Midnight

DESCRIPTION: "Under this sod lies a great bucking horse. There never lived a cowboy he couldn't toss. His name was Midnight, his coat black as coal, If there's a hoss heaven, please, God, rest his soul."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1963
KEYWORDS: horse death recitation
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1924 - First appearance of the bucking horse "Midnight" at the Calgary Stampede
1933 - Midnight is retired
1936 - Death of Midnight. This poem was reportedly inscribed on his monument
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REFERENCES (1 citation):
Ohrlin-HellBoundTrain 80, "Midnight" (1 text)
NOTES [273 words]: The horse "Midnight" was especially associated with rider Pete Knight, for whom see the entry on "Pete Knight." Knight owned bucking horses, but Midnight was not one of them; it was owned by one Jim McNab (Darrell Knight, Pete Knight the Cowboy King, Detselig Enterprises, 2004, p. 51). It was a "tall black gelding, sired by a Percheron-Morgan cross on the Cottonwood ranch in southern Alberta's Porcupine Hills" (ibid.), and apparently was born in 1916, since it was eight years old at the time it made its appearance at the MacLeod rodeo in 1924. The horse was "saddle-broken," but too unpredictable to be ridden (Knight, p. 52).
Later in 1924, the horse was in action at the Calgary Stampede, where it threw on Cecil Henley; because the Calgary event was so big, it was there that Midnight started to build a reputation (Knight, p. 55). It was enhanced when the Alberta Stampede Company, the first organized traveling rodeo in Canada, purchased the horse for its bucking horse exhibitions -- paying an amazing $500 for a horse that was otherwise too wild to be used for anything (Knight, p. 65).
The Stampede Company closed down in 1928, and Midnight was sold to an American named Jim Eskew (Kinight, p. 94). The horse was retired in 1933 (Knight, p. 142), though it was famous enough to be brought out of retirement at least once, soon after, to be taken on a tour of Britain (Knight, p. 149). The horse died in Colorado in 1936 (Knight, p. 173)
There is at least one book about the horse: Sam Savitt, Midnight: Champion Bucking Horse, Scholastic Book Services, 1957. Based on the publishers, it sounds like a children's book. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.5
File: Ohr080

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