The Autumnal Equinox
Another Fall is upon us and the Florida weather abates in its infernal pounding on man and beast alike. The nights are cooler now, often in the sixties and the days don’t run past 90 much anymore. The season of changes arrives. The two year olds have all been shipped to Calder, the yearlings are shocked to discover they’re now living across town in a strange barn where odd humans require them to perform curious duties, like walking the shedrow with a saddle on their backs. And what is all this business of taking baths, for God’s sake?
Soon will come The Worst Day Of The Year, when the foals are removed from their mothers. Saps like Bill will stand around and emotionally ponder their last bits of nursing and nuzzling before they are placed in stalls and their dams are led down the road. To alleviate some of the shock and awe, the ex-race horse and current nanny, Shamu, will be placed in their field with them, not to mention the mules, Mary Margaret and Pitznoggle. This is, of course, Mary Margaret’s favorite time of year, she being an orphan-raiser extraordinaire in past incarnations who can barely contain her glee when placed with new charges.
Things are picking up on the racing scene as Juno readies for her second start, probably October 3rd, a maiden $32,000 claimer going six-and-a-half furlongs. Wilson worked five-eighths Saturday in 1:01:2, fastest of 23 at the distance and has only to be gate-approved to start his career. Elf will have her first Calder work Saturday morning.
Football is in the air around Gainesville, not to mention the rest of the country, as the Gators are off to a 3-0 start and looking for another win Saturday against Kentucky, leading up to the giant battle against Alabama one week later. Despite my wretched back, contracting Siobhan’s Canadian cold and the other infirmities of age, I made it to the Tennessee game last week. Fate determined that I would be punished for this affrontery. After turning down a 45-yard-line ticket in the 20th row and another in the 16th (you have to stand up the whole game to see when you’re that low), I ended up with one even further down—in the 11th row. That’s the way it goes sometimes. Ameliorating the unpleasantness of standing, a young women, about 25, and her boyfriend sat next to me, and the girl looked like Greta Garbo. Greta asked a lot of questions about the game and when it was over she told me she had learned a lot. If you’re 20 years younger and this happens, you think, gee, this girl kinda likes me. If you’re 70 and this happens, you think heeyyy, some sugar for the granny-man. Seated next to me on the other side was a black guy named Michael, a brilliant fan if I ever saw one. He agreed with me about everything and when the game was over he told me it was a real pleasure to discuss the game with such a “knowledgeable” purveyor of the art. People who don’t attend these important events fail to realize the opportunities for self-image enhancement they offer. Athletic events in this country provide the public with one of the few remaining opportunities to share a sense of community with our neighbors, the rest of the time everybody is locked up in their little housing units, chained to the TV. When I used to travel through Mexico, one of my favorite experiences was sitting in the town plazas in the evening, grabbing a bite and watching all the people go by. Everybody knew everybody else. These days, in this country, we don’t even know the guy next door. Which, I guess, in these parts is just as well—he’s likely to be a Republican.
What I Did On My Summer Vacation
Not much. But everybody else flourished. My sister, Alice (the Republican), went to Ireland and had a high old time without getting arrested even once. Pat Brown, our Austin friend, visited British Columbia and all the gym rat pals spread out to the various National Parks. Even Siobhan got to go to beautiful Toronto while I languished in quiet old Fairfield. I was supposed to go to Glacier NP this year (just like the last two years), but Siobhan’s burgeoning drug business necessitates one of us staying home. One of the things we do here is analyze blood samples from horses suspected of having EPM and, if we left, there’d be TEN THOUSAND boxes piled up on our porch when we got back and a panicky telephone message from the sender of each. Siobhan has been trying to break in an apprentice but this is easier said than done. Maybe by next Summer. I still hope to be walking then.
The Evil Dissipation Blues—Part II
I appreciate all the expressions of sympathy and advice after last week’s column. I was surprised to hear from so many of you. Now I feel like a whiner. But since I’m sure you’re holding your respective breaths awaiting further news, I’m actually doing a little better. My GP has set me up with an appointment for physical rehab—which translates, I am sure, to “endless stretching.” Whatever it takes, I’m ready. I don’t want to turn into the little old man with the cane who has to take the elevator up one flight of stairs.
Storage Wars
Siobhan’s brother, Stuart, and his wife, Mary, were here last week. This always give us an opportunity to see what other (normal) people do for fun, sheltered as we are here in rustic Fairfield. What Stuart and Mary did the first day they were here was get up at the crack of dawn and race into Ocala to watch the televising of some sort of auction being held at one of the storage locker facilities in town. You know the places—those long avenues of dreary garage-sized storage units filled with every manner and make of useless merchandise and/or wonderful keepsakes no one should be without. I have never had a storage locker, but it’s easy to see why some people might find the need. The poor, expelled ex-husband, who comes home one day to find his stuff piled up at the door—you can’t just leave that pool table out in the rain. Or a mortgage foreclosee, tossed from his ample residence and forced to live in some tiny hole-in-the-wall. Where does the Giant Spa Go? So, all over the country, poor disenfranchised property owners are gathering up their earthlies and rushing on down to the nearest storage locker facility to procure temporary refuge for their beautiful things. It’s sort of like hauling everything to the pawn shop, in a way. Except, in this case, you pay them to keep your treasures instead of them paying you.
I’m sure that most of the nice people who utilize these services firmly intend to return one fine day to retrieve their goodies. But, being the type of people who get into this type of jam in the first place, sometimes they don’t. And so what, alas, is the poor storage-locker owner to do? Time passes, the locker sits, and, inevitably, the rent payments stop. A person would think, gee, what a horrible fate for the poor, unfortunate locker man—stuck with an untenable glut of seamy garbage, expensive to carry off to the neighborhood dump, which probably won’t even accept half the stuff. Ah, but we reckon without the clever eye for profit possessed by these storage locker tycoons! Utilizing “reality television,” for which no activity is too mundane, they have decided to establish high-profile auctions of this unclaimed freight. Apparently, you get the opportunity to inspect—from a distance—the contents of the room before entering the bidding.
Siobhan, for one, sees opportunity here.
“Why wouldn’t you seed the room?” she wisely suggests. "You know, drop a few intriguing pieces into the mix of otherwise charmless junk.” Why not, indeed? Ruminating on the possibilities, Siobhan considered the purchase of vast lots of these lockers, filling the occasional space with a relative gold mine of value while leaving most of it trashbound.
“It would be like the one-armed bandit near the casino entrance where everybody hits the jackpot and sucks in the customers,” she says. I tried to tone down this hysteria by reminding her she was a woman of science and she finally went back to her microscopes, but I’m not sure we've heard the end of this yet.
Lunatic V. Hypocrite
Well, it’s getting down to brass tacks for the Republican Presidential Nomination and it’s pretty obvious that the last two standing will be Texas Governor Rick Perry and Massachusetts ex-governor Mitt Romney. It would take a temblor of major proportions for anyone else to rise to prominence. Bachmann has made a total fool of herself. Sarah Palin has insufficient constituency and credibility. And John Huntsman is in the wrong party.
Despicable as Romney (the hypocrite) may be, it’s obvious to most that he doesn’t really believe much of the gibberish he is throwing out there to endear himself to the right-wing nuts who pose such a large influence in this campaign. He would not be nearly so dangerous a president as a true religious-fanatic, evolution-denying, global-warming agnostic like Rick Perry (the lunatic). Perry might be smart enough to win the governorship of Texas (brilliance is obviously not required to attain this position), but he is an ignorant man with no answers, not a person we can afford in this day and age.
Bill Clinton was asked on Wolf Blitzer’s CNN show the other day about the nation’s prospects in the next election. He put the blame for our present predicament squarely where it belongs—on the country’s pathetic electorate.
“The voters started down one course in 2006,” he said, “and continued it in 2008.” Then, for whatever reason, they decided to take a U-turn in 2010. Tea Party candidates told everybody what they would do if they were elected and they did exactly what they said they would do. And many of the people who voted them in couldn’t believe it, rejected the extremism. The public needs to pay more attention to who they’re electing.” Amen to that one, brother.
The Great Collapse
Okay, I do not need to hear from any more of my wonderful friends about the total collapse of the Red Sox, who led the AL East for most of the year and still maintained a 9-game lead over Tampa for the last playoff spot earlier this month. In a collapse of historic proportions, the Red Sox have lost something like 15 of their last 19 games and hold only a 2 ½ game margin over the Rays and the LA Angels. They have lost in every way imaginable and it doesn’t seem possible that they will not keep losing. They probably need to win 4 of the remaining 6 games to make the playoffs. But even if they do—THEN what?
That’s all, folks….
