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In 1909, a group of U.S. sportsmen headed by Kentucky's Matt Winn built a track at Juarez, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso. The grandstand and the barns (where a horseman could sleep when he couldn't afford a $4-a-week room in El Paso) were made of adobe. It looked good to Plain Ben. Jones: there was money for anybody smart enough to win it, and plenty of excitement for all.
One day before dawn, Pancho Villa's men shot up the town and a scare spread along shed row's grapevine: "They're looking for black horses." Ben's best horse, Lemon Joe, was black as coal. He got some mud in a hurry, swabbed it on one of Lemon Joe's legs, covered it with flour and painted generously with iodine. When Villa's men came by later in the day, they passed up Lemon Joe after one look.
Although Ben seldom went looking for trouble, he knew what to do when it found him. In Juarez' Black Cat dance hall one ' night, he was dancing with a Mexican matador's girl friend. The matador took exception, and let fly with a knife. Ben returned the compliment. One punch sent the Señor reeling into the street, busting one half of a swinging door on the way out.
Back to the Farm. His third winter in Juarez, Ben had a lightning-fast filly named Julia L. (after his mother) and he persuaded his parents to come down for a visit. Then he persuaded his father to bet $10 on her.
Julia L. won by a Mexican mile, and Banker Horace Jones began to wonder how long this sort of thing had been going on. Next spring, he gave Ben money to buy a stallion and some brood mares.
Ben Jones didn't train horses then the way he does now for Calumet Farm. "I was always on short money," he says, "always in a drive." He wanted horses with plenty of lick that could win and be converted into cash. After racing came back to New Orleans in 1915, the Jones Stock Farm made it a habit of showing up about Jan. 1 and winning most of the races for two-year-olds. "Had to," says Ben, "we were always low on cash after laying up on the farm all fall."
Second Look. His early habit of looking for speed, above all else, has stayed with him. "Once in a while you get one that's got endurance too," he says. The implication is a fact: a good trainer can build up endurance, but speed is something that horses have to be born with.
Ben Jones himself was born with an instinct that is his greatest asset. In the morning on the race track, a hundred horses can gallop past and he will never notice them. But the first time a good one goes by, he will instinctively turn and give a second look. Plain Ben can't explain why. He has no set idea what a good horse should look like or at least he can't put it in words, because "you don't know what it is until you see it." Neither can he explain his knack of knowing when his horses are "doing good" without consulting a stop watch.
First Derby. In 1932, "money was awful scarce" for Ben when Herbert M. Woolf, a Kansas City clothing merchant, phoned him in New Orleans to offer a job. Ben became trainer for Woolford Farm, a betting outfit that went as high as $20,-ooo on a race when the owners thought the horses were right.