1962-Voice Of The Tennessee Walking Horse 1962 August Voice | Page 7

Voice of the Tennessee Walking Horse
(Continued from Page 4)
Boy is purebred and registered. It is
predicted he will become one of the
great pony studs of history—with
extraordinary bloodlines in the mod­
ern horse generations.
This pony has been trained all year
by Doug Wolaver of Giles County—
who rode Mack K’s Handshaker to
the 1960 World’s Championship.
Jimmy “broke” the pony at the 5,000-
acre Ellis plantation near Selma, Ala.,
where Jimmy trains six of the plan­
tation’s 30 head of Walking Horses.
He and his father decided Sun’s
Glory Boy needed professional train­
ing as the pony showed such great
promise.
Jimmy is one of Alabama’s great
high school athletes, starring as a foot­
ball quarterback (weighing 185
pounds), basketball center (scored
700 points last season) and pitches
baseball (had a 10-2 record for last
spring.)
In Celebration competition his rib­
bons include reserve champion on
Merry Little Lady at age 14, first
place in a preliminary, and another
reserve championship. In 1955 he won
the Tennessee State Fair champion­
ship for pony riders at age 10.
This year at the Celebration he will
also compete in the 2-year-old stallion
class with Hobo Boy, sired by the
plantation stallion, Go Boy's Cadillac,
out of Easter Morn. Last year he won
the Alabama junior championship on
“The Governor,” a gelding.
Jimmy is an expert mechanic, keeps
all the plantation motorized equip­
ment in running shape and is a mem­
ber of the Orrville High School’s Beta
Club. He plans to study agriculture
in college—then return to the plan­
tation to help his father run the big
show there. Cattle, cotton, other field
crops, horses and humans make up
the big farming team where Jimmy
will be in competition with Nature
for the rest of his life.
His father is one of the modern
pioneers in Tennessee Walking Horse
history, attended the first meeting of
the Breeders’ Assn, at Lewisburg in
1935, and served as a judge at the
1951 Celebration when Talk of the
Town began his unparalleled 3-year
reign as World’s Grand Champion.
Jimmy McFarlin Graduated
From Shetlands To Walkers
Murfreesboro’s J i m m y McFarlin,
who cut his “riding teeth” on Shet­
land ponies, will have one of the Cele­
bration pony favorites of 1962 well
5
in hand when he enters the ring at
Shelbyville.
He has shown Scat Man, his 6-year-
old pony, in a host of Tennessee com­
petition this season with consistent
results.
Jimmy has taken eight blue ribbons
during the current season on Scat
Man. These included the highly im­
portant Spring Jubilee at Columbia,
Clarksville, Nashville Junior Riding
Club, Lafayette, Woodbine in the
Nashville area, Chapel Hill, Erin and
Jamestown.
Last season the McFarlin Stables
acquired Scat Man immediately after
the Celebration—buying him from
Bill Adams of Edgerton, Ky. Jimmy
rode Scat Man in the Walking Pony
Championship Stake for Adams and
placed sixth. He took ninth in the
preliminary event.
Scat Man is now six years old and
in the prime, according to show-
watchers in Tennessee.
After the Celebration last year
Jimmy won fourth in the Southern
Championship show at Montgomery
and first at McMinnville.
Jimmy is a senior at Murfreesboro
Senior High School this year, active
in the FFA, and plans to study agri­
culture in college.
His father, E. P. McFarlin, operates
Puritan Feed Mill at Murfreesboro,
and distributes livestock and poultry
feed over a wide area in Middle Ten­
nesse e. He has been in the milling
business for 32 years.
Last year he built new facilities for
McFarlin Stables on Highway 41—
near the city limits of Murfreesboro.
The 20-stall barn is 168 feet long and
44 feet wide.
McFarlin was born on a farm 10
miles east of Murfreesboro, and the
farm had Tennessee Walking Horses
on it.
Mrs. McFarlin, the former Lorene
Mason, was born about 20 miles
southeast of Murfreesboro at Noah—
formerly known as Need Mo (when
the community needed more fami­
lies—but it was changed to Noah when
the community had enough, the story
goes.) The Masons were neighbors to
the James R. Brantley family—and
she witnessed great pioneering of the
Tennessee Walking Horse at the
Brantley establishment—where major
contributions to the breed took place.
Therefore Jimmy McFarlin, age 16,
carries a heritage of the Walkers on
both sides of his family when he
enters the Celebration ring in late
August.
'Queen' Jan Wright Clucks,
Talks Her Horses To Throne
When blonde, blue-eyed, Texas-
born Jan Wright, age 10, of Lone Star
Stables, clucks and talks to Walkaway
Dark Shadow, the 5-year-old mare
gives out and goes on with something
extra. This consistent team makes 84-
pound Jan a heavy favorite for top
honors in her age juvenile class at the
1962 Celebration in Shelbyville.
The Nacogdoches nympth also goes
on with other horses, such as Walk­
away Honeytime and Jet’s Untouch­
able, the last-mentioned owned by
O. D. (Peck) Carlton of Albany, Ga.
Those tlrree horses carried Jan to
the throne as “Little Queen of the
Southwest Circuit” with the follow­
ing triumphs this season:
New Orleans, La.—First in Equi­
tation Class, Reserve Championship
in Equitation, First in Juvenile Walk­
ing Stake;
Beaumont, Tex.—Reserve in Juve­
nile Walking Stake;
Little Rock, Ark.—First in Equi­
tation Class, First in Equitation
Championship, Third in Juvenile
Walking Stake;
Oklahoma City, Okla.—First in
Juvenile Equitation Stake; First in
Juvenile Walking Stake;
Tulsa, Okla.—First in Juvenile
Walking Stake;
Houston, Tex.—F i r s t in Juvenile
Walking Stake.
This stretch of victories, unparal­
leled in all history of the Southwest
shows, was not made by a professional
person. They were piled up by a live­
ly little girl who made “straight A’s”
in her fifth grade school work for the
last month of the term—and who took
a 6-week vacation at camp after rid­
ing the circuit.
It was Jan’s first long stay away
from home, but she loved the camp
and Lhe camp loved her. She was one
of 12 campers, out of 237, to win mem­
bership in all seven of the “camp
clubs”—from which she chose four.
On a vacation visit to Tennessee
and Georgia, Jan found no juvenile
or lady riders classes where she was
eligible with her mare, so she entered
open mare classes at Ardmore, Fayette­
ville and Pulaski in Tennessee and at
Canersville, Ga. Her wins were sec­
ond, third and two firsts respectively.
In the process there were 30 men
riders placed behind her—a competi­
tive riding exhibition believed un­
precedented in Tennessee Walking
Horse circles for a 10-year-old girl.
(Continued on Page 12)