Shoemaker's grandmother put him in a shoebox, turned on the oven, and put the box on the open oven door. The homemade incubator helped the tiny baby defy the odds.
Though his father was nearly six foot tall, Shoemaker remained small as he grew into manhood. His father worked in cotton mills and at odd jobs, and the family moved frequently during the Depression years. When the boy was seven, he went to live on his grandfather's ranch and started riding a horse every day to get the mail. Once, he nearly drowned when he fell into a cattle trough.
Shoemaker preferred riding horses to going to school, and he often skipped classes. When he was ten, his parents divorced, and he went to California to live with his father and his new wife. At El Monte Union High School, Shoemaker weighed only 80 pounds. He tried out for football and basketball, but the coaches thought he was too little. So he turned to wrestling and boxing. As a wrestler, he consistently beat boys bigger than him. He never lost a match.
A girl at school introduced him to a boy who was a jockey, and Shoemaker started working at a thoroughbred horse ranch.
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