Gold Rush Daze
The traffic cop pauses in his marking of over parked horses (a pun on traffic issues at the time) to ask one steed its name. The horse laughingly replies "Seabiscuit," a famous racehorse of the era.,When the sucker finally gets his claim stake planted, he begins to use his pick to start digging. When the view shifts to a wide shot, the claim stake has moved away from the cliff.,Featured in Toon in with Me: Californianimation (2022),Oh! Susanna
(uncredited)
Music by Stephen Foster
Played at the beginning of the San Francisco scene,One recurring motif of Ben Hardaway and Cal Dalton were flashbacks to an earlier era. They previously did this with the Gay Nineties in LOVE AND CURSES (1938). This time an old timer tells about his misadventure attemting to strike it rich during California's Gold Rush.

I recall first seeing this at the same time my 4th grade teacher was teaching us about California history and the Gold Rush was a major topic. I also grew up where it all happened. While it's supposed to be a funny tall tale told by this grizzled old timer, his failure to strike it rich was very true for many prospectors during the gold rush.

Hardaway and Dalton's output was largely mediocre. This was because they didn't have a good sense of comic timing, like the other directors did. But most of the premises they came up with were very promising. This would have been an excellent cartoon if say Freleng directed it (See MY LITTLE BUCKAROO for comparison). The idea of an old timer in 1938 telling about his experience in 1849 would have been an outlandish premise.

I do wonder how this short looked in its initial release, considering every print in circulation is badly faded and devoid of pallette.,