Prologue
The days are warming up in Florida as we gallop inexorably toward Summer. On the morning of Sunday, the 17th, at 4 in the morning, the Horse Gods presented us with Hannah, a chestnut filly by Juggernaut out of Fortyninejules, whom we call Wanda. We’re in a 4 a.m. rut this year. The first morning out in a tiny paddock, Hannah somehow managed to cut herself inside her left front leg, thus the bandage you see in her pictures. Next day, her always-grouchy mother kicked back at some unknown irritant and blasted poor Hannah in the hindquarters. We can hardly wait to see what happens next. Nonetheless, the Fates seem to have some secret device which protects innocent young foals from true disaster and little Hannah is out there running around and raising hell as if nothing untoward ever happened. Her future buddy, Puck, is peering curiously at this new phenomenon (But Ma—she wasn’t even there yesterday!) but is keeping his distance for the time being. So far, so good.
Elf had her second two-minute lick Tuesday, tearing off from the first pole to the second in 12 seconds before leveling out to finish in 27. She goes three-eighths next week and then works a quarter a week later. Juno’s abscess has finally cleared up and she’s jogging on the grass track. Wilson is eating carrots.
A Letter From Marty Jourard
Dear Bill:
The post on me is very funny. However….I’ve never been chubby, that would be my younger brother, Leonard.
You know, Marty, it’s fat kids like you who give morbid obesity a bad name. It’s one thing to deny your faults but a much more reprehensible act to throw your kid brother under the bus. In the future, we hope you’ll begin to take more responsibility for your actions.
Kentucky Derby Report
Well, it’s become obvious over the last few weeks that nobody is going to win the Kentucky Derby. All the favorites have been beaten and there isn’t a standout in the bunch. If you’re betting, seriously consider taking the field.
Bill’s Rant Of The Week—McDonald’s Vanilla Hoarders
For healthy people, Siobhan and I go to McDonald’s a lot. Siobhan’s favorite meal is large fries and a caramel frappe. I mostly go for the Vanilla Iced Coffee. I’ve got to tell you, though, that the little elves who work in McDonald’s are very inconsistent in their preparation of Bill’s iced coffee. Like, sometimes they put in very, very, very small amounts of vanilla. The McDonald's in Williston, the closest one to us, often puts in no vanilla at all! C’mon McDonald’s—how much can a little vanilla cost? Once I complained to the Williston store and they went back and put another squirt of vanilla in and charged me for it, an outrage of the first stripe. Do I have to bring my own bottle of vanilla with me and embarrass you people in front of your valuable customers? I’ve been known to do worse. Mess with vanilla iced coffee drinkers at your own peril, McDonald’s. This is your last warning.
A Public Service Notice From Kathleen Scanlan
She writes:
Ever wonder what is on your hotel’s magnetic room key card?
Answer:
a. Customer’s name
b. Customer’s partial home address
c. Hotel room number
d. Check-in date and out date
e. Customer’s credit card number and expiration date.
WHAT? How come nobody ever told us that? This means that when you turn your room cards in to the front desk your personal information is there for any employee to access by simply scanning the card in the hotel scanner. An employee can take a handful of cards home and, using a scanning device, access all the information onto a laptop computer and go shopping at your expense.
Simply put, hotels do not erase the information on these cards until an employee reissues the card to the next hotel guest. At that time, the new guest’s information is electronically overwritten onto the card and the previous guest’s information is erased in the overwriting process. But, until the card is rewritten for the next guest, it usually is kept in a drawer at the front desk with YOUR information on it.
The bottom line is: keep the cards, take them home and/or destroy them. NEVER leave them behind in the room, even in the wastebasket, and NEVER turn them in to the front desk when you check out of a room. Despite what the hotel tells you, they will not charge you for the card because it is illegal to do so.
A tip: if, for some reason, you want to return the key, pass a small magnet over the strip several times. Then, try it in the door. If it doesn’t work, everything on the card has been erased.
Return Of The Grim Reaper
When I was five years old, the visiting nurses came by my house every day to remove the gauze bandage from my grandfather’s neck, clean the gaping hole created by his lung cancer and replace the bandages. The smell unleashed when the bandages were removed was like nothing else, memorable to this day. So, when my grandfather said, “Billy, I got this from cancer—don’t ever smoke!” you can bet your ass I listened. My grandpa was eventually taken to Mass. General Hospital, where he passed away. I remember my grandmother coming down the stairs and meeting my mother with a hug in the stairwell. “Bill’s gone,” she said, crying. That might be the only time I saw my grandmother cry. And so my acquaintance with the Grim Reaper began. We waked my grandfather at home and they kept us kids away from the casket for awhile. Eventually, my grandmother walked me up to the edge and I looked down on my grandfather, who appeared much the same as he did in life. She told me his soul was gone, stolen by the Grim Reaper. Gee.
My Uncle Arthur, my grandmother’s brother, might’ve been my best friend when I was a little kid. He’d take me to Canobie Lake Amusement Park in nearby Salem, N.H., and let me play with the toys (he was a sign painter) in his apartment. He even painted “Billy” in yellow on the back of my red Radio Flyer wagon. I think my Uncle Arthur was married to a big Italian woman named Rose, but it’s possible she was just his girlfriend. Everybody loved Rose, but one day Uncle Arthur split up with her, took up with a woman named Hazel, and before anybody knew what was happening, got married. We all went to the wedding even though nobody liked Hazel (whose name my grandmother delighted in modifying with “witch”.) Not long after, Uncle Arthur was dead. My grandmother said Hazel poisoned him as she had a previous husband but nobody had proof. The Grim Reaper had struck again—and this time he might have had help.
In an earlier column, I wrote of my father’s death from congestive heart failure when I was a junior in high school. While we were not as close as many fathers and sons, I nonetheless resented the Reaper’s intrusion. And, years later, when he stole my beloved grandmother two days before I was to visit, I was livid with the bastard. My mother’s passing at age 83 was a little easier to endure, she having been beset by senile dementia for several years, so I’m not going to hold that one against him.
The deaths of young friends are always difficult to bear, but I’ve got to admit Janis Joplin was a reckless, if spectacular, young girl and Lieuen Adkins and Win Pratt invited the Reaper into their homes. Dick North took a big risk with a hair-trigger pistol and nobody can know whether he or the Reaper pulled that trigger.
When I was lying on a hospital table momentarily pondering my chances of meeting him, I thought—for a few seconds—“oh, what the hell’s the difference?”—before thinking of Siobhan and all the unknown answers to questions I still had. I abruptly righted myself, determined not to give the Reaper that slight opening he might quickly take advantage of.
So I know this guy and know him well and now he is back haunting the world of Stuart Bentler, who has been languishing in a hospital in Fort Lauderdale with an undiagnosed life-threatening illness. Stuart’s daughter, Katherine Chamberlain, is with him for the duration, come good or come bad, dutifully performing the daily assignments required of a loving daughter. Yesterday, she took Stuart, too weak for a wheelchair, home on a gurney while the tortuous diagnoses continued. Despite off and on vomiting, Stuart told Katherine he was “happy as a pig” to be home, parked on his couch and watching his treasured Formula 1 Racing DVDs.
Years ago in Austin, a friend of mine named Joe E. Brown, in a fit of youthful exuberance (and probable drunkenness) took to the roof of the tallest building in Austin with a can of yellow spray paint in hand. Once on the roof, he sprayed the sentence, “F*ck you, Sky King!” on the rooftop so Sky King, no hero of Joe’s, would see it when he flew over. A perfectly rational approach if ever there was one.
So now Katherine Chamberlain, paint can in hand, ignoring the handwriting on the wall, climbs the ladder to her father’s rooftop in Fort Lauderdale. She pauses for a moment. The sky is clear and the stars are bright. She can see forever. Now she raises her weapon, and spraying words not only appropriate for her father but also for brave resisters like Pat Brown and Marilyn Todd and thousands of Others Unknown who must marshal their forces daily to defend their own personal Thermopylaes, she strikes the red button on top of her paint can and lets her defiant message hiss out.
“F*ck you, Grim Reaper!” she scribbles on the roof.
And, circling above, her adversary measures the ferocity of her resistance….and, hopefully, shrinks away into the distance to find a more accommodating soul.
