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Photo postcard of horseshoe pitching champion Ted Allen of Boulder, Colorado, with his wife, Betty, ca. 1940.

Horseshoe pitching is a game involving two iron or steel stakes planted forty feet apart, and the challenge is to throw horseshoes at the opposing stake with the goal of encircling it (also known as a ringer) or getting them as close to the stake as possible.  

The game of horseshoes may have its roots in the Roman game of quoits played in Roman-occupied Britain during the first to the fifth centuries.   In quoits, the player tosses rings, usually made of metal and weighing about three pounds, at a stake called a hob.   Some theorize that peasants in medieval Britain modified quoits by substituting horseshoes.  It’s possible that  British colonialists brought the game of horseshoes to North America.  Horseshoes used in competition are larger than everyday horseshoes and are not to exceed two pounds ten ounces in weight.   

In 1908, ten-time world champion horseshoe pitcher Ted Allen was born Joseph Theodore Allen on the Phelps place, three miles west of Natoma, Kansas, to farmers Bill and Esther (True) Allen.      Ted was one of eleven children.    His father, Bill, was well known for his horseshoe pitching prowess and instilled an interest in horseshoes in his children.  Ted began pitching at the age of seven.  In 1922, the Allen’s would move to Colorado and farm outside of Lafayette.

Ted’s talent made itself known early on.  He won the Weld County Fair horseshoe pitching championship at Island Grove Park in Greeley at the ripe old age of 13 or 14, depending on which account you read.  By age 21 he had won the Colorado state horseshoe pitching championship 6 times.  He would go on to compete a total of 10 times at the state level, with only two losses, both of which were to his younger brother, Ira!    Ted would win the first of his ten world championships at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933.   

Ted’s extraordinary abilities of depth perception, timing, and rhythm served him well in competition, but also in exhibiting pitching feats to audiences everywhere.   The latter provided him the opportunity to prosper financially from his talents.   His venues included Madison Square Garden, the Colonel Jim Eskew Ranch and Wild West Show, the vaudeville stage, newsreels and movie shorts, and he was the first person to pitch on television.  He estimated that in forty years he traveled an average of thirty-five thousand miles per year.   

Ted’s feats included pitching 72 consecutive ringers in a row on two separate occasions; pitching horseshoes to light kitchen matches placed at the foot of the stake, knocking a cigar out of a person’s mouth, throwing ringers with a person straddling the stake and even tossing ringers around pop bottles.  He performed the latter trick until one bottle broke, at which point he stopped performing it.   He considered knocking a paper bag from atop a person’s head as one of his most difficult feats.  One of his regrets was being unable to find a show which would let him toss ringers from the back of a galloping horse.  Perhaps that was because his average in throwing ringers while on horseback was only about fifty percent.    Here is a YouTube link to a publicity clip of Ted performing:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rJmln_Zkr4 .  Note in the clip that Ted knocks the bowl off a tobacco pipe clenched in a man’s mouth. 

In June of 1940 Ted married Betty June Tindall.  Betty, born in Illinois in 1920, was the daughter of Frank and Lydia (Pyles) Tindall, who, at the time of Betty’s marriage to Ted, were residing in Henderson, CO, where Frank was the proprietor of a fruit stand.    

On December 14, 1942, with a war on, Ted enlisted in the U.S. Army, and fifteen days later Betty mailed the photo postcard pictured here from her mother’s home in Henderson (Frank Tindall had passed away the previous year).  Betty writes:  “Dear Friends:  I received your Christmas card.  Ted is in the army and it sure is lonesome.  I’m going to him as soon as I can.  I’ll give you his add., maybe you can drop him a line.” 

Ted served as a medic in the army, including a year in the Aleutians, and attained the rank of sergeant.   Toward the end of his hitch, the army would put his horseshoe pitching skills to use at Fort Carson, where he would serve as a physical reconditioning instructor for battle veterans, exhibit his pitching skills and instruct those interested in learning the game of horseshoes.    For those interested in competing with him, he had a standing offer:  He would spot any opponent 20 points and wagered beating any opponent in a standard game of 21 points.    

In an interview Ted gave while newly stationed at Fort Carson, he described the origin of his cigar feat.  He said he first decided to attempt it at a show in Milwaukee some years earlier.  There was an inebriated man in the audience “who kept heckling me.  He was pretty funny, but I got tired of listening to him and invited him down.  I asked him if he would stand off with a cigar in his mouth and let me knock it out with a horseshoe.  I didn’t think he would but he did.  I had to go through with it.”    Asked by his Fort Carson interviewer whether he would be performing the cigar feat for the soldiers, he said he would not, explaining, “Two and a half pounds of iron is dangerous at forty feet.  Besides, we have a tobacco shortage.” 

It appears that Ted and Betty’s marriage did not last, for Social Security records indicate that, as of November 1961, Betty’s last name was Perkins.

In 1937, Ted began designing and making his own pitching shoes.  He did all the work

himself, including grinding the shoes and painting, packaging and mailing them.  His first shoes sold for  $2.25 a pair, including postage.  At the time of his death, he had orders for one thousand pairs that he hadn’t gotten to yet, and it’s impressive to note that his shoes are still being made.  Ted Allen Horseshoes in Longmont is one such business – see https://www.tedallenhorseshoes.com/home – and other companies are selling them as well. 

Ted Allen passed away on June 24, 1990, at age 81, and his remains are interred at Mountain View Memorial Park in Boulder.  No gaudy shrine to his celebrity, his grave marker is a simple one, lying flush with the ground, marking the burial spot of a veteran.  It contains three lines:  “Joseph Ted Allen / Sgt U S Army / Mar 29 1908 – Jan 24 1990.”

REFERENCES:

  • Betty Tindall Allen, Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 at www.ancestry.com
  • Pennsylvania, U.S., Marriages, 1852-1968 for Joseph Theodore Allen (www.ancestry.com)
  • U.S., Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2010 at www.ancestry.com
  • U.S. Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 at www.ancestry.com

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