Racing Report
Cosmic Song returns to the races tomorrow (Dec. 3) in a six-furlong allowance race at Calder. She’s third in the morning line, with odds of 4-1. The favorite is Cristal Jak, who finished second in Cosmic Song’s last race. Cristal Jak is 5-2. Amazingly, for the third time in a row Cosmic Song gets the rail. This is a winnable race in which positioning is key. Cosmic Song comes from off the pace and will need room to navigate but she has a big shot in here.
What I’ve Learned: Melatonin + Valerian = Sleep
When Siobhan and I visited Alaska a few years ago, I wondered if the abundance of night light would inhibit sleeping (in July, it was dark from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m.). No problem. Close the blinds and sleep normally. For some reason, however, when we returned I couldn’t get to sleep. And when I did, waking at all hours would be common. I thought this was only a transitional problem but it continued for several days. I wasn’t willing to take Ambien or Nyquil on a daily basis, I needed something benign with no side effects. So I tried melatonin. Our bodies produce melatonin naturally, but production decreases as we age. Production of lots of things decreases as we age. I think nature is trying to tell us something. Something like ‘Get lost, fogies!’ So we must find clever devices to deter nature’s ambitions.
Melatonin (I get it from the Vitamin Shop—the brand is Source Naturals) comes in 1, 2 or 3 gram tablets. I use the 1 gram and have a few at bedside in case I wake up at night and need another one, which rarely happens. If I wake up later than two, I don’t take an additional tablet because I don’t want to have difficulty waking up in the morning.
Valerian derives from a root and seems to smooth out your sleeping. You still dream, but the dreams don’t seem to be as disruptive. This is just my own personal experience, I doubt the manufacturers make any claims of dream enhancement. By the way, if anybody knows of a product that insures you don’t lose your car in a dream, let me know. Happens to me all the time. Anyway, Valerian is also available from the same retailer. The brand I use is Solaray and the amount per capsule is 470 mg. Both of these resources are harmless and have been approved by my doctors. If you’re considering using them, you might feel better if you check with your own. But don’t be put off by flimsy reasons to avoid. And, if you check melatonin and valerian for possible side effects, your computer will help you find them because there are possible side effects to everything. After several years of use, I haven’t had any. Except, every Thursday I have this strange compulsion to produce a little blog column. Hopefully, this won’t happen to you.
Allen Morgan
A few years ago, our new neighbors, Barbara and Scott, advised Siobhan that Barbara’s dad, Allen (“Don’t call me ‘Al’”) Morgan would be moving up from Martin County to join them. Since both Scott and Barbara worked all day, they expected Allen to get a little lonely and asked us to check in on him every now and then. Sure. Why not?
Well, it turns out we liked Allen even better than Barbara and Scott. We started taking him to the movies with us on Friday nights. And, since he liked sports, we brought him along to an occasional volleyball, baseball or softball game at UF. Allen has now become a devoted follower of Florida’s #1 ranked volleyball team and 3-time College World Series participant softball team. Last year, we got him a signed softball from his favorite player, home run hitter Francesca Enea, for his 85th birthday. You’d think it was the Hope Diamond.
Allen now has his own mobile home on the acreage. He originally lived with Scott and Barbara, but one day Barbara came home unexpectedly with a colleague and ran into Allen walking around the house naked. What the hell—you see one little naked old man, you’ve seen them all. But anyway, Allen blew town for awhile, going back to Martin County to help a friend sell real estate. And when he returned, he brought his trailer. Now he can walk around nakedly to his heart’s content. We always make sure to knock loudly before entering, though.
Allen was born on April 26, 1925 in Illinois. I am glad to point this out because it makes him about my only acquaintance who is older than me. (Excepting, of course, the invincible Dominic, who has been looking more vincible of late).
Allen has an interesting background. After graduating from high school, he spent a year at Furman, then joined the U.S Army Corp of Engineers and worked on the Burma Road. Allen says he never needs to go on any cruises because the one he was on to get to Burma took forty lifetimes. After the service, he went to Georgia Tech on the G.I. Bill and graduated from there, eventually going into sales and getting married twice, each time for 25 years. His marital “shelf life” is 25 years, no more, no less, says Allen.
Mr. Morgan is a lifetime registered Republican and you know how we feel about them. But he sorely disliked George Bush, isn’t too enamoured of wars (having spent time in one of them, unlike most of our current politicians), especially when those wars are removing kajillions of dollars from our coffers. He even thinks Barack Obama is trying to do a good job, despite the impediments. I don’t think we’ll get him to change parties, though. Eighty five years of Republican is hard to overcome.
Anyway, we’re glad Allen is our neighbor. He is a true gentleman. When he is ill and you bring him a pot of soup, he will tell you it’s the best pot of soup he’s had in his life. When you remember his birthday or perform some other elementary service, you will get a card in the mail expressing appreciation. All in all, Allen is an exemplary compadre, and we’d wish you had one in your neighborhood. Except for that naked stuff.
Danny
The first few times I went out with Harolyn Locklair, she neglected to mention her son, Danny. This is a little trick single mothers pull. Once you get to liking them a lot, they spring the kid on you. But I didn’t really mind. What the hell—in for a dime, in for a dollar. So Rick and Lynn Nihlen took me down to Miami in their Volkswagen van and we loaded up Harolyn, Danny and all their earthly belongings and drove back to Gainesville.
First night, I heard Danny crying. On his way to the bathroom, he had gotten lost in my sprawling two-story house. I went out and found him and took him back to his room.
“We don’t cry about stuff like this,” I told him. “If you need something, just call me, even if it’s late. We’ll fix it. But no crying.” And Danny, who had previously been primarily raised by a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, never cried again.
Danny had a normal childhood, particularly for a kid whose parents owned a headshop (which was cool with the other kids, but dubious to a few parents). He knew he was loved and was given the amount of independence he could tolerate without abusing it. We went to his kiddie league football games, where he was more a toiler than trapeze artist. He played on the offensive line and made an all-star team that travelled to New Orleans. Later, in high-school, he was on the wrestling team. He always got behind early and was always gaining late. He won his share. If they had added another period, he’d have won them all. He practiced his holds on me. With great difficulty, I’d get out.
“Bill, you cheat!” Danny would say.
“What—bending your fingers back is cheating? The TV wrestlers do that kind of stuff all the time.”
“Yeah, well this is real wrestling. That TV stuff is fake.”
Gee, he used to like it. Anyway, we had little trouble with Danny. There was that time when he and a friend burned down an unoccupied hovel in the woods, but what kid doesn’t? And then, in high school I did come home one Halloween (no, not that Halloween) and found Danny and a friend sitting at my dining room table accompanied by Mr. Policeman.
“What’s all this?” I wanted to know. The boys looked sheepish.
“Well, Mr. Killeen, your son here was shooting off firecrackers in the woods over by P. K. Yonge and somebody thought they heard shots so they called us in. We had a lot of patrol cars over there for a good while before we found them.”
I knew he’d leave sooner if he expected retribution to be exacted, so I inferred there’d be hell to pay. But boys will play with firecrackers, you know. It’s indigenous to the species. The firecrackers weren’t particularly dangerous, so I told the kids to be more careful.
“Don’t bring any more cops home, Danny. You never know what they might find.”
Danny’s Big Accident
After I split up with Harolyn, Danny was on his own when I had to leave town on buying trips, etc. The store being right next door to our house, he hung out there some nights. Various employees looked in on him periodically. Other nights, he stayed with friends. During this period, Danny learned to drive. It was an uneventful progression. He drove as well as the next person. On very rare occasions, since we had only one car, an Oldsmobile Toronado, which I really liked, I let him drive somewhere by himself.
“What if I ever have an accident, Bill, and trash your car?”
“Well, Danny, in that case you should emerge from the car, dust yourself off and keep walking. Don’t bother to come home.”
“For real?”
“Yep.”
Arriving back in Gainesville from New York, I looked for Danny at the airport. He was supposed to pick me up, but no Danny. If you’ve ever been to the Gainesville airport, you know that it’s not too hard to see everyone in the building. Eventually, I saw one of my employees, Layne Hayford. Layne, having children of her own, was very maternal.
“Well, he had an accident with your car and he was afraid to come.”
“Is he alright? What happened?”
“Well, supposedly a guy went through a stop sign and hit him on the right front fender. His friend Gary got a little shook up, but he’s alright, too. Anyway, Bill, I think ya gotta cut him a little slack.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, when I went to get him, he was walking off down the road. He said you told him if he ever trashed your car he should just keep walking and not come home.”
You had to laugh. I reassured Layne that I would probably keep him. She called him and told him he was safe. Danny told me he would work in the store until the bill was paid off, but I don’t think he counted on $600 of fender repairs. Anyway, Danny didn’t drive so much for awhile.
After graduating from GHS, Danny had no desire to continue school. He knew what he wanted to do. He joined his mother in Ocala and began working in the horse business. Hell, he already knew how to feed and care for horses (he even held the mares when I brought the stallion up for breeding), drive the tractor, and perform all the day-to-day minutiae of the farm. He got into the training side of the business, working his way up to assistant trainer for Joe Orseno’s stable in New Jersey. He got his trainer’s license, went to Texas and trained a string of horses for Hilmer Schmidt, for whom he had earlier managed a farm in Ocala. He found a perfect wife in Laurie Lewis, of the expansive Marion Lewis thoroughbred family, to whom he’s been married for 16 of his 45 years.
Danny called me the Father’s Day after my heart attack. Awkward as it was for him to say these things, he wanted me to know he loved me and appreciated the way he was brought up. He told me I had been a good role model.
I don’t know. Hard-working guy, not afraid to travel the country in pursuit of his goals, never in trouble, married once and to the same woman for 16 years. He’s a pretty good role model himself.
That’s all, folks…..
