Prologue
Tuesday was weaning day around here. At 9 a.m., we took the three mares over to Hal & Jennie’s place next door and Hugo (out of Paris Express) and Pogo (out of Cosmic Light) were on their own. They didn’t like it, of course, but after much calling and jogging along the fenceline, they settled down. We introduced them to Mary Margaret and Pitznoggle, the baby-sitter mules (Pogo’s not sure about Pitznoggle), and they haven’t missed a meal. Hugo is a full brother to Crimson Streak and Pogo to Cosmic Song. Obviously, they will have more glamorous aliases when they race but their real names will always be Hugo and Pogo.
I’m Just Sayin’….
We went to the movies Friday night to see The Social Network. When we got inside, the back 20 rows (in a 30 row theater) were roped off for the LSU football team. So we went to see Secretariat instead. Not trying to be too much of a curmudgeon, this movie should be flagged for Illegal Procedure. Poor old Penny Tweedy/Chenery had to come up with six million bucks to bail out the farm and it was all riding on Secretariat winning the Triple Crown. Nobody bothered to mention that while Secretariat was running in two-year-old races, Penny’s other horse, Riva Ridge, was winning the Kentucky Derby. He’s got to be worth more than a ham sandwich, right? And every time Penny had a problem, she would troop down the road to talk with her neighbor, Bull Hancock. Only trouble is Penny’s farm was in Virginia and Hancock’s in Kentucky, a long-ass walk by anybody’s standards. And how come Secretariat was only at the racetrack on race days and the rest of the time back home? You don’t get to come back home after every race. There were other bumbles too numerous to mention. That being said, the sellout crowd seemed to love the movie, even applauding at the end. Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss.
Bill’s Political Rant (Skip this part if you’re a Republican)
It’s nice to see that states other than Florida have moronic electorates. In Nevada, some certifiable nitwit named Sharron Angle is leading Harry Reid in the polls, thanks to the support of the crackpot Tea Party loons. Among other wacky ideas, Angle thinks there should be no separation of church and state. In Delaware, Christine (“I am not a witch”) O’Donnell has come out against (gulp!) masturbation. Oh oh! You don’t want to lose the masturbation vote, Christine. They’ve even got masturbators in the Tea Party. I think. Last night, during a debate, Wolf Blitzer asked Christine if she believed in evolution. After almost falling off her chair and stumbling around awhile, she said what she thought was “irrelevant.” I second that emotion.
In Florida, we have our own clown show. We’ve got an absolute crook named Rick Scott running for governor and leading after spending a king’s ransom on TV ads. My mailbox is crammed with bilious screeds from State Senatorial candidates Steve Oelrich and Perry McGriff every single day. Democrats, who must have thought Obama had a magic wand and could fix everything in seven days, are jumping ship and planning to stay home this election. We did that once before. After the Chicago riots, a lot of us were bitter about the treatment of the protestors and we decided to sit out the presidential election. The closer the election got, the more we wised up and it ended up very close. In another few days, the tide would have risen enough to put Hubert Humphrey, a good guy, in office. Instead, we got Richard Nixon. You’d think we wouldn’t want to make that mistake again. Alas, how quickly they forget.
Rolling Thunder Farm
Right about the time Secretariat was rolling through the triple crown races, I was making plans to get into the thoroughbred business. I had bought a forty-acre farm in Orange Lake for Harolyn (wife #2) to keep her pair of riding horses and it seemed a little spacey for such a minor purpose. A friend, Shelley Browning, long a fan of thoroughbred racing, suggested picking up a couple of broodmares at an Ocala sale and going into the horse business. So, after much searching and trooping around Marion County, we picked out a place maybe fifty yards from the shores of Orange Lake. It even had a grapefruit tree.
I was not aware of all the difficulties inherent in getting a horse farm up to snuff, but I found out soon enough. I was advised to plow under all the unsatisfactory grass currently growing on the property and plant bahia. So I did. Then Harolyn told me we had to go through the fields and remove the large rocks. So I did. Then she said we had to walk the fields and, with a sack over one shoulder, remove the moderate stones which remained. I was going to protest this until I realized Harolyn was planning to perform her part topless, so I did that, too. Eventually, the stones were gone and the grass grew. So did the crotelera, a nefarious weed once widely used by the government as a cover crop before anyone knew it was lethal to horses. Harolyn said we had to pull it all up by the roots, and no, we would not be doing it topless, so, grudgingly, I did.
The grass grew so fast we soon needed a tractor and mower. These are not cheap. I began to realize that operating a horse farm might be a little more expensive than I had thought. This fact was brought home firmly when we had to replace the fences, run water lines and buy a trailer. What did we need a trailer for? Well, the farm was 20 miles from our house in Gainesville and unless you want to be driving out there twice a day to feed, you’d better have a resident manager. Danny Levine, A Subterranean Circus employee, offered to perform horse-feeding duties for free rent. Danny liked the idea of setting up his telescope in a dark, rural area and planting his own organic garden. The animals treated Danny like Elmer Fudd, however, and, no matter what he did, they ate his vegetables. After much moaning and groaning, he finally yielded to pesticides and came up with a few meager crops. He took good care of the horses for a couple of years before the charm of the countryside was lost on him and he decided to return to the city.
This brought us to a run of interesting characters as we sought to replace Danny. We had drunks (I should have been suspicious when one of them set up our first meeting in a bar at 11:00 a.m.). We had total incompetents (“I just can’t imagine how those water buckets keep being empty, Mr. Bill, I fill them every morning”). We had runaway felons.
Ralph and Kim Stone appeared on the scene one day, enthusiastic and capable. Kim was a tough Minnesotan with a farm background who seemed to enjoy doing the bulk of the work and Ralph joined in when needed. All went well for many months, but one day I got a call from Kim, in tears.
“Ralph just got arrested!” she squalled.
“I’ll be right there,” I told her.
Turns out Ralph had been arrested by the FBI while returning home with groceries. Apparently, he had been on probation in California and just decided to leave. And change his name from Tim Dugger. Then he met Kim, married and came to live at my farm.
“Am I even married?” wailed Kim. “And what’s my name? Is it ‘Stone’ or is it ‘Dugger’ or what?” I had to admit I didn’t know. As time went by, though, Kim settled down and as the months passed she even picked up another boyfriend. They seemed like an odd match, though not so odd when I eventually discovered he was a Canadian looking to marry an American to gain citizenship. She dumped him.
A couple years later, Ralph was freed from jail and returned. Kim’s father, however, began having health problems and the two of them returned to Minnesota to help run the farm.
I decided I would not hire anyone else until I found The Perfect Farmhand. It was ten years now since we started the farm and Harolyn and I had just divorced. So I had to get up early, drive to Orange Lake, feed the horses, return to Gainesville, have breakfast, go to the bank and open the store. Then, at three o’clock, repeat the trip. This got old, but I did it for six months, determined to find The Perfect Farmhand. After a while, I realized my version of The Perfect Farmhand didn’t exist. I would probably have to settle for The Pretty Good Farmhand.
This turned out to be the poet ‘Don’. Don might’ve been the nicest guy in the world. He came complete with a nagging wife and two young children. Don was as one with nature. He felt that he could commune with the horses and get them to do his bidding. He did not believe in force. This belief did not come in handy when Don was required to hold for the blacksmith, but nonetheless.
Don roamed the property in his Indian persona. He wore a headband, primitive necklace, boots, cutoff jeans and carried a very large knife on his hip. During his plentiful free time, he listened to “my music” and wrote songs and poetry. Knowing of my background as a writer, he would bring many of his efforts to me for criticism. I hate to hurt anyone’s feelings, so I searched desperately for something—anything—nice to say about these horrific scribblings and usually managed to discover a tiny droplet to praise. Whereupon, Don would glow with delight and proceed to integrate that droplet into all his work for the next two weeks.
Eventually, Don’s wife had an affair, got dumped and ran off to Arizona in tears. Don ran after her. Whether there was a happy ending or not we’ll never know because Don, like most of the rest of these goobers, was swallowed up by the cosmos, never to be heard from again. I’m hoping he ended up on an Indian reservation, where he could help with the pacific Taming of the Mustangs.
Old College Magazine Joke (from 1966):
A first-grade schoolteacher, noticing one of her little pupils having difficulty unfastening her overshoes, went over to help.
“My goodness, Alice,” she wondered, struggling, “did your mother hook these for you?”
“NO!” the child replied, offended. “She bought them at Wal-Mart!”
That’s all, folks….
