Bud Dimick 100 Years With Horses
Bud Dimick 100 Years With Horses
by Lynn R. Miller of Singing Horse Ranch
photos shared by Betty Cook
Mike McIntosh and I went this winter to the 100th birthday party of our good friend and frequent work mate, Bud Dimick, someone we felt we knew if only because we’d shared so many hours of “teamstering” work together. But we were more than a little surprised by the scope and variety of his long years. At the party, Bud’s daughter, Betty Cook, had assembled walls of photographs chronicling the years. It hit me that here was the evidence to a well-lived life that further explained the great character of George “Bud” Dimick of Madras, Oregon.
What sort of life is worth deeper mention? What manner of living truly offers example and standard? Frequently for me it is that dedicated, independent, specific, handmade, chosen life wherein elegance and poetry is a constant. As Ernest Hemingway figured out early in his career, it is the unpublished poet, the unexhibited artist, the powerful yet unknown individual, all of them together – hundreds of thousands strong, which give us the certain hope that life is deeper and more worthy than the tastemakers would have us believe. Celebrity, and her sick and twisted second cousin fame, serves us up a regular regime of bony, mindless, diet pap in the form of thin lives wastefully spent. No wonder we feel at a loss for the models and examples we crave. But I am getting carried away. Because it is the details of Bud’s life and the pictures which will make my case for those invisible legends in our midst. So this spread is not just about Bud, it is about the many thousands of others like him who people our lucky lives without acknowledgment.
On the surface you could say that George Dimick was an Oregon horseman and logger, born in Washington in 1908, to a hardworking farm family. His father drove the horsedrawn school bus to make extra money. When Dimick senior was stricken by Typhoid Fever, not-so-little 8 year old Bud had to take over the route until his father returned to the job. At age 13, his father having passed away, Bud returned to the job of driving the school bus team. His daughter, Betty Cook recounted one incident,
“He had a horse that balked and the kids would get out and laugh at him. So, one day he got mad and built a fire with sagebrush under the horse. The horse moved – but just forward enough that the wagon caught fire and burned up!”
George’s brother was working on a river boat on the Columbia and told young George about a job available pulling fish nets at the river’s mouth near Astoria. Fish cannery boats would put out nets pointing the lines toward shore while teams of horses pulled the nets in, full of 50 to 120 pound “hog” salmon. The barn was built on a pier and, if the tide was in, the work horses would have to swim to the barn after work, Bud remembered,
“I spent three years catching salmon and had my own team. I got paid $2 a day for the team and $4 a day for myself.”
After that, at age 16, Dimick hopped a freight train and came to Oregon being thrown off in Madras. He went on to Bend, Oregon and went to work catching and breaking wild horses and making moonshine. During this time, though he made a lot of moonshine, his main occupation was horse training.
“I broke a lot of horses to work for people, that’s the way I earned my living. I got $3 to $5 for breaking a horse,” Dimick said.
In the early 30’s Bud logged with horses and worked at log camps. In 1934 he went into business for himself owning sawmills in California and Oregon until 1945, when he set up the D & L Lumber Co in Madras. He remembers his team, Mike and Baldy, and the time spent logging with them on Grizzly Mountain, trucking the logs to his mill in Madras. His important and essential status as millwright earned him a deferral from WWII.
It was in the 1950’s that Bud decided to be done with milling and go into the horseracing business. He taught himself the business and came up with innovations. His early successes landed him jobs working for other race horse owners, allowing him to build up a stable of 33 race horses, one third of which he owned outright. He travelled from Arizona to Montana, from Washington to Idaho, spending four months of the year living at Portland Meadows Race Track. Dimick augmented his income by shoeing race horses for others.
Bud was successful. He was part owner of “Travel Orb,” a thoroughbred who won several large purses including in 1960 a $300,000 one at the Santa Anita Race Track in California. Bud was named the Oregon State Lead Trainer for four years and in 1967 racked up a record of 41 wins in one year at Portland Meadows – a record which stood for 30 years. Several horsepeople have marvelled at Bud’s success and commented that he had to have some secret, he seemed to be able to just ask a horse to run its best and it would.
Retiring from the race horse scene, Bud took a liking to chariot racing and trail riding. In 1977, Dimick acquired a team of Percherons and rebuilt a Conestoga wagon. He started, at that time, teaching interested people how to drive horses. At this time he advanced his wheelwrighting skills and began to build and rebuild buggies, wagons and sleighs, eventually coming to consign several to the Small Farmer’s Journal Auctions.
In 1988, he and his team made their first working visit to our Singing Horse Ranch to be part of that summer’s horsedrawn hay crew. Bud loved any and every chance to actually work his teams. But it always had to be on his terms. I remember another later occasion when Bud was 89 and again had brought his team and mower out to the ranch to help me. He had his horses in one of my stalls and seemed to be struggling to get the heavy harness on one of them. I stepped up, perhaps too aggressively, and said “Here, let me help you with that.” He pushed me back hard, glared and said, “When I can’t harness my own horses I’ll be done. Leave me be.”
And he was competitive. That same day, out mowing, it was just him and me and our two teams. He had a big pair of roans on his #7 and I had long legged Lana and Cali on the #9. We had forty acres to drop, quarter mile square. I let him go first. And we followed close in behind. On the third corner he waved me around. I asked what was wrong and he said “Nothing, your horses want to walk out, let em walk out.” Later he mumbled something about my having a damn fine mowing team and how it was that his geldings weren’t up to the challenge. It had never occurred to me that we were matching teams in some sort of mowing race. But his compliment made me feel a little taller. Measuring up to Bud’s yardstick was and is a big deal to me.
In 1993, he participated in a re-enactment of the Lost Meeker Wagon Train for the Oregon Trail centennial. He also made several other long wagon trains throughout the state. Dimick was a regular participant in Central Oregon parades, draft horse shows and the Dufur Threshing Bee. Bud drove the wagon himself up until he was 94 years old.
Bud’s well liked, especially by the ladies and men who appreciate his long hard life and many skills. “I don’t know why I’m so precious. They peddle a lot of bull about me,” said Bud. Well my friend, let me add to that bull. I know what it means to work along side of you and I say you are the stuff of legends. And better still, you are the sort of example we sorely need these days. You’ve always wanted to “walk out” and you usually found a way to make it happen. Thanks for being my friend and one of my true heroes.
Special thanks to Jim Witty of the Bend Bulletin and Susan Matheny of the Madras Pioneer for allowing me to use some of their materials as reference.
