Nevada State Journal from Reno, Nevada • 8

PAGE EIGHT NEVADA STATE JOURNAL RENO NEVADA SUNDAY JULY 31 1955 Thoroughbred Horses Prove They Can Take efficiency in training and administration The honor is the fourth won by detachment giBii 2 it let dudes who ride have good horses for one thing it might be bad medicine a horse soon finds ways of getting rid of a passenger he like But anyone who can sit a horse properly is wel come to exercise one of the thoroughbreds The children ride them all the There is something satisfying ly beautiful in watching these clean bred horses cantering against the spectacular Pyramid backdrop of lake and mountain It is a sight that often takes the newcomer unawares he goes home talking about it After all what would the West be without the horse? And Sutcliffe for all its luxury and sophistication is still an oasis in a wilderness than is one of last cattle empires Here men are bom and raised with horses they are as much a part of their lives as as their pick up trucks and the deep freeze to for ex 1 AITHUL SAILOR WORCESTER Mass (IP) George May 19 of this city who is now a student in the med ical corps school of the Naval Training Center in Bain bridge Md makes the 700 mile round trip each Weekend to teach a Sunday school class for a couple of hours at the Wesley Methodist Church here And one of the best ways these fellow strangers embark on a student tour so many of which fered here in Vienna So recent four week Easter vacation we did just that we joined a student group touring Spain We left Vienna four Ameri cans and six Austrians with the remainder of the group coming from England to meet us in Barcelona The train ride from Vienna to Barcelona was 49 hours of almost uninterrupted travel Anyone with a knowledge of European trains will under stand the condition we were in when we arrived (Eight people in a compartment) We met the rest of our group and here as sumed our full international flavor or coming from England were no English or Scots but the following: two Chinese Malay ans two Singapore Chinese one Hawaiian and one Canadian We all immediately became the best of friends and proceeded on our strenuous 16 day tour The first days in Barcelona and Madrid were not memorable These are lovely cities indeed but not what one would imagine as So we spent these days getting acquainted with one another and discovered that only three of the sixteen could mus ter up a passable Spanish This caused several later difficulties since no two people wished to shop in the same stores After seeing some of the beau tiful paintings of El Greco in the El Prado museum in Madrid we were naturally eager to make the excursion to Toledo his former home There we also the Toledo artesans and watched their minute delicate work as they fashioned beautiful articles from the famous Toledo steel We were all so entranced with some aspect or other of Toledo that we kept losing members here and there until the whole group dissolved entirely How they all managed to get back to catch the same train remains a mystery to the group leaders El Escorial Another day took us to El Escorial the austere monastery palace built by Philip II Perched amid the barren rocks of central Spain it is a gigantic building with over 100 miles of corridors King Philip also built a fantastic mausoleum to house the remains of his royal forebears including Charles In a huge room stand row upon row of coffins all ex actly alike with names inscribed in Latin Here rest the kings and queens of Spain the succes sors to the royal house of Haps burg Since our main interests did not concern royal remains and the deplorable lack of teeth prevented us from understanding his explanation of the inhabitants several of us decided to leave the mau soleum and search for something more cheerful to behold We moved ahead but the exit was locked We raced back to the entrance locked Almost frantic we hunted for a door but none were to be found To prevent the tenants from coming arid going no doubt Resigned we perched on the steps and leaned upon Alphone XIII untiLthe man with no teeth let us out into the bright sunshine Our next stop was at Cordoba once the Moorish capital where we visited the mosque intended to be the second Mecca upon which is built a cathedral (actu ally within the mosque) Here stands a huge crucifix surrounded by thousands of red and white Arabian arches a curious con trast of East and West Seville rom there we went to Seville to view the festivities and proces sions of Holy Week Crucifixes madonnas figures of saints are taken from the churches decor ated with gold and silver flanked by thousands of candles and placed upon platforms Then the entire thing supported by the shoulders of forty men is carried through the streets of the city accompanied by black (sometimes colored) hooded figures carrying candles The procession halts at intersections amid dense crowds and singers on the balconies above exchange weird Arab like chants After the delivery of a particu Those whose affection jealous of its growing popularity may however take heart There is no present danger that Pyramid will become over populated the Indian Council at Nixon still sets its face adamantly against giving any residential permits so that no houses or hotel other than for Indians can be built along the lake's shores for many years to come At present the non Indian resi dents in the immediate vicinity of the lake can be counted on both hands and there are only three or four patented ranches within the reservation There is Pyramid Lake Ranch itself built in 1878 by the Sutcliffe family and now managed by Harry and Joan Drackert there is Mrs beautiful ranch in Quail Canyon there is Letty ranch at Pyramid 18 miles above Sutcliffe and the post office Ad jacent to the lake are Hard scrabble Ranch owned by the Matley brothers and Big Canyon Ranch which Harry Richman re cently sold while retaining use of the palatial ranch house itself Also there are a few a very few mining claims carrying resi dential permits which have to be renewed every five years and paid for annually Sometimes these mines have been inactive for years the Indian Council allowing the owners to continue as resi dents so long as they conform to Indian regulations Still Wilderness On the eastern shore of the lake there are no residents not even Indians excluding a few uranium prospectors who have taken out temporary permits This region comprising the Lake Ranke and only forty miles from Reno is among the few true wilderness spots left in the Union One may ride or walk for days without see ing a living and this in scenery which surpasses the imagination Anyone may venture into these fastnesses but for extended trips camping permits should be ob tained from the Indians They make no fuss however if merely a weekend trip you plan but you may not fish in the lake without both a Nevada and a special Indian license which costs 8 for one day or $3 for the sea son Similar permits should be ob tained for boating though the regulations here are not very strictly enforced Incidentally you will be astonished at the sound deadening qualities of the lake a dozen motorboats can be within sight of Sutcliffe and scarcely a sound be heard Harry Drackert with the co operation of Indian officials and county commissioners early this year installed a landing place for boats at Sutcliffe and a parking area for cars fewer of which now get stuck in the sand He plans further improvements in collabo ration with the Indians whose sole property the whole of Lake Pyramid has been since the reser vation was established You may wonder why I am giving you information which perhaps you knew already There are two reasons for this The first is that despite its growing popularity among vacationers and divorcees Pyramid Lake still remains largely unknown to many Reno residents People who know every inch of Tahoe often have to ask their way to Pyramid which is a larger lake than Tahoe but of a completely different character Experiment With Horses The other reason is that I really started to write this piece about Harry experi ment in horse breeding which like the lake is too little known But when I came to gather the material I found that about all I knew about" a horse was the rela tive positions of its head and tail ridden horses most of my life too But then I once knew a girl who worked in a public library who never read a book There is a relationship between the real horseman and the horse which has been always more or less of a mystery to me or instance I had always as sumed that thoroughbreds were raised uniquely for racing that they were considered useless for ordinary riding or ranch work Harry disposed of this idea with a snort thoroughbred raised ranch fashion can outrun and outwork any other horse" he said have more strength general ro bustness and stay longer too Of course short bodied thor oughbreds are favored for ranch work because they are more easily maneuvered for roping but the fact is ranchers all over the west now are coming around to the use of thoroughbreds in preference to other horses even quarter horses which were bred for ranch purposes The thoroughbred deserves and needs more attention than the With an adventurous spirit we boarded the wooden coaches The adventurous feeling soon wore off and was replaced by calluses on certain parts of our anatomies The coach made of wooden slats was ricketey enough and to help matters along the rail ends were laid about an inch and a half apart so that the sideways sway was nicely counterbalanced by a jolt every tw seconds It was like riding in a matchbox along a test ing course for tubeless tires As if this were not enough to keep us awake the car soon filled with soldiers who laughed sang and told jokes to one another at the top of their lungs Spaniards in general are about as inhibited as atom bombs but the wild abandon of the soldiers causes tongue clucking among their more sedate countrymen The girls immedi ately noticed a dark eyed young man with a shy smile who watched us intently After a week with out hot water we were a sorry sight but we hardly merited such unwavering attention At the first opportunity he leaped into a con versation and produced an an cient tattered English grammar by which he explained he hoped to learn enough to land a job in the He carefully pointed out in halting broken phrases that he was bom in Puerto Rico and thus would encounter little diffi culty Conversing with him was a slow process since he refused to revert to Spanish but it helped pass the time The more adventurous of the group discovered the long board running alongside the coach by J' I I I AT I Kl ivas awarded members of the Medical Detachment 421st AAA JviLMvR Ivr I I INKJ bn of National Guard during the recent summer field training at Boise Pictured (left to right first Lt Col Alan Roche Cpl Richard Bortolin Sgt Robert Welty Sgt 1c Stanley Philipie Detachment Sgt Robert Philipie (back row) Cpl Richard Hodson Pfc Richard Davis CpL Charles Harmon Pfc Chester Hines Cpl Walter Rusche and Pvt Hugh Barnhill Others not pictured are Capt Elmer Hanson commanding officer of the unit and Cpl George Bubier Sixth Army inspection teams bestowed the ratmg for the IIP A recently brought together a mini I vUl wi JrAllN ature United Nations Shown in Madrid before another pair of travelers Don Quixote and his faithful Sancho Panza are (left to right) Karl Mueller Stanley Lau of Hawaii Yeow oo of Malaya Mrs Katl Mueller and ritz a Viennese (known as ritz because no one in the touring party could pronounce his last name) Mr and Mrs Mueller are gradu ates of the University of Nevada and now are continuing their studies in Europe Mrs Mueller is the former Miss Carol Nor mandy daughter of Mr and Mrs rank Normandy of £000 Plumas St Reno plain plug but who would grudge this extra attention to tan animal able to do tw ice the work and of which he can feel Since 1948 Harry went jnto the horse breeding business in 1948 at Pyramid but he has been asso ciated with the breeding and rid ing of quadrupeds all his life from his early days as a cowboy in Montana to the days when he ran a stable at Lake Tahoe When he was younger zhe was adjudged Champion Cowboy of America at Madison Square Gar den So if anyone knows about cow ponies he should and he has had a good many years now to study the thoroughbred At first he subscribed to the popular idea about the thorough bred that it was delicate when young difficult to breed requir ing special pasture and so forth Men whose only interest in the thoroughbred is their ability to run fast have long watched Pyramid Lake expe riment with skepticism How can you raise a race horse they ask without the blue grass meadow the exercise track the heated stable the spe cial hay and grain? The very though of breeding thorough breds in the rocky purlieus of Pyramid Lake what grass there is belongs to the bunch variety and where there are only stretches of sandy beach as working tracks strikes these conservatives as absurd If Harry has confounded the ex perts it is because mainly he both understands and loves horses To watch him among them there are always a dozen or so colts or mares cantering about the Pyra mid Lake Ranch paddocks is an exercise in gentleness and the au thority of intimate know how He breeds all his mares himself using more care eugenically than some doctors use for human babies he brings their progeny into the world trains them from their first unsteady wobble and doctors them when they are which often Racers Make Good or some years now Harry has been racing both thoroughbreds and quarter horses in California and other western states and he has won a respectable number of races Thoroughbreds of his own breeding and training which won last year included Kitty Easter Regards and Joanna which had a number of firsts at Portland Arizona Downs and other Arizona tracks Made to Go which beat all the horses than ran 1 2 3 and 4 in the Arizona Derby last year but which entered in the event Kayloma which won handily at Pleasanton (the oldest track in America) Reservation which came in first at Santa Anita and Del Mar and Desert Stone which ran away from the field at Bay Meadows famous quarter horse Washoe Queen has of course a long list of successes winning last year at Bay Mead ows Los Alamitos Sacramento State air Pleasanten and else wheer His other notable quarter horse Kaho was an outstanding performer this year at Los Ala mitos and will be seen in Septem ber at Washoe County air The well known Indian trainer Levi raser will have him in hand I asked Drackert if he thought there were any special reasons why Nevada bred horses did so well on California tracks and he nodded emphatically healthier all he said hoofs are tougher and the altitude gives them more lung space which in turn makes them good stayers and gives them that extra spurt of speed which wins races Moreover in Nevada we have fewer flies and parasites to contend witl and our horses do not suffer from the worst plague of sea level stables worms Our mountain pasture hay is of a finer quality than you find in the lower No Precedent In this respect it will be re membered that in the last years of the old century hay from Washoe Valley was exported even to England for race horses and the breeding studs of the same valley were famed throughout the world The Winters racetrack near ranktown was then fam ous it was on the shores of Washoe Lake on the Theodore Winters property Winters hav ing been a horse breeder who had begun a profitable career north of Pyramid Lake in the Smoke Creek desert So Harry Drackert has precedent in plenty to back him up At Pyramid Lake Ranch it is no oddity to find dudes riding thoroughbreds with western sad dles I had supposed thorough breds were trained only to the English or so called racing saddle but Harry said the kind of saddle on its back made little or no dif ference to the horse he said The Gaff Right Along With on this forlorn and locust ridden oasis in 1862 Not Many renchmen The troops I am with are mostly young Germans recruited by the Legion among Hitler youth who returned to their homes in the rench zone of Germany jobless after the last war knew only sol diering took off their German uniforms and put on the rench The next heaviest percentage are Spaniards Italians are third There is not an American or Eng lishman in the ranks but many are veterans of Indochina They are led by rench Col Jacques erry famous through out the Sahara as a brilliant grad uate of St Cyr West Point) and lifelong Legionnaire with 20 years of desert combat ex perience much of it as command er of the camel corps He is an in the flesh Beau Geste comman dant if ever you saw one open throated white tunic campaign ribbons swagger stick enormous Turkish pantaloons and all My first look at the new results against the terrorists came through him When Governor General Sous telle recently took over in Algiers he supplemented military person nel changes by importing from Morocco rench local civil admin istrators who had a long history of good relations with Berber tribesmen kindred people to those involved in the fighting here Soustelle sent them into these Aures communities as trou ble shooters Terrorists atrocities in their in dependent movement have been largely concentrated at this stage not against the rench and for eigners but chiefly against fellow Arabsfriendly to the rench Arabs Cowed A major difficulty for the rench has been that the terror ists so intimidated their Berber neighbors by spasmodic assassin ation disfiguration plunder and general destruction that the pop ulation refused rench protectors even the slightest Information about who the terrorists were for fear of their lives The Mafia like tactics aided by this wild terrain make rench protec tive measures all but impossible and again we knew the terrorists of the night before were mixing with their victims in the village market places the next says Soustelle "but it is only now that villagers will aid us in captures by secretly supplying information and will join us as an armed auxiliary force against their own ma This decisive change' is evident and is credited to the imported functionaries experienced in the handling of the oppressed tribes men inside the villages a very heroic line of work in these wilds I might add Accordingly you can see today in a ravaged mountain town like Batna where much of the trouble started armed native Arab vigi lante units formed into companies as large as 250 men marching with the rench in self protec tion Until recently this whole XSee oreign Page 26 CoL 1) PpAVI Kjr that thoroughbreds are as gentle as any ranch pony when they have the right llV I IN KJ training Nancy Riley 8 of New York City rides one of Harry fine horses Andyk Drackert makes a specialty of thoroughbred horses at his Sutcliffe ranch MT Karl Muellers ind Much To Interest Them Note: Mrs Karl Mueller author of the ac companying report has been recommended and accepted for a extension of her ulbright scholarship Dur ing the summer Mr and Mrs Mueller have been lecturing on education methods to teachers in the smaller villages of Austria They will remain at Innsbruck for the coming year with both Mr and Mrs Mueller continuing their studies and lectures Mrs Mueller is the former Carol Normandy daughter of Mr and Mrs rank Normandy of Reno) By MRS CAROL MUELLER One of the most interesting facets of life and study in Europe is meeting students from various parts of the world and exchang ing customs and ideas with them to meet is to holiday are of for the larly long and difficult refrain re quiring tremendous lung power and a set of limber vocal chords the crowd cries with all the hearty approval they would give to a well executed veronica or pass in the bull ring Our Chinese friends with re markable good humor were rapid ly becoming accustomed to being the center of a good deal of atten tion especially on the part of the small fry When the three girls stepped out in their Chinese dresses high at the neck and slit to the knee eyes popped and mouths gaped along every street through which they passed Most Spaniards had only seen Orien tals in pictures and the sight of live specimens in their own cities was exciting to say the least Several people asked if they were real honest to gosh Chinese from China and not the European variety whatever that difference may be But their tremendous popularity reached its peak in Granada where they paid a visit to the gypsy caves Unfortunately the gypsies were not so over whelmed that they forgot charge their customary fees picture taking and dancing hibition Granada rom Seville we rode through some of loveliest scenery on the way to the beautiful south ern city of Granada Perhaps a word of warning here would not be amiss He who travels through Spain should either bring his own transportation with him or be very very careful never to travel third class on Spanish trains Experiment at Pyramid Lake Pays Off By BASIL WOON You will be glad to hear some of you (the others that Pyramid Lake premier desert attraction at last seems to be coming into its own Until this year the majority of guests at Pyramid Lake Ranch were six weekers come for the well known reason This year vacationers outnumber them two to one lor the lake makes them oreign Legion Advances Against Terrorist orces In Sahara Desert Campaign note: Henry Taylor obtained special permission from the rench government to go into the wild Aures Mountains of North central Algeria There he saw the fighting be tween the rench and the forces of the fanatical Arab liberation of God" Taylor reports from deep in the Sahara Desert that the rench believe they are bringing under control one of the last actual fighting centers of the world They foresee no new Korea or Indochinai The following United Press dispatch was sent by courier from the Sahara oasis to Algiers and from there cabled to New York) ormer Reno Couple Visits Spain During Educational Year Abroad which the conductor climbed from one compartment to another and went for a walk They came back and reported that if they had had longer arms they could have picked wild flow ers for us At last we arrived in Granada after twelve hours in the matchbox which had covered the remarkable distance of 150 miles Holy Week We saw more of the fabulous Holy Week processions in Gra nada but the most impressive sights by far were the magnifi cent Alhambra and Generalife The Alhambra with its exquisite Moorish architecture and fine plaster domes and pavilions stands in excellent contrast to the mighty palace of Charles which seems almost crude as one turns from delicate lacy rooms and patios to behold giant stone pil lars We spent an entire after noon basking in the sun in the breathtaking gardens of the Gen eralife the summer palace Trimmed Cyprus arches wild splashes of colorful blossoms and everywhere the music of running water We tore ourselves away from Granada to travel to the coast town of Alicante where we waited for the boat that would take us to the island of Mallorca in the Balearic Islands Only a few people got seasick on the overnight boat trip We were very greatful that none were in our party We first landed on the island of Ibiza about six that morning and had our break fast in a sidewalk cafe This cafe was only 50 yards from where our ship was tied up We sat at tables out in the open and had coffee and breakfast cake The sun was just coming up over the sea light ing the whole harbor when we again boarded the ship to continue the trip to Mallorca We arrived at Mallorca about 2 pm Mallorca is the largest of the islands in this group Palma is the largest city and the capital of Mallorca Palma is a clean quiet beautiful place in which we gratefully relaxed After two days of relative peace and quiet we proceeded back to Barcelona from whence we took the train to Vienna and had the whole 49 hour business to live through again In spite of the fact that it was snowing when we got home Vienna had never looked so good to us before By HENRY TAYLOR (Copyright 1955 by United Press) SAHARA OASIS LAGHOUAT Central (UP) There probably is no rougher country on earth than these wild Aures mountains with their gorges and passes down here in the deep Sahara But in their bloody fight against fanatical Arab rebels the rench are get ting along better than the world has been led to believe rench intelligence teams say arms coming across the Tunisian border are now a trickle Among 2000 weapons seized not One was of modern manufacture Although the terrorist areas down here have been largely out of bounds ever since the fighting started rench Premier Edgar aurein Paris instructed Algeria Gov Gen Jacques Soustelle to open the terrorist areas to me rench Air orce Col reder ick Riedel flew me from Algiers to this sun baked wind swept fort of the rench oreign Legion (temperature 120 on landing) whose gleaming yellow walls parapets and barracks were built 7 4 at f'1 SMS' Mali 5 0 MB wk aBk IP' iw a ManasK? fi lv? i jem BH 7' azh SES 1kHBlx Z' '7 ilaSfaE 11 Su 7 'V iL VS A XX jL Tiz 1 SLJL as as jr 17TT 7 I sw I liX t' nanussfe 3t'.