by Phil Pines

Del Insko entered harness racing’s Hall of Fame nearly 20 years ago and like all his fellow Hall of Famer’s, Del has a lifelike statuette of himself in the Goshen shrine. And if you examine it closely you’ll see something that sets Del apart from all the others – a tiny toothpick sticking out the left corner of his mouth. That’s Del’s trademark: a toothpick. It goes with him wherever he goes. If he ever took it out, he’d be hard to recognize.

Del Insko

An earlier generation of harness drivers had a similar affliction. Doc Parshall, who was a graduate veterinarian, started a public stable of trotting horses, won a couple of Hambletonians in the 1930’s and during his long years of training; he covered many tracks with generous quantities of tobacco juice. Doctors told him to cease and desist. If he didn’t, it would Sick City for Doc Parshall. So Doc substituted toothpicks for tobacco just to keep his jaws in motion. He soon discovered there wasn’t a good gnaw in a pocketful and changed from toothpicks to wooden matches. He chewed them by the gross and it has been estimated that before he went to that great Matchbox in the Sky, Doc had chewed more lumber than any man on earth.

When Parshall was just a tiny baby, there was another “Doc” – Charles (Doc) Tanner, a developer of champions whose wisdom around horses came from experience. It had started early.

Tanner went to St. Joseph, Missouri while still a youngster, asked Colonel W. W. Abbott for a job and got it. Abbott owned a band of horses including a savage brute named Westmont whose reputation was unknown to Tanner. When he innocently went into Westmont’s stall for the first time, the horse lunged at him, teeth bared. Tanner dodged the horse, grabbed a pitchfork and used it to defend himself until he escaped.

The incident so angered Tanner, he wanted revenge. He said to himself: “The first of Abbott’s friends to come around is going to get a taste of Westmont. Or, better still, Westmont might get a taste of him!” A few days later a rather tall, slim man called on Abbott and was being shown around the barns. Tanner tried to trick Abbott away for a while so he could lure Abbott’s friend into close contact with Westmont. It never worked but a few more days went by when Tanner learned that his employer’s friend was none other than Jesse James, the train robber and all-around Bad Guy who lived in St. Joe under an assumed name. There was a price of $50,000 on Jesse, dead or alive, and Tanner always regretted the outlaw didn’t go into the stall with Westmont. “That horse might have fixed him up for good. And I would have collected a fortune. On the other hand, Jesse James, being fast on the trigger, might have shot and killed Westmont and I wouldn’t have had to worry about that crazy horse any longer. I lost in both directions.”

As any follower of the Wild West will remember, Jesse was shot by two members of his own gang. Jesse’s brother, Frank, later surrendered, was twice tried and acquitted and lived out his years on his Missouri farm. Like Jesse, Frank James enjoyed trottin’ horses, too, and acted as a timer at county fairs after he got too old to rob trains.

The 1870’s may have been the end of the James gang but it was the beginning of a new age in harness racing. Equipment was introduced to improve the training of trotters and pacers. Hoppies helped keep the pacers on gait. Holders for reins were an invention prompted by necessity. Too many drivers almost had their fingers sawed off when horses went into sharp, unexpected pulls. Boots and protective padding for harness horses began to appear. The pads kept the iron of the shoe from cutting the flesh of the horse.

And goggles for horses were introduced by one of the sport’s old timers, a fella name Dan Mace. He first used them on his horse, Fearnaught. But the practice never became popular. You see, it was difficult to determine horses’ vision: the critters couldn’t read the eye charts.

Phil Pines is the retired Director of the Harness Racing Hall of Fame and a harness racing consultant for the Catskill Off Track Betting Corporation.