to Foshalee. That was Mrs. Ambrose Clark's ranch, uh plantation.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And Foshalee is still down there. It's on the Florida Georgia border.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And that's where Mrs. Clark used to spend the winters. She had daddy down there one year. And they drug me along, because they knew that I could shoot. I was a good shot. So I was allowed to shoot dove, but I had to be with daddy.

SMITH: MUm-hm.

WHITE: And, so, Louie Campbell who was a manager, told her, said, uh, told daddy he said, "Now, we're gonna let you out on the walk. Henry's gonna ride in the dog wagon. Ride with the pointers." Because Mr. Clark and Mrs. Clark used to bet each other which dog would find the bird first.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And so, first call off, the birds came up - boom, boom daddy killed two doves. So, then, Louie never said anything. Mrs. Clark was quite impressed. Came up again, daddy was called out, they came up and he killed two doves. (laughs) Well that went on 'til noon.

SMITH: All right.

WHITE: And at noon, we were told, Louie told Daddy we were, we were over at Louie's having lunch instead of over at the big house. And he said, uh, "Cy, the Clarks have decided you are an excellent shot, but you're to shoot twice and kill one bird." (both laugh) But I been, I think the greatest thing about my whole horse industry, the people that I've been associated with, like daddy had Ogden Phipps' mares because of Mrs. Clark. Mr. Phipps was Mrs. Clark's nephew. And when Mr. Clark, when Mr. Phipps got the mat-, mares from Bradley's, they came to Elsmeade.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: They came to Elsmeade. 'Cause then we had the Phipps mares. And we had the Phipps mares until they went to Claiborne, um about 1953. 00:43:00We had them about eight years I think.

SMITH: So, as a teenager, did you have much association with these people?

WHITE: Some, yeah. I used to, Mrs. Clark had a herd, good herd of angus cattle, and I used to fit cattle.

SMITH: Oh, okay.

WHITE: And they used to have a big, fat stock show down at uh, Bourbon County Stock Yard, Bourbon Stock Yard down in Louisville. And, uh, the Future Farmers 4-H Club would all take calves down. I had, always had two or three calves to take down.

SMITH: Oh, okay.

WHITE: But also C. V. Whitney did, too, but they had a good herdsman, and their daughter went was in high, was in school with me. I couldn't, I never could beat her, but I could run second. (Smith laughs) The five years I showed, I had, I had four, four seconds and a third. I never could have a win.

SMITH: Aw. She was just a little better, huh?

WHITE: No, her father was a better herdsman.

SMITH: Okay. Okay. (both laugh)

WHITE: Daddy says I just didn't pay the judge enough. (both laugh)

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: Okay. So, we just, there's the Clarks, the Phipps', the Bigelows who were Wideners.

SMITH: MUm-hm.

WHITE: Uh, Maje Odom helped daddy got, uh Jack Dreyfus.

SMITH: Yeah. Okay.

WHITE: We had Dreyfus when he started, fact is, Mr. Dreyfus called me and wanted me to go to Florida. And, I've took, I went down and visited with him and, and Elmer Heubeck.

SMITH: MUm-hm.

WHITE: And I knew after I'd talked to Elmer about thirty minutes that Elmer and I'd be just like cats and dogs.

SMITH: Oh.

WHITE: And so I told Jack, and so Jack told me that, uh, he wished I would come down and that I would be the broodmare manager and Elmer would be the farm manager. Aaaaa after being with Elmer I was damn sure I didn't want to work with Elmer, but we were good friends. And 00:45:00they, uh--

SMITH: What was his last name, Elmer--

WHITE: Who?

SMITH: Elmer --?

WHITE: Heubeck.

SMITH: Heubeck. Okay.

WHITE: Yeah, uh, he died two years ago. He ran Hobeau Farm.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: Jack Dreyfus' place was called Hobeau Farm. It's coming back. They've had, got new manager down there and they've done pretty well the last two years. And he always had, one of his trainers was Allen Jerkins. That's where I got to know Jerkins. And then I got to know all of Jerkins' clients through Jack Dreyfus.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: It's kind of uh, if you know him, you know him, and him, and him.

SMITH: So word of mouth is what, how--

WHITE: Word of mouth and, and, and the, as long as you were always square, you never had to worry about move, back in those days nobody moved their horses. They had the same group of horses for twenty and thirty years. From the owners like the Whitneys and the Widener's, and John Wesley Marr, when he was in his hey day. Golly, he had clients 00:46:00forever. And, we had, I guess the four greatest things that I saw was parasite control, which Ed came up with. When they came up with phenothiazine, the first time. Those horses used to treat those horses with olive wormwood, and turpentine, and something else. And colic, god damm those horses with colic, sometimes two or three days. We'd lose one about every four or five wormings.

SMITH: Oh, my.

WHITE: And, uh, nutrition. Then we got into palpating mares. We got into ultra-sounding mares.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And that's what Ed Fallon did. Ed Fallon was my vet, and there was a guy in Florida with Elmer from Argentina. And he had developed 00:47:00a technique to palpate mares, and he could tell that a mare was in foal at sixteen to eighteen days.

SMITH: That's amazing.

WHITE: And I took Ed down there. And we went down there on Jack Dreyfus. He flew us down there and everything. And started out on the way down there, I could just tell that this guy ain't gonna show me nothin'. Well, I went with Elmer, and he went with Gerbers, Dr. Gerbers.

SMITH: Ed did?

WHITE: And Dr. Gerbers and Ed liked two things. Both of them liked Scotch whiskey.

SMITH: Okay. (both laugh)

WHITE: They'd had (both laugh) And he showed Ed the technique and showed him what he needed to look for. We went down there, then coming back we got hung up in Atlanta, for seven hours I think. Bad weather up here. So we sat around in the barn and drank mart--, drank some Bloody Mary's and whiskey for seven or eight hours and ate. (Smith laughs) 00:48:00Got home we were both still a little hung over.

SMITH: I would think so.

WHITE: And Ed, I guess his uncle, Ed's uncle was Dr. Charlie Hagyard.

SMITH: Oh, I didn't realize they were related.

WHITE: Yeah, very much so. And he went, I know he went to Dr. Charlie. 'Course, Bill McGee was in there then. Art Davidson was in there then. And they were the backbone.

SMITH: But Ed Fallon was a friend of yours, and he was also your vet?

WHITE: He was also my vet. I was one of his first five clients.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: Barbie Hunter, he's the only client he still he got, Barbie Hunter.

SMITH: Oh, really? Barbie Hunter?

WHITE: Barbie Hunter.

SMITH: I'm actually interviewing Mr. Fallon in two weeks.

WHITE: Huh?

SMITH: I'm going to interview Ed in two weeks, Ed Fallon, so--

WHITE: Oh, good, good. He uh, uh, he's having a little back trouble right now, he was. I was talking to his wife this morning, and he's going in today for his shots. When you going to see him?

SMITH: Umm, I think it's on the eleventh.

WHITE: Yeah.

SMITH: Couple weeks.

WHITE: You'll enjoy him. He has a nice wife.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: But he's a very good person.

SMITH: You'd said that he was a good influence, he was an influence on you and how you worked with your horses.

WHITE: Yeah. See and then, 'cause Ed's brother-in-law, Jack Bryans, who was the head of the university.

SMITH: Okay. I was going to ask about him. Okay. He was head of the university's research?

WHITE: He was, uh, he was uh, started out as a virologist, he and Dr. Dimock, and Dr., (knocking) another one, a virologist, were the ones that solved the virus abortion problem.

SMITH: Pardon?

WHITE: The virus abortion problem.

SMITH: Oh. And, uh--..

WHITE: One year for Mr. Phipps we had eighteen mares in foal for Mr. Phipps, and we had eleven of them slip. It's probably what helped 00:50:00kill my father.

SMITH: Aw.

WHITE: 'Cause he really, he went down to see Maje and just didn't get up--

SMITH: Aw, Aw.

WHITE: the next morning. But anyhow, uh--

SMITH: What was, what caused the?

WHITE: The virus abortion was caused, it was a contagious disease type thing, and they uh were able to solve it with a vaccine. And the vaccine was kind of hard on the mares at first, and my father told Mr. Phipps says, "You got two choices. You've got a choice. We can use a vaccine or we can not use a vaccine." And Mr. Phipps asked Daddy said, "Well, what will happen if I don't use it?" He said, "You'll have the same thing over again what you had this year."

SMITH: So, he used it? Yeah.

WHITE: Yeah. But it's amazing how much Jack Bryans, Ed, Dr. Charlie, 00:51:00a guy named McCullen that worked for Jack helped solve a lot of our problems, health problems, vaccination problems. Uhhhhh, I don't know, ask Ed. Make yourself a note to ask Ed, and he can probably tell you how many vaccines Jack Bryans helped develop.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And these, and these people, a lot, a lot of the, I call them the greeny farm managers that have come in, they don't have a clue of what we went through in the fifties and sixties.

SMITH: He was saying um, can you guess at what percentage of horses that you lost to these, these kinds of illnesses that now you--

WHITE: --uh, well, between virus abortion and shakers--

SMITH: --shakers.

WHITE: Which was, turned out that that was another one of Dr. Fallon's finds, was botulism.

SMITH: Okay. Okay. Huh, huh.

WHITE: We, I used to, I've lost a bunch. Poke Valley Farms lost a lot of foals. Some farms that were in the hinterlands' never had much problems, and then they finally developed the botulism vaccine. Because of a classmate of Cornell of Dr. Fallon, he was able to get hold of the botulism vac, vaccine--

SMITH: --amazing--

WHITE: --they used for humans. And that's what it was.

SMITH: So is it dramatically different now, than what it was in say the fifties in terms of horses?

WHITE: Oh, Lord, yes.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: Was not nothing uncommon. It would strike you. One year you'd a hit it, and you'd lose eight or ten out of thirty, and then the next year you'd maybe lose one. And then you'd start using the vaccination. 00:53:00And I just explained it to my clients. I called them, I said, "I'm gonna, you're gonna make--" but, it's like Mrs. Sloane said, she said, "Henry, I don't know a damn thing about operating a farm. That's your job." The great thing about Paul Mellon was that when you got a horse from Paul Mellon, you answered to no one except his secretary. You'd get a good mare, she'd have colic, she'd have to go to surgery. That's when we used to lose about 50% of them. And she was doing okay, and you'd call the next morning, and you'd say, "Tross, we had to send so-and-so to surgery last night. So far this morning she's doing okay. Her foal's doing good, because we've already been able to get a nurse mare. We put the foal on nurse mare." And she'd say, "Golly that's too bad. How's the rest of the horses?" And that was the end of it.

SMITH: Were other clients like that or was he the exception?

WHITE: Uh, most of them were kind of like that, because he kind of rubbed off on a lot of your clients, you know, (Smith laughs) to give you a free rein. I never had any New York farm managers much.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: Because of Maje, Mr. Burch, Elliott, and all the trainers, Max Hirsch and everything. And, uh, Mr. Hirsch got mad at me one day, and he said, "God damnit, you don't ever come around except to eat breakfast." I said, "You're always too damn busy." Well, after that about every other Saturday, I'd spend with him. The Saturday after that I'd spend with Maje Odom. My other good friend was Johnny Vietch's father--

SMITH: --okay--

WHITE: --Sil Vietch.

SMITH: Now, uh, Preston Burch, tell me about him.

WHITE: Preston Burch was a real gentleman.

SMITH: A gentleman?

WHITE: And a good horseman.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: He was a good pedigree man. Uh, he was a good friend.

SMITH: Now was he, he was older than you?

WHITE: Oh, yeah. He was Elliott Burch's father.

SMITH: Okay. Okay.

WHITE: See his, Preston Burch's father was a good top trainer.

SMITH: Um-hm. He worked with Mack, well, sort of.

WHITE: Yeah. Yeah.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: Mack worked with uh,--

SMITH: --Mr Mellon--

WHITE: --with Mr. Mellon.

SMITH: Yeah.

WHITE: Because Mack at that time, Mr., oh, golly, the big guy that was platinum king from South America.

SMITH: Englehard?

WHITE: Huh? Englehard And he'd had just passed away. But Mrs. Englehard and Mr. Mellon were good friends before she married Englehard.

SMITH: Oh, okay.

WHITE: They knew each other way back when. And, so, (sigh) I talk to Elliott about once every two months. He had a little bout, couple of 00:56:00months ago he had a little bout. Six months ago with cancer--

SMITH: --I'm sorry--

WHITE: --but he came through it good.

SMITH: Oh, good. Good.

WHITE: You see how lucky you can be that you get to know what it's like. People would give anything to be able to sit down and talk to Paul Mellon. Mack and I used to sit down with him four times a year.

SMITH: I know that uh, when I interviewed Mr. Miller, he, uh, and then listening to your interview, that he was a pretty special man the way he worked with you all--

WHITE: --yeah--

SMITH: -- and cared for the horses.

WHITE: Oh, horse came first. You always remembered that.

SMITH: I'm going to take you back a little bit. Now, you, uh, explain to me how Els-, your father got from Elsmeade to Plum Lane.

WHITE: Okay. Well, we got to Plum Lane through the Jot 'em Down Store.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: 'Cause Mr., Mr. LeBus would come into the Jot 'em Down Store. 00:57:00Daddy would be in the Jot 'em Down Store, and they got to know each other. Plus Mr. LeBus had a daughter that was a horse nut, and she was having trouble with her ponies.

SMITH: What was her name?

WHITE: Uh, Bertha. And, fact is, her sister just died. Mary Belle just died. Everybody called her Snooky. And we got to know the LeBus'. Fact is, when I got to be twenty years old, I became the LeBus' kind of private chauffeur at times. Like I got to drive them to the Derby. And we'd go to the Pendennis Club and have breakfast, and then I'd go to the Derby with them. And then I'd take care of keeping Mrs. LeBus in mar-, in mint juleps and run bets for them and everything like that and see all my friends too. And, we used to, we used to make it a big day. But, we'd go to the Pendennis Club and have lunch. Then we'd come back. On the way home we'd go to the Idle Hour and have dinner. 00:58:00Bertha would meet us, and then as Bertha got older, she'd go with us. They had a Cadillac. That was a special made Cadillac. That dude would do sixty-five miles an hour in first gear from here to the parking lot.

SMITH: Oh, really? (both laugh)

WHITE: And I used to, Berth, Mrs. LeBus was having a problem at that time with the whiskey bottle. She'd call me up and she says, "What are you doing?" I said, "Well, I am mowing grass." She says, "Well, I've got a more important job than that. You need to take me to lunch."

SMITH: Oh, Okay.

WHITE: And we'd get over on New Circle Road before it was finished. And these guys in the hot rods would pull up behind, beside you, and here you sat with the old in the backseat and you're driving. She'd say, "Snow 'em" We'd put that thing in first gear and I'd leave him from here to that tree out there.

SMITH: Oh, wow.

WHITE: By the time he got that far I'd be five car lengths in front of him, going over the hill. Then he'd pull up beside you and answer, 00:59:00"You can't do that again." She said, "Make it worse." (Smith laughs) And we'd drag race right up New Circle Road. (both laugh)

SMITH: Well, she sounds like a character.

WHITE: Oh, she was. She was a lovely lady.

SMITH: Tell me about, uh, like I said--

WHITE: Mr. LeBus is one of our main things in my background, because I grew up with Clarence. I used to be the, I was one of the ones that would go over to the house on Christmas. Sometimes daddy'd go, sometimes he wouldn't. They always had a big Christmas party. And there's some of the LeBus' friends daddy didn't particularly care for, because they knew that he was being used. And then one day he came to daddy and said, "Would you like to take over Plum Lane?" And daddy told him he said, "There's an awful lot of work you need to do over there before the horses ----------(??)." And he said, "Well, let's do it. I'll pay for it. You oversee it." Plum Lane, somewhere or other, the 01:00:00one thing I'd love to get for you all, somewhere there's a scrapbook. I don't know who's got it, whether his, one of his step-daughters or whether I'm hoping little Mary has got it, because I'm gonna see if I can find it. They had a one day race meet in 1917 at Plum Lane Farm. At that time it was called Hinata.

SMITH: Okay. Ed Bowen was telling me about that.

WHITE: Now, now Hinata is, was Plum Lane.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: After the LeBuses got Plum Lane, Mrs. LeBus, Mrs. Clarence, Mrs. Clarence' mother had passed away, then Frazier and Clarence had a fight over the farms, and they ended up trading it out, and Clarence got Plum Lane. And Mrs. Lebus changed the name to Plum Lane because the front avenue at Plum Lane at that time was all little black Plum trees.

SMITH: Okay. Prior to that it was--

WHITE: --it was Hinata.

SMITH: It was still part of that family's?

WHITE: Right. And see it was tied in, it was tied in with Phil Chinn. 'Cause Phil Chinn and Bob Young used the front part down there. I've got a picture at the farm, at the house, of Man o' War when he was at Hinata.

SMITH: Okay. That was before your father came up here. Right? Okay.

WHITE: See that was in 1924.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: This picture's dated 1924. It's done by Mr. Ashby, and Ashby was one of the famous horse print people. I only thing I did a mistake was, I wasn't smart enough, that I should have gotten Chik Barkley before he died to authenticate the picture--

SMITH: --oh, okay--

WHITE: -- on the back for me. Because he said, "Yeah." There was some phony Ashby's, but this was one of the real ones.

SMITH:: Okay. So Man o' War stood there for a couple of years.

WHITE: Uh,huh. Stood there because as long as he was under control of Mrs., Miss Elizabeth Dangerfield, then he went to Faraway Farm. Then 01:02:00he went from Faraway Farm to Man o' War Farm. And see, I'm working with Mr. Bonn who now owns Man o' War Farm.

SMITH:: Okay. Okay. Uh, I'll get all this straight. Okay. (White laughs) I have to go back and get all this transcribed. You've given me so much information. OK. But there was a racetrack there, and they had a one day meet?

WHITE: They had a one day meet, and they had pari-mutuel racing. Why? Because Mrs. LeBus' husband was DeShay Breckinridge who was the head steward for the Kentucky Racing Association.

SMITH: Oh, okay.

WHITE: I've got his rule book.

SMITH: His rule book?

WHITE: Rule book.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: It's his name's on the front of it.

SMITH: Oh, my.

WHITE: And I've been debating whether I should give it to the Keeneland Library or should I give it to Johnny Vietch.

SMITH: Mmm. Mmm. I won't, won't, venture on that one. Uh, okay, so, then you dad, did he stay with Elsmeade and Plum Lane or did he go 01:03:00direct; so he kept them both? He worked both.

WHITE: He kept both.

SMITH: That's a lot.

WHITE: Because you see, we had Mrs. Clark. We had Brookmeade. We, no Mrs. Clark, yeah, we had Mrs., no, Mrs. Clark came up with an illness and they ended up doing something with her horses, the, the bean counters--

SMITH: --okay--

WHITE: --that I called them. And, uh, she uh, but we had Mrs. Bigelow. Fi (??), her name was Fi Widener, but she was married to a guy named Bigelow.

SMITH: Um-hm.

WHITE: And she was George Widener's sister.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: Now, I'm going to really screw you up.

SMITH: Yeah, probably (laughs).

WHITE: In 1955 I was at, over at Old Kenney Farm of Mr. George Widener's with, with daddy.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And Bill Bugg was the manager of, of, of Erdenheim

SMITH: Of what?

WHITE: Erdenheim, which was the name that the original, that was the Wid-, the Widener name for the farm. This was a lovely farm that ran right down Hughes Lane. It was Mr. George Widener's, and it was four hundred and fourteen acres right down one road. And the only neighbor he had was his brother, Joe Widener, on the other side. They just took a strip off of it.

SMITH: Yeah.

WHITE: Probably never had more than thirty horses on the farm until Mr. Widener died.

SMITH: Really?

WHITE: Because all the horses went to Erdenheim in Pennsylvania.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: So, I got a call from Bill Bugg, and he said, "I need to see you." So I went over there, and he said, "We have recommended you as the assistant trainer for George Widener, and Mr. Widener wants you 01:05:00to get on the George Washington and come to Philadelphia, because he'd like for you to spend two days with him."

SMITH: And now, had you been working with your uncle before that?

WHITE: Um-hm.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: I'd put in two years with Uncle George. See, Uncle George won so damn many races they thought I was hoppin' the horses.

SMITH: (both laugh) Really?

WHITE: Now you see, I'm so, I'm so damn lucky to have been associated with all these people. People would give their eyeballs to be able to sit down and talk, to have lunch by yourself with George Widener, Mr. Mellon.

SMITH: Did you realize it at the time?

WHITE: Oh, no. One thing that I, one reason was this was about two weeks after Kathy and I had gotten married.

SMITH: Um-hm.

WHITE: And we knew that we, she knew that at that time I'd rather have 01:06:00done anything as train horses. That's what I really wanted to do.

SMITH: To train horses?

WHITE: Um-hm. But in the meantime after I went, I went to Mr. Widener to sit down and talked to him, and this was 1955 or 1956 was the year daddy died. And she and I, like he was going to give me five thousand dollars a year which was a big salary in 1950 something. I didn't understand one thing in the whole deal that he paid all my expenses.

SMITH: Oh, my.

WHITE: Every time we moved from New York to Miami, he paid my expenses. Anytime that I went to the races, like if I would go from New York to Monmouth Park, because he wanted to start racing in Monmouth Park because it would make him living closer to the racetrack than he was Belmont.

SMITH: Um-hm.

WHITE: I didn't get the whole picture. Didn't realize that he would paid all my expenses to move from New York to Miami. That he'd pay my rent in Miami. He'd pay my rent in Floral Park. He'd furnish my car. He'd furnish me an expense account, and I was the assistant trainer.

SMITH: That's quite a deal.

WHITE: I would go to New York, I would go to Erdenheim the first year with a yearling crop. I would break those horses. I would help break those horses. I'd get them ready, and they'd be my horses and not Bert Mulholland's.

SMITH: Um-hm.

WHITE: And Bert was agreeable to it, because he was there.

SMITH: Sounds like an incredible deal.

WHITE: Well, I sat down with Mama, and we had a long talk and decided we didn't want to become gypsies.

SMITH: Awww.

WHITE: In that crop, there was a horse call Jaipur.

SMITH: Jaipur?

WHITE: He was a champion.

SMITH: Aww.

WHITE: There were three fillies that were all good stake winners. There were five out of fourteen horses were grade one stake winners. I got ten percent of everything the stable won.

SMITH: Okay. But you didn't do this? You didn't go?

WHITE: No. I went with Mr. LeBus, because Mr. LeBus encouraged me to do it until daddy died.

SMITH: Oh, okay.

WHITE: And then when daddy died, he came to me right after daddy's funeral and he said, "Henry, I want you to take over Plum Lane, and I'll bankroll you for three years. At that time I didn't have a window or pocket or a window to throw it out.

SMITH: Yeah. So--

WHITE: I went with Clarence.

SMITH: Did you realize then that you would not be a trainer?

WHITE: Uh-huh.

SMITH: So you gave that up?

WHITE: I just, but I, I broke horses forever.

SMITH: Hm-hmm.

WHITE: I broke a lot of horses for Preston Burch. I used to have uh, two eighteen stall barns, and I had a, I was breaking that many horses all the time. Preston Burch's first book, I'm the guy in the back that's saddling the horses. That look, 'cause I had my jaw broken.

SMITH: Ooh.

WHITE: Car wreck.

SMITH: Oh, okay.

WHITE: Damn near got killed. And that's, I'm the guy, that funny looking guy back there with cap on and shorts. (White laughs)

SMITH: Oh, all right.

WHITE: Now, you see, there's a lot of people don't realize, and I didn't for a long time, God how lucky was I. How lucky was I. When you stop and look at the people that we're talking about. Mr. ,Mr. Mellon was one of the best friends I ever had. He was one of the reasons that I 01:10:00was going up so fast in the, in the uh, Jockey Club.

SMITH: Mmm. Mmm.

WHITE: In the Grayson Foundation.

SMITH: Now how long did you work with Mr. Mellon?

WHITE: Twenty-eight years.

SMITH: Twenty-eight years. That's a very long time.

WHITE: But see, I, Mack and I, uh, Elliott and I at first would go. When Elliott was there he and Mr. Burch would call the mares. I made one fatal mistake. I should have had Preston Burch helping me book those mares.

SMITH: You valued his opinion?

WHITE: I should've. I made a couple of mistakes.

SMITH: Oh.

WHITE: I knew it, I owned up to it to Mr. Mellon.

SMITH: Well, a couple of mistakes isn't so bad. Hmm?

WHITE: Yeah. But I just, I just look back over it.

SMITH: Tell me about your time working as an assistant trainer to your uncle.

WHITE: When I worked with him?

SMITH: Yeah. What was that like?

WHITE: It was rough. (both laugh) Heck fire. I had one, I had one old guy that was a good man, but he was a drunk. And fact is he caused my 01:11:00uncle a whole lot of grief. 'Cause Uncle George ended up with a horse showed up for caffeine positive.

SMITH: Oh.

WHITE: And Mack was washing his god damn coffee cup in the horse's bucket. (both laugh)

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: So whenever we, we went, did Uncle George's license we had to put on there said you know, he says, and the thing of it is we found out, a friend of his, Uncle George found out that all we had to put on there 'On Record'. That means that you did have one caffeine thing.

SMITH: On record.

WHITE: But the thing of it is it was because of the uh, the man. The groom washed his damn--

SMITH: --cup--

WHITE: --yeah. Washed his damn what-you-call-it, (Smith laughs) cup in the damn horse's bucket.

SMITH: (laughs) So, is it hard to get good help?

WHITE: Huh?

SMITH: Was it hard for your uncle to have good help?

WHITE: We left Nashville, that time we had those twenty-eight horses, 01:12:00we left Nashville with twelve men, and they did all the work on twenty- eight horses, twenty-nine horses.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: They were green. Uh, they were good. They'd get drunk.

SMITH: Yeah?

WHITE: I told them. I said, "You get in jail, I'm not going to come down and get you out until the next day. I'll leave you down there." I said, "Them guys at that jail will work you over like a baloney sandwich." One of them got in jail, and the guy, huh, he got in a fight. He went in there and whipped six guards and fourteen prisoners (laughs) all by himself.

SMITH: (laughs) Gosh!

WHITE: One of them Tennessee mountain boys.

SMITH: Oh, okay.

WHITE: But I, I enjoyed the racetrack. I enjoyed the life. When you-- Well, looka here.

SMITH: Thank you.

WHITE: Thank you. Uh, help was not the problem it is today.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: Now let me back track just a little bit and let you, they, see 01:13:00where I'm coming from with this.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: My son was, went to work when he graduated from college.

SMITH: Um-hm.

WHITE: He went to work with Mack Miller, and one of the horses that Hank was a back up groom on was Red Ransom.

SMITH: Said, Red?

WHITE: Red Ransom.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: Who turned out to be a top horse--

SMITH: --right--

WHITE: --and a good stud. Hank was the backup groom on that. And Hank and Rick Hughes, who was assistant, is the farm manager now down at Shawnee Farm--

SMITH: --okay--

WHITE: --were together with Mack. And after the first year, Rick went to work for Watts full time.

SMITH: Um-hm.

WHITE: Leaving Hank by himself at the racetrack. So, that was the start of his second year. And the second year he came back from the 01:14:00racetrack for Christmas on his way to go back to Florida, he came home for Christmas, and he looked at me and he said, "I've had," pardon my French, he said, "I've had all this seven day a week shit that I want." And he, meantime he'd been in Miami with a lady down there that I was associated with, Mary Hecht who's Hecht Department Stores.

SMITH: Right. Right.

WHITE: And Libby, who was her niece, was there, and I called Libby, I says, "Have you got room to let Hank stay in the garage until he finds a place to live up at, up at, by Gulfstream? So I told her what, she said, "Oh, I'd love to have him stay." She went down there with Hank, and Hank and Libby became very, very good friends.

SMITH: Um-hm.

WHITE: They had cocktail hour together every night.

SMITH: Um-hm.

WHITE: And 'course Hank was driving fourteen miles one way from where 01:15:00she lived out on Key Biscayne up to--

SMITH: --Gulfstream.

WHITE: --Gulfstream. And he really, and she exposed him because she had a doctorate. She was a doctor in physical therapy. And she took him to the University of Miami.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And she was also an occupational therapist--

SMITH: --oh, okay--

WHITE: --along with the physical therapist. And that's where Hank decided he wanted to be a physical therapist.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: So, he came back. We got Red Ransom moved back to New York and everything like that, and in the meantime while he was here he went to UK and he found out that to get into any physical therapy school he didn't have enough chemistry and he didn't have any physics.

SMITH: Um-hm.

WHITE: So, he had to take both of them. So he came back here, by golly, he got the job pushing wheel chairs at Shriners.

SMITH: Huh.

WHITE: And going to school. Well, he ended up good, because he in organic chemistry, he had an "A" in organic chemistry, and he had an 01:16:00"A" in physics.

SMITH: Oh, a subject that bothered you.

WHITE: ----------(??) Yeah. But he lived at the house. He lived with us. So, he was no trouble then part of the time. And then he had a bunch of fraternity brothers that had also come back, and so he moved from us and moved to work with them then he really got to go to school, and he started applying. And of all things, he got turned down in three different schools because of his physics grade, because they didn't understand he was retaking it, but he applied to Wash. U. in St. Louis.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: University in St. Louis.

SMITH: Um-hm.

WHITE: And, lo and behold, they accepted him sight unseen.

SMITH: Really?

WHITE: Took his transcribe-scriptions, and they called him up and they told me, I got, I got the call because he was in school, and she said that she'd like to talk to Henry Frances White. I said, "Yeah, that's my son." So she said, uh, "Tell him I need to talk to him as soon as I 01:17:00can, because we're going to accept him into the class, to the physical therapy that starts in September, and we've already, he has a room in the dorm here at Wash. U."

SMITH: Hmm.

WHITE: Well, we found out what it was going to cost, and it was more than I'd really planned on, but I helped him.

SMITH: Yeah.

WHITE: I bankrolled him. And, so that's where he got his, got his MH.

SMITH: Yeah.

WHITE: So he came back here, went to work for Shriners full time, and then he decided he wanted, Libby talked him into this, he had to get his doctorate.

SMITH: Oh, okay.

WHITE: And he got his doctorate this year. So, he is--

SMITH: --this year?

WHITE: --Dr. Hank White.

SMITH: Oh, Wow. Congratulations!

WHITE: And, as he said that, thank God that he's in on the old program. Everybody now, that goes through physics, physical therapy, has pretty much got to have a doctorate.

SMITH: Oh, Okay.

WHITE: So he's ahead of them, because he already, he's got one of the 01:18:00old doctorates not one of the new doctorates.

SMITH: Oh, Okay.

WHITE: So, he was also bitten by the racetrack, but he said that he just, he just couldn't stand that seven days a week, but the worse thing was that the help was starting to get a little bad, so that's when we talked. And he told Mack, and Mack encouraged him. He says, "If Mr. Mellon had a thirty-five old son, I'd tell you, no. You're going to stay with us." And I was going, he was going to keep Hank, because he wanted to move Hank up--

SMITH: --oh, okay--

WHITE: --to the second assistant trainer.

SMITH: But with, since Mr. Mellon was going to retire--

WHITE: If Mr. Mellon was going to retire that the son would take over, but they didn't. Neither one of his sons didn't like it, and neither did his daughter.

SMITH: Well, tell me, Okay, you told me about your son. Tell me about your wife. How did you two meet?

WHITE: She was, she was dating a friend of mine. (laughs)

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: For some reason or another, I was very attached to nurses when I was in the Air Force. There was a bunch of nurses, Air Force nurses 01:19:00there, and I dating, always dating the nurses, and I came home and I was dating nurses, and I met Kathy. Ohhhhh, where did I meet Kathy? I met Kathy, fact is, I met Kathy up at Cincinnati.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: I was up there with one of her friends, and that's where I met Kathy, and I started dating Kathy.

SMITH: Okay, now, so, this was after you were in the Air force.

WHITE: Um-hm. This was after I had been with Uncle George and everything, too.

SMITH: Oh, Okay.

WHITE: 'Cause, this is when I, this is you know, when I was telling you about the George Widener thing?

SMITH: Uh-huh.

WHITE: This is when Kathy and I were dating, and this is when we decided to get married.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: There were six people at our wedding.

SMITH: Just six?

WHITE: We had our fiftieth anniversary last year.

SMITH: Aww. Well, congratulations. So, so you didn't date very long before you got married.

WHITE: Oh, I known her for about a year.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: Because I knew her sister and her brother-in-law.

SMITH: Is she from here?

WHITE: No, she's from, she's from Cat Creek.

SMITH: Cat Creek? (laughs) Okay.

WHITE: Cat Creek's up ----------(??).

SMITH: All right.

WHITE: That's where she grew up.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And, uh, she was a red head.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And, uh, aw, we've had a good life. We've had, we've been very, very lucky.

SMITH: You have two children. Is that right?

WHITE: Three children.

SMITH: Three children.

WHITE: And I have a daughter that works at Hagyard's. She's a dispatcher. She worked for me for seven years, so she knows. She's a dispatcher. I have a daughter that has, who's a Special Ed. teacher, and I have Hank.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: Kitty's got two boys, big boys. And my daughter, Jean, has a daughter that's nine years old, a real, real little booger.

SMITH: Um-hm.

WHITE: And Kitty, I mean Hank, has no children. He has two step- children.

SMITH: That's quite a few. Now, uh, you went, you were in the Air force 01:21:00for only a year?

WHITE: Two. I was in the Air Force about twenty-six months.

SMITH: Did you join?

WHITE: I was, no, I was, my father told me that if I would, went through college for four years and didn't come out a second lieutenant I was an idiot. So, I took ROTC.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And I had a real rough tour of duty. I was supposed to be, this was when the Korean War was going on. When I got out of college, I, turned up that I went from semesters to quarters, and when the quarter got through, I was 7/8 of a point short of having enough points to graduate.

SMITH: 7/8 of a point? Oh, how awful.

WHITE: One.

SMITH: Yeah.

WHITE: One point. Well, it was just what I've been looking for, because I went back to school one day a week, and I took Retail Meat Cutting. Best course I ever took in college.

SMITH: (laughs) Retail Meat Cutting. Okay.

WHITE: When I went to service, this was about the time I had that bad wreck--

SMITH: -okay--

WHITE: --and got messed up. So, I didn't get, I was to go to Texas, to, either to try either to get through into flight school or to something else, uh, ordinance, I think, which was guns and stuff like that. And I had this bad wreck, and I couldn't. So, I called the Air Force and told them, and they ended up after I got out of the thing, see I went, I was always big. When I went into the, before I had that wreck, I weighed two hundred and forty-five pounds. I had that wreck, and I came out of the hospital, I weighed one hundred and ninety-one pounds.

SMITH: Ooh.

WHITE: I had a busted jaw and a spleen. Best thing that happened to me. (both laugh) So, where did I get sent? That's when they were, war was 01:23:00over. And they were changing the Air Forces to reserve centers.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: So I got sent to Mitchell Field, Belmont Park.

SMITH: Oh, my.

WHITE: I put in eighteen months at Belmont Park and six and a half months at Pimlico.

SMITH: Oh, goodness.

WHITE: 'Cause the reserve center, I got myself sent to Baltimore.

SMITH: Yeah.

WHITE: And I knew how the race track system worked. And I got two old sergeants, and they just love to bet, so we went up every day, 'cause we worked in the evening.

SMITH: Uh-huh.

WHITE: We went up every day for lunch. I had a deal with the guy, Parker. He'd park the car for us for five dollars, I mean two dollars. And they told me, said, "Don't come up, ever come up here on a holiday or on a--

SMITH: --yeah--

WHITE: --whatcha call it, 'cause we won't be able to do this. And we did, and the two old sergeants were pretty damn good handicappers, and we went up there every day and had lunch, and bet on the races. Then we could come back and go up on the top of the building, and we could watch the races. (laughs)

SMITH: Not too bad an, uh, not too bad an assignment for you. (White laughs) So, okay. All right, but I know it's getting about lunch time here. So, uh--

WHITE: You want lunch?

SMITH: Uh, oh that's fine, but uh, I know it will start getting noisy. There, I have some other questions. Could we?

WHITE: Well, go ahead.

SMITH: Uh.

WHITE: I got nothing to do.

SMITH: Are you sure?

WHITE: Uh-huh.

SMITH: Okay. Um.

WHITE: Depends on your schedule.

SMITH: I just have so much to learn, and I'm, I'm learning a lot from you, and uh, uh, Mr. LeBus. You were talking about him. Now how, he had the farm. You came, uh.

WHITE: I was, see, I was raised on Elsmeade right across the road from Mr. LeBus, and I knew the LeBuses.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: But more, really, the daddy did. Because Snooky, at that time, his daughter had just gotten married.

SMITH: Um-hm.

WHITE: And, uh, she, the LeBuses were living at Plum Lane. That's why I used to drive Mrs. LeBus quite a bit, and that's why I used to go, get 01:25:00to drive them to the Derby and things like that.

SMITH: So, Clarence LeBus was ----------(??)

WHITE: Clarence LeBus, see there was Clarence LeBus and Frazier LeBus. At one time the LeBus family owned so much of Harrison County they asked them not to buy any more of it.

SMITH: Really? (laughs) That's amazing.

WHITE: Now, let me tell you one more story and I'll quit. Mr. LeBus' father was a real good old farmer. And what he did during the Depression was that he would come in and buy your farm with the stipulation that you would manage it.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And he would help finance you. And he would help you go. Well, when the, really it started to go again in the tobacco, really started to go up, and the crops started to go up, and everything started to go up. Mr. LeBus was in a way bankrolling all these people, but the ones that made money ended up as soon as they got enough money, he'd sell 01:26:00them their farm back.

SMITH: Um-hm.

WHITE: And that's where they accumulated so much of Harrison County.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: Because at one time I know that Clarence and Frazier owned over twenty-nine hundred acres.

SMITH: That's huge.

WHITE: A little bit in Bourbon County, Plum Lane, a place down on the, that is now Juddmonte over on Lemon's Mill. That was in LeBus' property. And the big rock quarry down on the Russell Cave Pike. Here we call it the Russell Cave Pike to Cynthiana. See the big rock quarry? That was also LeBus'.

SMITH: Well, now, how involved were they in the horse industry?

WHITE: Well, you see, he was involved a little bit because of Mr., Mr. Phil Chin and Bob Young. And that's when that at Plum Lane there was a racetrack there.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And that's why I said I'm trying to get hold of that book if I could, because I think it's a crying shame that what all they did. I 01:27:00mean this was, this was money for the war effort.

SMITH: Oh, Okay. So that's what it was for.

WHITE: A charity thing. It was by invitation only.

SMITH: Oh, my.

WHITE: They had a, they had a big drunk to go with it. (Smith laughs) They had pari-mutuel wagering. You were invited to run your horses, and if you had too good a horse, you might not get an invitation.

SMITH: My gosh. (laughs) So, now, when you took over, how much property did--

WHITE: --huh?--

SMITH: -- did they have when you came in '57?

WHITE: In, well, Plum Lane was over four hundred acres.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And we, they, the Skain, not the Skain, the state, the estate that ended up with Elsmeade thought they could do a better job with Plum, Elsmeade than what we were doing. So we just decided, Mr. LeBus and I decided just to put, not put anymore money into Elsmeade. We'd 01:28:00put the money and time in Plum Lane.

SMITH: Plum Lane, Okay.

WHITE: That's what we did.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: He had another thing going for him that really helped, too. He was one of the founders of a big laboratory up in New York, up in Ohio called Brookside Laboratory.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: He was one of the bankrollers of that. We learned a lot about pasture management from that.

SMITH: Really? Now was he actively involved in the farm, or did he?

WHITE: Oh, yeah. He owned half of everything. He owned half of the horses, and that's the thing I couldn't explain to this stupid outlaw, his step, his second wife why they, we weren't making much money. I said, "Because you all didn't want to be on, in on the horses." And his bookkeeper at that time said, "Tried to tell you all. You should have let us stayed in with Henry on the horses." Because that's where we were making our money.

SMITH: It's the horses. Okay. But they had half of an interest in it?

WHITE: Uh, yes and no.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: We, we had half interest in most everything except in the sales 01:29:00of some horses. I got three quarters of the commission, and he got a quarter.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: If I sold a horse for, and the commission say was, just for a quick drop, our commission was like eight to ten thousand dollars.

SMITH: Why didn't he want a different arrangement?

WHITE: Who?

SMITH: Mr. LeBus.

WHITE: He didn't. It was his family.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: Not, not his real family.

SMITH: His step.

WHITE: But he remarried, and his second wife was a great old gal in a lot of ways, but ----------(??) was a real pain in the ass if you want to know what I'm talking about.

SMITH: Um-hm.

WHITE: She could only think of one thing.

SMITH: Money?

WHITE: Only thing she didn't want to do was to have to pay half of the bill on all the help and all that stuff. See, because we were paying, he and I together paid all the help.

SMITH: Now when did he pass away? He was with you most of the time, right?

WHITE: Um-hm.

SMITH: Most of your career? Okay.

WHITE: I'm trying to remember. I think it was about 1974 or 5. I'll 01:30:00have to drive by his grave and look on the headstone.

SMITH: Now when you took over for your dad at, at Plum Lane did his clients stay?

WHITE: We lost one horse.

SMITH: That's all?

WHITE: We had one man that moved his mare. Good mare. I hated to lose her, because I was selling the yearlings out of her.

SMITH: That's a pretty good record.

WHITE: You don't, you don't make any money boarding horses. You make money selling horses.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: One of the problems we've got today is that we don't have enough people coming into the business that want to race horses. Clarence loved to race horses. We had a filly that we raised, one filly, and her name was Moment to Buy, and we traded her for a mare that I thought was a stake winner that would be a mighty good broodmare who turned out to be a flunk. This mare won thirteen races in a row.

SMITH: In a row? Gee.

WHITE: And we had, we had her dam. We had her dam in foal to Nijinsky. And, lo and behold, I was at Saratoga and she just won the big race in California, and I had a guy come to me and say, "Would you take eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the dam A Moment to Buy? We know she's in foal to Nijinsky." And I said, "If I don't, my partner will. " (both laugh) We got ready, and Ed came out to examine the mare, and he, the two men that were holding the horse had been with me awhile said that he actually turned white and said, "This mare's slipping her foal right now." She was aborting her foal.

SMITH: At that moment. Oh, gee.

WHITE: She did. And we didn't, we didn't get the money. We sold her later. We bred her again, and got her later, and when dispersed all of 01:32:00the horses we ended up getting six hundred and fifty thousand for her. So that's where I got my bankroll.

SMITH: Okay. So, um, Clarence. I was interested in ----------(??)

WHITE: But, Clarence, Clarence bankrolled me to get me started, and then he also helped me to, he built the stud barn for me, and we had four studs down there. And one time we had five, but the main thing was we had a couple or three good horses. We had a good horse called Sadair.

SMITH: Yeah.

WHITE: that belonged to Mrs. Bigelow. Mrs. Hecht, Mary Hecht, kind of adopted me. She was a great Jew lady.

SMITH: A what?

WHITE: Great Jewish lady.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And, uh, she introduced me to all the Baltimore people.

SMITH: You, you talked about her in the interview at Keeneland. Quite a colorful character.

WHITE: Oh, yeah. Like when she won the Pimlico Futurity she said, "Hell with this trophy. Where's the check?" (both laugh) That was the day 01:33:00that we took everything we had and bet on Sadair. We came out of the paddock up there, and we figured he was at, in the morning paper he was like eight to five.

SMITH: Um-hm.

WHITE: But Tom Roth was in there, and everybody switched off of Sadair onto Tom Roth.

SMITH: Oh.

WHITE: And so I think he paid twelve or fifteen dollars. I think I had two hundred in cash, and so I had bet two hundred dollars on him to win.

SMITH: Oh, okay. Okay.

WHITE: And she bet everything she had on him in cash.

SMITH: Really? Huh. And he won?

WHITE: Huh?

SMITH: And he won.

WHITE: And he won. See, he won the, the only horse that beat him out, and it was partially because of Mary that we got pushed around a little, was Bold Lad, who belonged to Mr. Phipps.

SMITH: Oh, okay.

WHITE: He was two year old champion of the year. He beat Sadair one 01:34:00time.

SMITH: Okay. Hmm. So, all these horses that you've been associated with, um, do you have a favorite?

WHITE: Oh, I guess one of my favorites was Moment to Buy.

SMITH: Moment to Buy.

WHITE: 'Course I, yeah. But uh, one of my pet favorites is this horse Singletary that I sold, the last crop that I sold--

SMITH: --yeah--

WHITE: --and I sold him for thirty-two hundred, thirty-four hundred dollars. He ended up winning almost two million.

SMITH: And who has him?

WHITE: He belongs to a group of horse people, and he stands in California.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: They call themselves the Little Indian Race Stable, Little Red Indian Race Stable.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And they bought him.

SMITH: Did you sell him at Keeneland, or just sold him straight?

WHITE: I sold him at Keeneland.

SMITH: Okay. Um, talked a little bit about uh, Keeneland, um, in the 01:35:00other interview. Uh, you've been coming to Keeneland sales, and I assume Saratoga, for years and years and years.

WHITE: Went to Saratoga once.

SMITH: Just once?

WHITE: Once. Took a bath.

SMITH: Oh, okay.

WHITE: I have a client. See that? See that?

SMITH: Yeah.

WHITE: My father was given that by a client by the name of Frank Conklin. And Frank Conklin was the carnival king of Canada.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And he and I got along great. He used to take us fishing all the time. But once we had Kitty, Kitty didn't like it. Kathy didn't like it 'cause he never invited Kathy to go. We'd go to the Bahamas to go bone fishing. We'd go fishing in the Keys. We'd go fishing everything.

SMITH: Um-hm.

WHITE: Fact is, I've got, no, Mary paid for that. I've got a sailfish that I caught on twelve pound test line.

SMITH: Okay. (laughs)

WHITE: Two hours and twenty minutes.

SMITH: Oh, my.

WHITE: I couldn't straighten my hand for two days. But, uh, I think that probably, where am I trying to go?

SMITH: The sale?

WHITE: No, I'm sitting here thinking about what you asked me about the horses. I liked Sadair. Mary bought that horse for ten thousand. He won almost five hundred thousand. Fact is, in my office, I've got a great big picture of Sadair.

SMITH: Aww.

WHITE: And, uh, you asked me something else, and now I can't remember what it was.

SMITH: Okay, we were, uh, you'd said you had only sold once at Saratoga.

WHITE: Yeah. I, I, well, Clarence was one of the reasons. And he, as Clarence put it, says, "You got to get in bed with Keeneland, 'cause you ain't goin' do no good with Fasig-Tipton, with Fasig-Tipton's come back."

SMITH: Yeah.

WHITE: They've uh, they've really, they filled a void that we had to help take some, it's like this thing we just had here, this five 01:37:00hundred, you see, there was five hundred and eighty horses or ninety horses catalogued, but they only actually sold thirty-nine hundred.

SMITH: Aww.

WHITE: The rest of them were outs or RNAs. There was a tremendous amount of RNAs.

SMITH: Yeah, that's what I heard.

WHITE: The whole sale was not bad, but the whole sale was not quote unquote what you call real good either.

SMITH: Um-hm.

WHITE: But it was a good place to get a horse, to get a runner.

SMITH: So, you, you always sold at Keeneland?

WHITE: Um-hm.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: I sold, I dispersed all the, I got shot out of the saddle by one of the ----------(??) people.

SMITH: Um-hm.

WHITE: I sold the first crop of yearlings, and I think when I sold the first crop of yearlings, I think I got a million, nine horses, I think they averaged, I can't remember what they averaged, but I sold one filly for a million dollars, and then I sold, then I sold the horses real well. Well, when he died, I never had a contract with a client in 01:38:00all my life.

SMITH: Mmm.

WHITE: One of the one of the people involved got the horses and gave them to another person.

SMITH: Oh!

WHITE: So I lost my last sale.

SMITH: Yeah.

WHITE: And they sold, they sold well, but they had kind of a disaster. Two of them got hurt bad. They never did sell.

SMITH: This is because you didn't have a contract? Okay.

WHITE: Yeah, and I was too dumb to draw one up right quick. (Smith laughs)

SMITH: Um, couple of other things, and maybe I'll just talk, maybe I'll talk you into meeting with me again.

WHITE: Oh, okay.

SMITH: So we can talk a little more in depth, 'cause you know a lot.

WHITE: We might need to do that.

SMITH: Okay. Um, you have, uh been very involved with KTA and KTOB?

WHITE: Yeah, the start of it.

SMITH: Yeah, well, how did um, KTA, I've talked a little bit with David 01:39:00Switzer and Alice Chandler, uh, what do you remember of those days when it got started?

WHITE: Well, Alice was the one that really started the KTA.

SMITH: Mmm.

WHITE: 'Cause I was the president a year, two years before Alice, that when I was the KTOB, and then the KTA was spun off because of the problems we had with the HPBA, and all of this came about because of Nick Nicholson.

SMITH: Because of what?

WHITE: Nick Nicholson.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: See, I'm one of the guys, and I'm, I've stayed in the background. I'm one of the guys that really helped bring Nick down here. By accident.

SMITH: Now he was working for uh--

WHITE: --he was--

SMITH: --Ford.

WHITE: Yeah. This was after he'd, yeah, he was still working for Ford when this all came about. And I was up there on one of those, CEM or one of those problems we were having. So, I was on a later plane. So Nick took me to the Monaco where the, the, that I call them the do- 01:40:00gooders, the politicians all gathered at night and had dinner with him. And so we got to talking about what was he going to do, because we knew that, we knew that he just helped get Ford reelected. Then that was his termination of his contract more or less to speak. He said he didn't know, but he said he'd kind of like to come back home. Well, boy I come home, and I got hold of Alice and Bill O'Neill and three or four others and we started. 'Cause we knew we wanted him. He educated us more to politics in three days than we had done in five years. He taught us how to handle Ed Flint who was the head of the HPBA.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: It's like he said, "There's one thing--" one of the things that, two things that Nick taught us. Anytime that you are going to take anything away from a politician, you want to be sure you give him something.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And the other thing is that you always want to know where you stand with a politician before you go in.

SMITH: Yeah.

WHITE: So we needed him and he, the other thing that he really taught us was that it's a whole lot easier for the public to be against something than it is for them to be for something.

SMITH: True. So, uh, you felt that there was a need for a political mind to help--

WHITE: Um-hm.

SMITH: guide the organization.

WHITE: We knew we, we knew then that we were, we really needed it.

SMITH: Okay. Now, Nick was--

WHITE: See, see the, one of the, one of the ones that told us that was Warner Jones.

SMITH: Warner Jones.

WHITE: See, Warner Jones even came to me once and asked me if I'd like to be his farm manager.

SMITH: Really?

WHITE: And I told him, I said, "Mr. Jones." He said, "Mr. Jones, hell, I'm Warner." I said, "Warner, I'd rather be your friend than be your 01:42:00employee." 'Cause he's tough, too.

SMITH: Yeah. (laughs) I've heard stories about Warner Jones. So--

WHITE: So, if I confused you too much, I'm sorry.

SMITH: No! No, not at all. Not at all. Okay. I'm going to ask you one other thing, and then, uh, then we'll talk about maybe, uh, doing this again sometime. Um, in the articles that I was reading, you talked an awful lot, and you've mentioned this, the importance of nutrition. Now you came up with some, uh, what was your philosophy of caring for your horses?

WHITE: My philosophy for what?

SMITH: Caring for your horses. Raising the horses.

WHITE: Uh, my father told me many years, this goes way back, when he was running Plum Lane, and had a lot of horses at that time. We were getting the feed out of Deerwood, Maryland called Deerwood Crunch.

SMITH: Deer----------(??)?

WHITE: Deerwood.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And it was a big pellet about that big. And it didn't have any binder in it, because it was bound with molasses. And we pretty much 01:43:00knew, because of my Virginia connections with Mr. Mellon, what was in it. And daddy always told me the best horses he ever raised were raised on Deerwood Crunch.

SMITH: Deerwood Crunch, Okay.

WHITE: So, I got hold of the, basically I got hold of the formula. Bobby Hall and I went to high school together, the guy that owns Farmer's Feed Mill.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: Now, this one you might want to talk to, too.

SMITH: Bobby Hall?

WHITE: Bobby Hall. Because he started, he and his son run Farmer's Feed Mill, and they feed an awful lot of horses.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: You got Farmer's Feed Mill. You got McCullough.

SMITH: Uh-huh.

WHITE: Uh, you've got, uh, we tried to work with Purina, and they didn't want to talk to none of us.

SMITH: Hmm.

WHITE: And, but uh, then I got in with Bobby, when he was getting here, and he had a little old mill that he was running over on Price Avenue.

SMITH: Um-hm.

WHITE: Then he and I started working with this pellet thing, and we had more and more people wanted to get in on it, and the nutrition thing was just really getting to going good about the time, this was in the late fifties.

SMITH: Late fifties?

WHITE: This was when it really started to get important. Lot of people still don't like to feed pellets, but as I told them, one reason I like pelleted feed was the help couldn't fool with it.

SMITH: Oh.

WHITE: They came in felt bad on Saturday, Sunday morning and forgot to put in this, this, and this. 'Cause so many people would, I caught myself, that it was taking too long every morning to mix the feed. That's when I went to Bobby, and that's when we started talking, but all of them, when I started, Henry Myer was another one from Louisville. He had Progressives. And I, he could have done the job, but he wouldn't change his damn pellet. He had a little bitty pellet 01:45:00about that big.

SMITH: Mmm.

WHITE: We have a name thing for them. We call them rat turds.

SMITH: Okay. (both laugh) Okay.

WHITE: We didn't want that. We wanted a pellet bigger than your thumb. And that's when Bobby got the dyes, and we started, and we made, and that's where we really helped get him off the ground.

SMITH: Okay. Okay. So, you, uh--

WHITE: He and I, he and I, went to U.K. together.

SMITH: Bobby Hall?

WHITE: Um-hm.

SMITH: Okay. And, uh, so you came up with this feed--

WHITE: One thing else--

SMITH: that you used a lot?

WHITE: Huh?

SMITH: Is this what you used then all the time?

WHITE: I used, basically it's a product now called Stam and Oats, but it's basically my formula except for one thing. The, uh, Brookside Laboratory formulated me a supplement to put into it.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: And their idea was this. That if your pastures are short of A, we can put A into your pellet by adding this.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: So that's what we did. And then we took what I had plus what he had. His son went to college. His son came in, and he got a couple of good nutritionists over there. And there, and then there's, I was lucky at this time, too. I was getting a lot of good help from the university. Over at McCullough's there's a young man over there his name is John Lew and he worked for me over a year, maybe a year and a half.

SMITH: Just worked on the farm?

WHITE: Um-hm. He worked ----------(??) I had, oh heck, I had, I had a crop this one year, oh I had like forty horses to get ready for sale, and I had an eighteen stall barn.

SMITH: Whoa.

WHITE: And we kept them up in the evening, and these people, there's seven people came in and groomed those--

SMITH: --forty?--

WHITE: --forty horses.

SMITH: That's a lot of work.

WHITE: And those, and I mean those horses came out of there spotless.

SMITH: Where'd you find the people?

WHITE: Students at the University of Kentucky getting their doctorates and masters that wanted to work on a horse farm, and they thought of the nutrition thing, and then all, and we made a few changes in the feed program, from things that we picked up from them.

SMITH: Now, was that a source of help for other farms as well--

WHITE: --um-hm--

SMITH: --or were you unusual in that?

WHITE: No, no.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: No.

SMITH: Okay. I wanted to uh, I know Alice Chandler, and we talked about her philosophies of horse care, and hers, of course, is 'Keep 'em close to nature' . Um. Besides the feed, did you have any other, um--?

WHITE: Yeah, I like, uh, I like sheds.

SMITH: You like sheds.

WHITE: I don't want horses in a stall anymore. The worse enemy, we came up with Jack Bryans and Ed and I, we came and got a little drunk one night, and we came up with the horse's biggest enemy is his stall.

SMITH: Really? Okay. Well, how so?

WHITE: Because, when you turn them out they get more exercise, and 01:48:00there's too many people right now that are fitting horses that their horses probably for the September sale haven't been turned out--

SMITH: --I know--

WHITE: --on a full time basis since maybe May--

SMITH: --um--

WHITE: --or June.

SMITH: That's hard. Hmm.

WHITE: Alice still turns hers out. She, she does. Her daddy was, you know her daddy's nick name was 'Half Price Headley'.

SMITH: Half Price Headley? I hadn't heard that. Okay. (both laugh)

WHITE: See, and I had another client that I haven't mentioned much, but used to be, and he and I got along pretty good, and we bred pretty well together. It was Bunker Hunt.

SMITH: Bunker Hunt? Yeah, okay, that was mentioned in the--

WHITE: Yeah.

SMITH: You've had some pretty impressive clients.

WHITE: Yeah.

SMITH: But it sounds like Paul Mellon was special.

WHITE: Yeah. He was, I think he was partially one of the reasons was that I had Mr. Burch to help me with that. Mr. Burch really was a big help to me with that, and Elliott, too. And, uh, Mack for putting up 01:49:00with me. (Smith laughs) And, uh, Mack and I became very good friends because of it. Fact is, I'm very guilty. I haven't called him lately. We, for awhile, we were having lunch over here about once every two weeks. Mack's not healthy right now. He's got some problems, and--

SMITH: Yeah, I interviewed him, he was the first person I interviewed.

WHITE: Did he?

SMITH: And, um, he's somewhat concerned about his health.

WHITE: Did you read his book?

SMITH: Yes, I did.

WHITE: Yeah, well, we, I brought, uh, what's her name, the gal that wrote the book, over here.

SMITH: Yeah.

WHITE: And she and I sat in there, talked for about three and a half hours one day about it.

SMITH: Yeah.

WHITE: She kept wanting to know the secrets. I said, "I don't know his secrets. You got to get them from him." (both laugh)

SMITH: I don't think he had very many secrets. Maybe he does. Maybe he does.

WHITE: Yeah, a couple.

SMITH: (laughs) We'll let him tell those. Right?

WHITE: Yeah. He can talk about it. But, naw, if you'd like to get together again, I ain't got nowhere to go. (both laugh)

SMITH: Okay. Okay. What, uh, would you mind if we did this again?

WHITE: Sure. Get your questions together go for it.

SMITH: Yeah, 'cause I, what I'd like to do

WHITE: Go through all of--

SMITH: --is go through it--

WHITE: --through my rambling.

SMITH: And then to figure out where I have some questions and where I don't ask a good follow up. And, and, you know it may not take quite as long, but uh, it will probably help. And, and as I've said, I'm new to the industry. I'm still learning, and I'm trying to learn all the breeds, and you certainly have a background that I think will, will help me to do a better job.

WHITE: One thing you might do is, you need to look into the veterinarians to--

SMITH: Yeah.

WHITE: --to, to, you need to talk to Ed, definitely talk to Ed. Feel him out. See who else. Uh.

SMITH: Uh, Dr. McGee.

WHITE: Who?

SMITH: I'm going to try, Dr. McGee. I'm going to try to get him.

WHITE: Yeah, get Bill before something happens to Bill. Bill, Bill's a nice guy. Bill was a good man. Uh, he and I always got along well. But, because I think that well, I was one of the guys that I said that took Ed Fallon. And there's another character here you might put down, is Bill O'Neil.

SMITH: No, I don't think I have him down.

WHITE: He worked, he worked with Mr. Waldheim at Bwamazon Farm.

SMITH: Okay,

WHITE: And that was a big operation over in uh, Winchester.

SMITH: Ok, now was he a vet.

WHITE: Huh?

SMITH: Was he a vet?

WHITE: No, he's an Irishman that likes a red top van.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: You know what a red top van is?

SMITH: No, I don't.

WHITE: J and B whiskey. (laughs)

SMITH: Okay. Yeah. I haven't interviewed any of the Irishmen yet.

WHITE: But you'll, you'll enjoy Ed.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: But it's too damn bad that we don't that we don't have Jack Bryans.

SMITH: Jack Bryans. Okay. Yeah, I want to know

WHITE: Jack, Jack did this business so much good.

SMITH: Now how long was he at UK? Do you know? ----------(??)

WHITE: Quite a while, until he died.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: He uh, he really, Jack Bryans and I did something we never thought we'd do together. I used to play a lot of golf. Now, I played 01:52:00a lot of golf in the service and when Kathy and I got married, and I started, I said, and I just put my golf clubs up for almost twenty years. Then I got them back out again. And I think that we won, we won the big hurrah at the Idle Hour.

SMITH: At Idle Hour. Okay.

WHITE: And it did it on his driving and my putting, because I got hot, and I mean it. I was hitting putts, well, shoot. I just throw the ball down there and it'd go in the hole. And that's what did it.

SMITH: (laughs) One of those lucky days.

WHITE: Yeah. And he was getting it on the green, and I was putting it in the hole. (both laugh) And we had a good time. But, I think there's so many other people.

SMITH: Um-hm.

WHITE: Let's stop. Now, one you might want to talk to, too, is Glenn Greathouse. He's the blacksmith.

SMITH: Okay. Okay. I was wondering ----------(??)

WHITE: One Jack, one that I really wanted you to talk to just died.

SMITH: Well, we did Jackie Thompson.

WHITE: Jackie Thompson.

SMITH: Um, we did have an interview with him, but it was done by a 01:53:00folklorist who really focused on being a blacksmith, the art of being a black Smith and not on his history. Now, did you work with Jackie Thompson?

WHITE: I didn't, but Glenn Greathouse did.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: Fact is he got started, when Glenn got started, Glenn was trying to be a farm manager. And, uh, I'm not sure whether it was Jackie, or, it may have been Jackie that got him started.

SMITH: Okay.

WHITE: Jack, I came out of school and really started to work. And Glenn came out of school and started having kids. (both laugh)

SMITH: Some people do that. Now, is Glenn still here in, in Lexington?

WHITE: Yeah. He's still here. Fact is, he'll be over there tomorrow night.

SMITH: For your birthday?

WHITE: Yeah. Glenn Greathouse's telephone number is XXX-XXXX. (laughs)

SMITH: Okay. Well, I'm going to go ahead. We can talk some more about people, but I'll go ahead and shut this off for now.

WHITE: Okay.

SMITH: And, uh--

WHITE: Would you like me to get, would you like to get a sandwich?

SMITH: If you would, that would be great.

WHITE: Yeah. I need one.

[End of interview.]