It seems like every decade or so a racehorse comes out of Amish country and catches the sport's imagination. There was Dale Hiteman and pacer Trusty Time in the seventies and trotter B Cor Pete in the 1990s for several horsemen. Some are regally bred, others have pedigree bereft of household names. Some hold mystery to their backgrounds. Others are well known. And then there is the story of Makin Some Noise. Makin Some Noise (Always B Miki-Eternity's Delight-Bettors Delight) was a $72,000 yearling named E Dee's Fashion when he sold at Harrisburg in 2019. It was befitting for the son of Eternity's Delight -- after all she had two offspring who had banked over $500,000 and six of her seven living foals had marks of 1:55. Purchased by an Ohio partnership, the colt was sent to trainer Brian Brown. He was unraced at 2, but easily won his first career start at 3 in April 2021, winning in 1:55 1/5 at Hoosier Park. "We liked him. He was a good looking colt," said Brown. "He looked good on the track and off." But disaster struck as Makin Some Noise tore a tendon before his second lifetime start and ended up pulling an Amish buggy in Ohio. That's where trainer Wes Hershberger comes into the picture. "This Amish fellow had him and didn't really like him in the buggy. Rumors were that he was lame. Torn tendon, broken bone in his foot, something, nobody knew for sure, but that he was lame somewhere," explained Hershberger. "He said pick him up and see what you think. I jogged him and he jogged sound. He had plenty of road miles, so I turned him a slow mile -- 2:30ish -- and he was great." Hershberger continued: "I think the tendon, and maybe his knees, were still open [immature] when he was younger. After a while I asked Kara, who works for me, to go a decent mile with him. I have a 1/3 mile farm track and he went in 2:18, which is a pretty decent mile on that track. And, he is really nice to be around. I had him about a month [December 2021]. We put him into qualify and Kurt [Sugg] fell in love with him. He won the qualifier in [1]:57 and I started thinking this could be a once-in-a-lifetime horse. The owner wanted to race him once or twice and Kurt wanted to buy him." Sugg picked up the story: "They told me how much they wanted and I kept saying too much. Meanwhile he is winning races and winning out of easy conditions. Finally I bought him for $50,000. He won a couple races for me and I thought 'he's better than the average horse I get.' I wanted to send him to Ron Burke, but he never returned my phone call, so I sent him to Yonkers with Rob Harmon." It is worth noting that NW2 at Yonkers had a purse of $16,500 while at Northfield the race went for $9,000. Now 4, Makin Some Noise raced in a late-closer and eventually won his way out of the conditions at Yonkers, so Kurt brought him back to Ohio in May and that is when he became an Open horse under the tutelage of Ed Miller, who trains Sugg's stock as Kurt now focuses more on catch-driving. ► Sign up for our FREE DRF Harness Digest Newsletter "That is when he really blossomed. He knows jogging from business. He is a pleasure to be around, anyone can jog him, but when you turn him behind the gate, he is a different animal," said Sugg. After returning to the Buckeye State, Makin Some Noise picked up a conditioned win at Northfield and won an Open 2 in his first Scioto Start. On July 7, he won a $30,000 Open Pace in an eye-popping 1:48 2/5, a race where he did nearly all the work, leading at the 53 2/5 half and 1:21 1/5 three-quarter pole. That effort was a divisional track record. A couple more Scioto efforts followed and then he went to Hoosier Park and won the $40,000 Haston Memorial in line to Dexter Dunn. He has beaten Ohio-bred star Charlie May, but he has run into some tough luck including a broken equipment line and a fifth-placed-tenth finish in the $100,000 Senditin Invitational at Scioto, placed for interference. "He had the second tier and he gets a little bully, plus he was locked in the whole way," said Sugg. "He never really had a chance. But that will happen." Right now Sugg is very much playing things by ear with Makin Some Noise -- he only has 27 lifetime starts and about $170,000 in earnings. But, he said, "I talked to Duke [Kurt's brother and a fixture on the Ohio circuit] and told him this horse is gonna pace in [1]:47" That was before the record Scioto win. Scioto's all-age track record? 1:47. Held by Makin Some Noise's sire, Always B Miki. As for Brian Brown, he admitted that he never expected Makin Some Noise to reach the levels he's achieved. "We liked him a lot. But we never thought he would be a 48 pacer," said Brown. That's it for this month. Now go cash, hopefully on Makin Some Noise's next start.