The Story of the Equine Einstein

Some stories simply must be handed down through the generations. This is one of them.

It’s the story of an Orange County horse named Serrano, born along the banks of the Santa Ana River in the mid-1930s and bought early on by a local farmer and horseman named Clint Brush.

Mr. Brush, it seems, had a way with horses.

“Writer Astounded by Horse’s Mental Agility.”

That was the headline from the Long Beach Press-Telegram on June 16, 1947, when Serrano, then 13 years old, was being billed as “The World’s Best Educated Horse.” Brush claimed the horse was not only smart but psychic. That led the Long Beach paper to enlist R. DeWitt Miller, an author on the supernatural, to put Serrano through its mental paces.

“Serrano is a most astounding animal,” Miller told the newspaper, which reported that the author watched the horse “add, subtract, divide and multiply figures, ascertain ages by mind-reading, unscramble words through telepathy, find objects hidden under boxes and pick objects by color.”

Miller said the presence of trainers and other spectators made it impossible to apply scientific tests to determine how the horse’s “wonder-working” was performed, but added: “Many of Serrano’s feats could have been performed through the use of reasoning together with telepathic and other scientific gifts. Whether they were performed in this manner, I am not now in a position to say.

Some of Serrano’s actions were suggestive of telepathic powers, but in the absence of test conditions, no researchers could form a definite opinion.”

Among the feats Serrano performed that day in Fullerton was to unscramble the name “Muhamed” (a name of another horse and which Miller chose) from among lettered balsa blocks. Using numbered blocks, Serrano solved arithmetic problems. The methodology was the same: After a question was posed, Serrano would clop over to the blocks and, using a leather strap that was attached to each block, pick up blocks in his teeth and set them down in the proper sequence to answer the question.

The newspaper also reported that Serrano “found a hat hidden by Miller while the animal’s back was turned.”

Cynical readers of today may be scoffing.

Not, however, 87-year-old Jack Dutton of Anaheim. Perhaps that’s because Dutton was there.

Brush told Dutton--then a businessman and later a city councilman in both Anaheim and Fullerton as well as Anaheim mayor--that he had a horse in his backyard that was amazing. Brush wanted Dutton to help him promote the horse; Dutton eventually agreed.

“He could spell any word of any length, in any language, and work any problem in mathematics,” Dutton says. On one occasion at a fair in Sacramento, Serrano got into competition with the person guessing people’s weights. “It got kind of nasty because the horse beat him all the time,” Dutton says.

Serrano started out working in local schools, but his fame took him beyond that. In 1948, Dutton ran him for president.

In his heyday in the ‘40s and ‘50s, Serrano appeared on the TV show “You Asked for It” and toured state and county fairs from Sacramento to Austin, Texas, pulling in $1,000 a day from people who thought they could stump the horse. A favorite challenge was to ask an audience participant to step forward and concentrate on his own age. Using numbered blocks, Serrano would pick out the two that matched the participant’s age.

After all these years, I ask Dutton, tell me how he did it. Surely, I say, it’s time to come clean.

Dutton chuckles. “I booked him, I worked an open mike roving the crowd. There was not a single plant in the crowd. Never. Horse people couldn’t figure out how in the heck it was done. We’d say, ‘Come back to the next show and we’ll show you exactly how it was done.’ They’d come back the next day, and the horse would do it again.”

Serrano died at 37 in about 1971; Brush died a year or so later at 81.

Another link exists to Serrano. She’s Phyllis Traylor, 73, now living in Santa Barbara County. “Clint Brush was my father,” she says over the phone. “The horse did it. He had a rapport with my father that was unbelievable.”

Yes, I say, but how could the horse solve problems? She laughs, not unlike Dutton. “It was mental telepathy,” she says. “From father to horse.”

But, I say to her, the accounts from back then say Serrano knew things your father didn’t. How was that possible? She laughs again.

Pressing her, I ask: “What do you know?”

She pauses before answering. “My dad was special,” she says. “He and that horse had a special relationship. TV is magic. You press a button and you’ve got a picture and a story. It was just like TV. It was magic. The mystery was part of the fun.”

Dutton worked three or four years with Brush and Serrano. The horse was still hot, but Brush didn’t want to spend the money necessary for regional and national advertising.

“At that point, I bailed,” Dutton says. “He [Serrano] ended up working for $25 a day at Knott’s Berry Farm.”

Lamentable, Dutton says, but not a tragic ending. The years he worked with Serrano were “a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

Is this some kind of magicians’ fraternity? I ask Dutton. Do you know how Serrano did it but just won’t say?

“I know how he did it,” Dutton says.

Tell me, I ask.

“The horse did it.”

Come on, I say. It’s not possible. Are you telling me there were no tricks?

“He did it,” Dutton says again. “You betcha.”

And darned if he didn’t give me that laugh again.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com