Old Bob had run his last race. Thing is, my great grandfather didn’t know it in the moment, when he climbed on Bob’s back, no bridle, no saddle and let him chase after the hunters leaving his father’s dairy farm out where Ball Camp Pike connected with Third Creek Pike (Schaad Road at Oak Ridge Highway now).

My best guess is it was sometime in the very early 20th century, seeing as how Bob was running against a car. My great grandfather, Sherwood “Shub” Johnston, noticed the horse was confounded by the horseless carriage and pricked his ears in earnest as it was leaving the property. Bob held the advantage as long as the going was somewhat uphill, but once it levelled off, the car got the best of him.

Shub turned him out in his pasture that night after the day’s excitement was over. When he got up the next day, he found Old Bob dead in the field. He claimed he died of broken heart for losing that race with the car.

This is part of a story that Shub told to longtime Knoxville News Sentinel columnist Bert Vincent. It first appeared in his column Strolling in 1949, was repeated in 1955, 1958 and 1961 with some additions and subtractions with each rendition. The part about Bob’s demise only appeared in the 1955.

There’s a reason Bob wanted to chase after cars or anything else running near him. It wasn’t just that he was a horse, he was a racehorse, a thoroughbred. No matter how high or low bred, racing is in their blood. It’s what they do.

For all that I know about thoroughbreds and their lineage (which is a lot), I know nothing of Bob’s. I do not know his registered name, who his sire and dam were or who bred him, but he was a bay and reportedly a good runner who made a decent amount of money. He was Kentucky bred, purchased and raced by none other than Cal Johnson. At a race meet in Chattanooga, Bob got tangled in a barbed-wire fence, and his injuries brought his track days to an end (horses and barbed wire never belong in the same place at the same time). So, Johnson sold or gave Bob to a man named Kavanaugh (first name unknown) who lived near Chenoweth Gap at the foot of Beaver Ridge not far from my great-great-grandfather’s dairy.

And now we get to the reason Vincent reworked and ran the story several times. He would get requests from readers to “tell the story about that old drunk racehorse again.” Now, in Bob’s defense, he was not a lush. But, when Kavanaugh rode or drove him into town on the Third Creek Pike that turned into Asylum Avenue (all of it now Western Avenue/Oak Ridge Highway), he would pass Mauser’s saloon at 410 Asylum. It was the first stop coming in and last stop heading out back home. Kavanaugh always stopped for a beer each direction, and Old Bob would get himself a pail of beer, too. I’ve never known a horse to turn down a draft or some Boone’s Farm Apple Wine for that matter.

The best I can figure, Mauser’s was on the north side of what is now Western Avenue between Deaderick and University Avenues. It was owned by J.G. Mauser who also had a saloon on Gay Street between Vine and Jackson Avenues. I can find no reference to him outside of his saloons after 1933.

J.G. Mauser’s Saloon on Gay Street (Photo credit: Knoxville News Sentinel)

Anyway, my great-great-grandfather, James Grant Johnston (see story here), was originally from Halifax, North Carolina. He and two of his many siblings, Gough Johnston and Maggie Johnston Lyman, made their way here via Davenport, Iowa. Their oldest brother, William Anthony Johnston, was living in Denver, Colorado, and was the secretary of the Guggenheim Smelting Company. He had gone and married himself a fancy English lady named Emma Amelia Harvey. Well Emma was coming to visit her in-laws.

Now, Shub was prankster, so was James Grant. Maggie asked her brother for his gentlest steed to use with the buggy so she could take Emma into town one day. I don’t know exactly when this happened, but assuredly it was after 1894 but before 1906. James told Shub to go hitch up Old Bob knowing damn good and well the route the Misses would be taking to Knoxville.

Sure enough, once they pulled up on Mauser’s, Bob veered off Asylum to the back of the saloon and nickered for his bucket of beer. No slapping, steering or pulling of the reins could redirect him. The ladies were aghast. Once his thirst was obliged, he proceeded on into town like a gentleman. Maggie and Emma did their lunching and shopping and were heading back out around four in the afternoon.

Maggie decided to circumvent Bob’s urges by steering him down Deaderick Avenue toward what was then Clinton Pike and take another route back to Ball Camp Pike all together. Once again, Bob wasn’t having it and wheeled himself around the back way up to Mauser’s for his homeward libations. The Aunties all but fell out and fainted. With his thirst quenched, Bob proceeded on their route back to the dairy farm.

Maggie and Emma returned home in high dungeon. Shub and James listened to a torrent of “well I nevers” and “who taught that horse to drink” and “the IDEA, a beer drinking buggy horse” and other exclamations.

“Dad listened until they ran out words,” Sherwood said. He winked. “What you so mad about girls?” he asked. “Didn’t anybody offer you a drink?”

Maggie Johnston Lyman was born in 1856 and lived to be just over 100 years old. She died less than  decade before the author was born.

Beth Kinnane writes a history feature for KnoxTNToday.com. It’s published each Tuesday and is one of our best-read features.

Sources: Knoxville News Sentinel digital archives, author’s personal collection