Also, it was recently published in Marian Wardle's (Minerva's granddaughter; my aunt) book Minerva Teichert: Pageants in Paint. The autobiography has a few interesting remarks about her father. The first mention of him occurs on page 196:
My family seemed to enjoy travelling around. Altho[ugh] I was born in utah I spent most of my life in Idaho. Ruth Moench Bell of A. C. [Utah State Agricultural College] was my first teacher in the Plain City grade school. Soon after that first year we were up on the "Old Ranch" [the homestead owned by Fred and Mary Ella near American Falls, ID] in Idaho and didn't go to school much more until I finished the eighth grade "back to grandma's" [Minerva Wade's place] in North Ogden. Father had bought a great long legged mare, Puss, from Lyman Skeen in Plain City. She had her "spirits broke," as Skeen put it, from a long trip while she was too young to work. One morning I went to the barn and to my delight discovered a sorrel colt [Puss' colt, Gem] so brilliant in color to remind one of a very newly coined penny. He had deep purple eyes and I fell in love with him. We had Puss for years. Her sire was Derrick, the fastest race horse in Montana. Even now I see that mare at work, her head down, her spirits broken. Again I see her racing over the hills, loose and going like the wind when not in harness.
Gem was sired by a $40,000 horse, Sline, [whom] Skeen imported from England. He was mine. No princess was ever more delighted with her heritage. From the time I first tickled his glossy coat with my little bare toes until the big boys would say, "There goes Minerva Kohlhepp. I'm goin to ride home with her" and another answer "no you're not[--]she's on Gem." He was the greatest joy in my life. No wonder I love horses. I was never beaten nor nearly rivalled on that great long-legged raw boned aristocrat. Poor folks like us should never have owned Gem, at least not for his sake, but for mine it was wonderful. I often wondered, child that I was, how he knew he was a race horse. Father always worked him when he needed an extra horse. Then Gem hung his head in shame[,] but let his mistress mount him and the change couldn't be imagined. He lifted his classic head and no one ever passed him on the road. He thot any rider who happened along was just trying to beat him and pull as I would I couldn't hold him. Since I was not afraid of him I learned to let him go. I didn't have to teach him the game. He taught me.
Teichert has a very romantic picture of her time with Gem. It is hard to imagine that such an expensive race horse was actually Gem's father, and that if this was the case, that such a horse would end up with the Kohlhepps. Teichert admits as much, but it is still hard to believe. The With a Bold Brush story has her work 3 summers to purchase the horse, while the autobiographical account has it be a colt of a horse already owned by Fred, Puss. Fred apparently used Gem for work around the farm, and Teichert anthropomorphizes his "shame" at doing such work.
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