A Son's Tribute: Burning Fire, the Arizona Razorback

Most likely you’ve all heard the old cliché, “Never look a gift horse in the mouth”. In Burning Fire’s case, the saying was, “Never look at a gift horse’s ribs either.”

March 23 marked the eleventh year since my father’s passing, and I am often reminded that my father could do remarkable things with a horse. Burning Fire was no exception. As he aged, my Dad never liked working with more than one or two horses at a time. 

Having lost a couple of horses through the claiming box, he'd settled in for the winter of 1989 in Tucson, Arizona, with plans to sell feed to the other horsemen there. Dad had a way of getting acquainted with the local farmers everywhere he went, and that often meant good deals on hay and oats.

He bought grain in bulk, often whole bins, and then he’d haul it to the track, clean it, and sell it all by the gunny sack. Usually, he doubled his money, and more importantly, it kept him active and close to his friends at the race track.

I was laid off from my construction job the same winter, so I decided to travel to Tucson and see how Dad was doing, and maybe pick up some work at the copper mines in Arizona. Upon my arrival at Rillito Park I discovered that dad had acquired a new horse.

This in itself wasn’t surprising, but what I saw in the stall was. When Dad took me to the stall the horse was in and I thought I was looking at warmed over death. The thing in front of me was more a bag of bones than a horse, with ribs and backbone exposed everywhere. In fact, I’ve seen rescue animals that didn’t look as bad.

All I could say was, “well I hope you didn’t pay too much for him, Pops.” “He didn’t cost a dime,” said Dad. “However I might be broke by the time I get any weight back on him”.  I had to know how this all came to be, so Dad explained everything to me as we had coffee in the tack room.

“Old Okie was doing his chores awhile back and a fellow approached him about a horse he wanted to give away.”  Okie was a hometown boy who gave my Dad a hand sacking the oats and doing other piecework around the racetrack. Okie had told the man (Gene Johnston), “Go talk to that old man that sells the grain around here he is the only guy I know that might be interested.”

“I was going to turn him down until Gene told me his breeding.” Gene was the horse's previous trainer and the name of my father also. His sire was J Burns, a multiple stakes winning son of Bold Hour, who in turn was a son of Bold Ruler. Gene had my Dad at Bold Ruler, one of his favorite horses and a bloodline that he’d had success with at the race track in the past.

“It won’t cost me that much to feed this Razorback while I am hauling all this feed anyway and he just might be able to run a little.” Well, I wasn’t as convinced, but as the weeks went by Burning Fire started to blossom. Dad began to gyp him on an extended lunge line mixed with a little ponying and the horse responded well to the routine.

As the weeks turned into months, Burning Fire had posted two morning workouts at Rillito and Dad had plans to race him on the final weekend of their meeting. Well, that wasn’t meant to happen, and to the benefit of Burning Fire, Rillito was canceled due to rain that week.

I say, "to the benefit of Burning Fire," because I thought he needed more time and works to be race ready. He’d get that time because the next races on the fair circuit were two months away in Duncan, Arizona. In addition, the competition would be a little easier there.

My Dad's intuition paid off in folds as Burning Fire ran second the first weekend of that meet and won the next weekend. Although he only managed three wins and five seconds on the recognized tracks, Burning Fire was almost unstoppable at the County Fairs and although I don’t have access to them, he filled my Dad's photo albums with winning pictures.

My father had to euthanize Burning Fire in the winter of 1991 and he was the final horse my Dad ever trained despite continuing to sell feed around the race track until approximately 1999-2000. I love and miss them both.

In Memory of my Dad ~ Eugene K. Tunks.