Mick & David Easterby

Trading apples, selling ponies, escaping dentists - some early mischief

Posted: 14.48

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23 Nov 25

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Memory Lane

I was always a buyer, a seller, a trader of just about anything and everything. From the time I was a boy I had an eye for a bargain and a knack for turning it into a profit. In the late 1930s, when we lived at Great Habton, autumn meant crab apples. I would walk the lanes and hedgerows, filling sack after sack until they were three-quarters full, then topping them up with scrumped apples from nearby orchards. On Saturday mornings I loaded the sacks onto a pony and trap and headed for Pickering market.

It was six miles, though I could shave it down to five with a shortcut or two across a farmer's field. To the unsuspecting buyer those sacks looked a bargain at 1/6d a stone. Once they were sold I made myself scarce before anyone discovered they had bought nothing more than a bag of worthless crab apples. My escape route always included a stop at the sweet stall, where I bought a big bar of Mackintosh's toffee. That weakness for toffee may well have sounded the death knell for my teeth.

I remember the school dentist vividly. He and I were sworn enemies and I lost count of the skirmishes we had in the dentist's chair. One day he came armed with a pair of pliers that looked better suited to a garage toolkit than a young mouth. I wasn't waiting to find out what he planned. I wriggled my way out of the chair, ducked under his arm, and bolted from the surgery. I ran all the way home. Once there I scaled the big tree at the end of the garden, clinging to the flimsiest branches like a crow's nest. Nobody could reach me. I stayed up there until dark, then came down for bread and dripping before locking myself in my bedroom. Dentists and I never got along. Today I have little need for them, as the last of my teeth gave up a few years ago. I tried false teeth once, but they didn't suit me. So I remain toothless, and happier for it.

The first horse I ever bought was a pony at Malton Fair in 1943. I was twelve. He was rough and ready, but I saw potential. With a bit of haggling I got him for a good price. I broke him in, clipped him out, and soon he looked grand. I sold him to a local chap for a profit, which gave me the means to buy another. That was the beginning. From then on I was a middle man. I could spot a bargain, put in the work, and find a buyer. Cash from one deal funded the next, and I was never without money in my pocket.

Back then everyone in the countryside was brought up with horses. They worked the land, pulled the carts, and earned a crust for those who couldn’t afford tractors. But horses had another talent: they could run. And if they ran fast enough, they could win you money. It was inevitable. A love of horses, an eye for a bargain, and a plot of land—I was destined to become a racehorse trainer.

My first winner was a horse called Great Rock who I trained for Mrs Straker.

"I'm going to send you a horse and it'll be your first winner," she told me. "But he needs to run fresh."

I got him straight, got him fit — very fit. Back then that was the job. No blood tests, no fancy feeds, no treadmills. If you were lucky you had a telephone. Otherwise you just got your horses fit and sent them out to run for their lives. Great Rock won at Edinburgh over a mile and a half, ridden by Jimmy Etherington. I remember that day as clear as a bell. I was on cloud nine. I had trained my first winner, and I had beaten my Uncle Walter's horse into second place. That made it sweeter still. From that day there was no looking back.

Winners brought money, and money bought land. I farmed alongside training, trading cattle, sheep, wheat, and horses. I never kept count of my winners. Some trainers can tell you to the exact number, like notches on a bedhead. I couldn't even tell you to the nearest hundred. Someone once said it was over 2,500, but I couldn't swear to it. What mattered wasn't the tally. It was the horses, the owners, the jockeys, and the staff. Get the horses fit, get them winning races—that’s what everyone wanted. And here I am, still at it in my nineties, with a hundred horses in the yard. I hoped it might be so, but I never thought it.