I enjoyed this post quite a bit. I never met B. Smith personally. We shared one phone call in the 93-94 maybe even 95 time frame. It has been a long time and it was just one phone call. I can't judge a guy on one phone call but I did take two things from the conversation. One he was very sure of himself. A non-issue there because without confidence the game would come to a screeching halt. Secondly Bull Boy Bob would go down as one of the all time great producers because he had 'others' working for him. I took that information with a grain of salt. We were just venturing into the Patrick dogs back then. I had just got out of the service and prior to that I grew up in NC. In the mid 80's it was Snooty and Redboy and later on the Garner dogs. You could step out of any front door, throw a rock and hit a Garner dog. While I was in the service I met a guy named Mike B. whose pops did dogs in the southwest. When I was in San Diego we took leave and went to a get together in Stafford or Safford AZ. I can't remember. We saw three sets of males. This was around 90-91. A couple were of the Patrick breeding. They were slick, and smart and positioned themselves to deliver but were hard to be delivered upon. So my plan was to get some of those Patrick dogs when I got back to NC down the road in 93-94. Later down that road I saw a BBB dog that was bred to a Reuben daughter, or so that is how it was told. Long way around but that is when I called Mike B. who in turn got me the B. Smith phone number. When trying something new I always start with a female and pay the stud fee to start with a litter of my own. I was trying to work a deal on a Reuben daughter or Reuben doubled up on a grand daughter. Unfortunately it never got worked out. Looking back it would have been nice to get that Reuben shot from way back then.
But like I said, things happen for a reason. I never met B. Smith personally and did not know him other than that one phone call. The years may be off by one or two either way as it was a long time ago and it was just that one phone call. As I read the posts from Jack and TFX I was looking back on my younger years. Pretty much being self analytical, sometimes a brain surgeon and sometimes a dumbass. I may have enjoyed the post for that reason alone. It was good times back then. The game had characters and personality. Most of the people in the game had been in it for a long time. The new comers came and went but not near the rate they come and go today. And after being in the game back then for so long, coupled with being a character with personality, there were a million stories to be told. From the late 70's into the early 80's I was always captured by the history and the conditioning. My first job as a 10-11 year old was walking dogs. A dollar a mile, which put me on Rockefeller status in rural NC in the late 70's.
Sorry for the rambling. It was a great post. Offered up some nice history and some anti-history (LOL). It provoked some good memories. Some 'wish-I-hadda's'. And some proof to one of the first things I remember about growing up around old dogmen. The only way to prove a dogs breeding is to win three or four or produce dogs that win, or better yet produce dogs that produce dogs. When that happens there is always someone out there that can tell you how he is really bred. In turn, if we are discussing the breeding of Hammer (Reuben or BBB) still in 2013, then those dogs most certainly threw some dogs in their day. EWO