With one swoop of the head, Summer throws its long hair back over one shoulder and slowly, grudgingly retreats. The nights grow cooler now, temperatures often descending into the sixties, a level which encourages our Rottweiler, China, to cavort through the yard during her morning feeding duties. The local schools are beehives of activity, crackling with Fall sports and other extracurriculars and the yearlings in the fields are innocently enjoying their last days of freedom. One fine morning—when the small lake in their pasture finally abates—a noisy horse trailer will rattle its way out to the barn where Puck and Hannah have just finished their breakfasts, capture them up and deliver them to Barry Eisaman’s training center just down the street. For five or so months, they will be schooled in the ways of racing. Hopefully, they will take to it and enjoy their lessons because there is nothing as useless as a racehorse who wishes to be elsewhere. In the meantime, we will check in on them weekly. Like most other horsemen, we will disregard any negative indications and overvalue small accomplishments. As always, the truth will eventually be revealed on the racetrack in the Spring and we will be buoyed with optimism or wretched with despair. We go round and round and round in The Circle Game.
The Day From Hell
Filled with a feisty encouragement after last Friday’s second-place finish by Cosmic Crown, Siobhan and I headed down to Calder two days later to watch Cosmic Flight (aka Pogo) run for the first time. Pogo had been slowed by various minor problems and also by his disinclination to learn anything the first time it was presented to him, not unlike Bill. The first time he saw horses galloping toward him during training he was certain this was a grave mistake. Two weeks later he decided it was acceptable, though not preferred. He also did not feel it was especially necessary to burst from the gate in any particular hurry once it was so frantically opened, bells and whistles or not, and it took awhile to convince him otherwise. He is still highly offended when the horse identifier attempts to roll his lip back to check his tattoo, and, I have to admit, so too would I be.
Nonetheless, it was finally time to run. Cosmic Flight’s works had been exemplary and even when he was outbroken leaving the gate, he quickly caught up and passed his morning opponents. He was entered in a modest $25,000 maiden claimer with horses of similar experience (none) and appeared to have as good a chance as anyone. When they broke from the gate, Pogo broke with them and maintained an attending position until just before the first turn at which time the jockey, Fernando Jara, moved him up to third, just off the leaders. Fine, so far, but you can never tell what horses are thinking. What Pogo seemed to be thinking was, well, hasn’t this been fun but now it’s time for my nap. Despite no apparent problems, he slowly dropped back out of contention and finished up the track. Jara’s whip did not inspire any particular encouragement. “Whip, schmip,” said Pogo.
The long drive to Miami—4 1/2 hours—had been initiated in the rain, which lasted another hour-and-a-half into Orlando. We had fed Sunday morning slogging through the water still standing from the night’s ample rain (an inch-and-a-half). We fed in the dark to get rolling by 6:30 since Cosmic Flight was in the first race. Our regular feedperson, Debbie, was in Boston with her own horses and her fill-in, Buster, was off in parts unknown so there was no chance of an overnight stay—we had to be back for the afternoon feeding. After a brief period of commiseration and discussion with trainer Larry Pilotti, we were back on the road for the return trip. Just before we reached Ocala, the sky blackened. We called our neighbor, Allen Morgan.
“Is it raining, Allen?”
“It’s going to be,” he promised. And Allen was right. The last part of the trip was accomplished through a deluge and by the time we returned home there was another inch-and-a-half of rain on the ground. Happily, it cleared for us to feed. When we went inside, however, we discovered the power was off. Well, it’s stopped raining, they’ll fix it soon enough, we figured. Every time I have reported an outage, Clay Electric has always known about it so I left the reporting to others. We drove to the Williston Subway to eat, sure all would be well upon our return. Wrong. Still no power. I drove next door to see if Allen had juice and noticed a lamp was lit in the window. Great. We were the sole darkies. I flipped the circuit-breakers and prowled the length of the driveway, looking for signs of trouble, finding nothing but a few vines which had fallen on the electric lines during the storm. These turned out to be the problem and when Mr. Electric Man arrived he promptly ascended in his magic ladder and resolved the problem.
I am not certain whether or not the Fates conspire to deliver these sorts of punishment to a particular kind of sinner or whether it’s just the luck of the draw, but I would like to find out. Is there a rule book available for compatibility with the Cosmos? Who do I have to pay off? Oh, you say it’s not just me? This sort of thing happens to everyone? Well, let’s check into this a little further then.
The Days From Hell
Our neighbor, chicken wrangler Jennie Hollis, is as compassionate as they come. If you want sympathy for something, even if it’s something dumb which is entirely your fault, just call Jennie.
“Jennie, I drank three bottles of whiskey, drove my car into a sheep pen and got a $500 ticket from the Highway Patrol.”
“Those unsympathetic bastards!” Jennie would say. So Siobhan called and told her about our Day From Hell.
“Wait’ll you hear what happened to ME,” Jennie countered, then relating a tale of woe in which she travelled to Ocala in an honest woman’s search for hay. When it came time to leave the hay dealer, her battery was dead. Fortunately, the hay man was located right next to a garage which sold batteries. When it came time to move the car next door to pay the bill, Hal, Jennie’s husband, started to get in the car but was brushed aside by the battery man who insisted HE had to take it back, perhaps concerned that Hal, the ultimate straight-shooter, would abscond with his battery bill unpaid. In the traditional manner of garage workers everywhere, he roared backwards at an altogether unnecessary speed and crashed smack into a telephone pole. He graciously offered to swap the battery for the damages but Hal, despite being Mr. Nice Guy, is not your typical country rube. He made them fix the car. Not a cataclysmic disaster by any means, but involving Car Damage, a fact which put it on a disaster level greater than ours.
Siobhan then called Irana, the Jewish Queen of Sympathy. She broached the subject of our terrible Day From Hell.
“Wait’ll you hear what happened to ME!” countered Irana, who proceeded to recount a horrible incident in which she awoke to a horrible thud and, upon investigating, found her husband, Paul, on the bathroom floor in a pool of blood, unable to move. Gee, this made our Day From Hell seem like a ride on the carousel.
“I followed the ambulance to the hospital in bloody pajamas," Irana said. “After about four hours, they came out and told me Paul had broken his nose and damaged his spine. At first, they were going to operate but decided instead to take him to the Trauma ICU and try steroids to reduce the swelling. Let me be the first to tell you that the Trauma ICU is a veritable garden spot for the massacred—full of punctured gangbangers and motorcycle wreckees. The good news is, they fixed Paul. The bad news is it took a long time. In the meantime, I was out in the trauma 'family room' visiting with the homies. Lots of folks with eight colors of hair extensions and airbrushed nails. One of them looked at me and blurted out my favorite question ever….”
“Your man got shot, too???”
“The nurse came and got me just before my head exploded.”
Well, gee. Now were down all the way to THIRD on the Day From Hell charts. But I knew I could count on my pal, Court Lewis, for a little understanding.
“Wait’ll you hear what happened to ME,” he exclaimed. I was getting that déjà vu feeling.
“I was surfing one day in La Jolla, California with two friends, Bill and Martha. Behind the beach was a 100-foot-high red clay cliff which the more intrepid surfers climbed to get to the parking lot above. As the sun went down, we found ourselves with two choices—hike a half-mile to the end of the cliff and back up into the parking lot or take the direct route up the cliff. We foolishly decided on the short route. We were three-quarters of the way to the top, dragging our boards, when the rains came, almost immediately turning the nice clay path into a downhill bobsled run, water gushing everywhere. We held on for dear life. The rain stopped but now the clay was as slick as wet ice. We couldn’t go forward or backward, straining not to slip and fall 100 feet to the ground. After what seemed like a VERY long time but was probably no more than 20 minutes, the San Diego Fire Department arrived with a crane and a bucket. We urged them to take the unresponsive Martha, who had hung tough for an hour now but was quickly giving out. Because of the relative locations of the three of us, he had to take Bill first. I tried to find a way to jam Martha onto the cliff but I had all I could do to hold myself in place. They came back and snatched Martha up in the nick of time. I was cramping up a lot but managed to hold on til they returned, my rescuer a smiling black archangel who probably didn’t even need the crane. Immediately, we were down into the parking lot. I felt sheepish. I felt cold. Best of all—I felt alive. I’m pretty sure that the moral here is, “When in doubt, take the SAFE route.”
Is EVERYBODY’S Day From Hell worse than mine? I had one last hope. I called my neighbor, Allen, and told him my sad story. “Gee,” he said, sympathetically, “That’s terrible. But did you know what happened to ME yesterday?” Groan. Even Allen has a sob story.
“Okay, Allen, spill it. What monumental atrocity happened to you?”
“I turned 87 years old, ha ha!”
Shit, Allen. You win the whole mess. Hands down.
That’s all, folks….
