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Two Slate Signs at Livingston Place

December 25, 2022 | Continental Championship, Poetry | Comments

The Continental Open All-Age Championship Livingston Place in 2002 Cindy Crawford Top Qualifier Barshoe Esquire Champion Dale Bush and Sherry Ebert judged Cindy’s qualifying race for Jimmy Edmundson On the day’s last course Was spectacular Read more

When January Comes

December 24, 2022 | Florida Open All-Age Championship, Poetry, Ted Baker | Comments

When January comes I will be here at home First time since 1994 Won’t be at Chinquapin The second week Of that cold month at home I spent in North Florida From 1995 through 2022 Read more

A Brace at Ames

December 17, 2022 | Fiction, National Championship | Comments

The year was 1938. The place was the Ames Plantation at Grand Junction, Tennessee, 55 miles east of the Mississippi River at Memphis. The event was the National Bird Dog Championship. It had been held most years since 1896, and here since 1901. The subject of this story is the winning performance and the players in it, canine, equine and human. Read more

The Worst Injustice

December 10, 2022 | Ben Reach, The American Field | Comments

“What was the worst injustice you ever saw committed in field trials?” Sam asked Ben on a rainy Friday afternoon as Ben poured them drams of The Macallan in Ben’s library-conference room. Sam was looking to hear a lively story to end his depression after a tough week with patients. “That’s easy. It was Bernie Matthys’s banning of Miller’s White Powder and Ferrel Miller from field trials.” Read more

War

December 3, 2022 | Bobwhite Quail, Short Stories | Comments

Wars between son-in-law and mother-in-law are endemic in our culture, perhaps pandemic in wealthy families and especially when son is Dixie-born and bred and mother-in-law a Yankee. So it was between Eloise Crump of Boston and Doug Hall of Thomasville, husband of Eloise’s daughter Charlotte. Read more

How the Florida Open All-Age Championship Was Different

November 30, 2022 | Florida Open All-Age Championship | Comments

1. No mud — ever, on Chinquapin Farm, even after heavy rain. No creeks, much less rivers. Three man-dug ponds, one at Big House, one on second morning hour course, one on second hour afternoon course. Soil: sand over lime rock, everywhere. Cover: wire grass, everywhere. No crop fields. No wooded areas that cannot be ridden through on horseback. Read more

Defining Moment – A True Thanksgiving Story from 1950

November 24, 2022 | Remembrances | Comments

Is there an event that defines you, that set your course for the rest of your life? At age 83 I look back seventy-two years to such a moment, one dramatic and thanks to Google and Wikipedia and the U S Weather Bureau, easy to research and document. Read more

He’s an Old-Time Handler

November 21, 2022 | Poetry | Comments

He’s an old-time field trial handler Rides right in front of the judges Sings to his dog Lets it hunt through the country Find its own way Read more

The Agency

November 15, 2022 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

Ben Reach and Sam Nixon, MD, ran a secret agency. It was sometimes an employment agency and sometimes a housing agency, and often both, but its customers and patrons never realized it. They thought the curmudgeons just by coincidence ran across opportunities to help folks, their friends, sometimes clients, sometimes patients, sometimes strangers, sometimes a combination. They did not charge for their services but gathered much personal satisfaction from rendering them. Read more

Hunting Grouse

November 8, 2022 | Grouse Hunting, Remembrances | Comments

Hunting grouse when I was young was my escape. No matter my troubles, and they sometimes seemed many, I could make them go away for a day. I would rise at four and jump into my boots, orange shirt, khakis and briar chaps and load my dogs in the trunk of my Dodge Demon and drive west to Augusta, Highland or Bath County, turn out a setter dog at the head of a holler and walk up it. Read more