Saturday mornings are rollicking good times around here. On Saturday mornings, we get up, feed the horses and head out to Eisaman Equine to watch the two-year-olds train. Sometimes, there is a small cluster of like-minded horse owners, sometimes there is just Barry Eisaman, the majordomo of the operation. Barry is a tall, soft-spoken man with an easy smile and a charismatic demeanor. He presides over an empire of 250 training horses, give or take a horse, with all the pleasures and nightmares that entails, and he does a good job of it. With such an army of horses to exercise each morning, things must go like clockwork and most of the time they do. Eisaman Equine has a crew of 12 exercise riders, all Hispanic, all male and all competent. Barry has one of the few facilities around Ocala which operates year round, thus his employees are not out pounding the pavement looking for work during the slow months.
Barry Eisaman started out as a veterinarian, plied his trade for several years and, in the process, decided he could make a little extra money as a pinhooker, a person who purchases a horse at one stage of existence, spiffs it up and sells it at a later stage. Some pinhookers buy weanlings and sell them as yearlings. Barry buys yearlings, trains them and sells them as two-year-olds. We remember Barry from years back when both he and we trained horses at the old Tartan Farm in Ocala. Barry has moved up in the world, several years ago buying his current facility near Williston, a convenient five minutes from our place. In addition to his own horses, Eisaman trains for several other people, notably California trainer and Derby regular Bob Baffert. Barry says he gets Bafferts “second team,” but Baffert’s second team is better than most people’s first. He has 23 horses nominated for the Triple Crown this year. Last year, Barry trained Kentucky Derby winner I’ll Have Another, though not for Baffert. Suffice to say, there are a lot of very good horses at Eisaman Equine.
Enter Puck—or, as he is known in racing circles, Cosmic Flash. One of the charming things about horse-racing is that you, on your wee little farm in tiny Fairfield, Florida, can occasionally raise a better horse than the King Farouks of the world. We got Juggernaut from a breeding between a stakes-placed mare of our own, Mito’s Touch, and a $3500 stallion, Is It True. Juggernaut won two $100,000 stakes and $225,000. We got Vaunted Vamp from a mare who was given to us and bred to a free stallion named Racing Star. Vaunted Vamp won a preposterous 21 races and $420,000. You never know. So you go out there on Saturday mornings to observe, to try to detect the first signs of talent, to get excited at the slightest sniff of racing ability.
Puck was always a smart horse. When he started training, he saw no need for foolishness, so he went about his business in a professional manner, no nervous hijinks, no stubborn refusals. He just bowed his neck and took to the track like an old horse. Several months of galloping later, when it came time for his first work, he went straight and true, no shying from his workmate, no leaning on him either. Puck looked quick but how fast was difficult to tell since Barry gives his riders assigned times, keeping them from going too fast and coming back with, in his phrase, “four flat tires.” After working an eighth of a mile on two occasions ten days apart, Puck went his first quarter-mile in 26 seconds flat, exactly what Barry wanted. He looked to be doing it easily, which you would certainly hope since that should be well within the capacity of anyone pretending to be a racehorse. His galloping-out (slowing down) time was 38.2, about what one would expect. We thought his work ten days later would be as much as a second faster, a very good time at Eisaman Equine.
On work day, we were surprised to see Puck out by himself. He would work solo, an experiment which could go one of two ways: he could fly off unrestricted by a slower horse or, as happens most of the time, run slower due to the lack of competition. Barry feels it’s important, however, not to let his charges get the idea that they are always supposed to arrive at the finish together. If this didn’t work out, well, there’s always next week.
We could tell Puck was moving pretty fast when he hit the starting pole. He runs evenly and determinedly, with a longer and smoother stride than you might expect from a horse his size, not particularly long or large. I thought he might have shaded 25 seconds when he hit the wire but it’s difficult to tell when you’re looking straight down the track, the angle is poor. Barry looked at his watch. He looked at it again. Then, he called me over…he didn’t want to show it to Siobhan, who worries about too-fast works. 23.2, the watch said. The galloping-out time was 34.3. The galloping-out time is not supposed to be faster than the actual work, so I’m no longer sure Barry’s pole is in the right spot. I asked him if he was sure he hadn’t somehow inherited “a Jimmy Hatchett watch,” named for an earlier trainer who invariably caught his horses in significantly faster times than the official clocker or anyone else. Barry keeps an assistant on a pony at the other end of the track, however, and he came back with 23.4 and 35 flat. Either way, it’s a shocker. I went back to the barn next morning and ran my knuckles over his shins, looking for signs of trouble, but he didn’t move an inch. Not even one “flat tire.”
There’s Many A Slip….
So now it’s time to get excited, right? It’s only a matter of weeks til the fun begins at the racetrack and the money starts rolling in. Not so fast, my friends. There have been so many promising failures that the phrase “fastest horse in the world” is more often delivered in sarcasm than with a straight face. Horses who have had spectacular works in sales and sold for millions often have not delivered on the racetrack. Why? Tons of reasons, the main being injuries. You’ve got a large body bouncing along up there on pretty spindly legs. The wear and tear of racing erodes talent over time in most cases. Some horses just don’t have the mental strength to perform. It’s pretty intimidating to break from a starting gate, bells blaring, jockeys hollering, horses knocking you left and right, and perform the task. Not to mention, impressive early works at three-eighths of a mile don’t necessarily translate into great performances at minimal racing distances of five or six furlongs. And then there’s plain old bad luck….the ever-lurking colic or a raft of other potential horse diseases. A bad step, a jockey mistake, a muddy track, all allies of the devil. Sometimes, the Fastest Horse In The World breaks from the gate, goes to the lead and is never headed. It could even happen again and again. Sooner or later, however, the Fastest Horse In The World moves up in competition. The purses get larger. The competition gets tougher. Sooner or later, the Fastest Horse In The World meets the Second Fastest Horse and there may only be a nose between them in the final reckoning. Now, speed is not the only factor. Now, the Fastest Horse In The World must call upon all the reserves of courage built up over generations in his ancestry and extend himself to the max. Can he do it? We’ll see.
And they wonder why we like horse racing.
Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Cedar Key. More Than Everything, Really.
Siobhan and I, sadly lacking in traditions, decided we would have at least one: we would venture off to Cedar Key for dinner each Valentine’s Day. This was our second try. Last year was cool and threatening every bit of the hour and fifteen minute trip—until we crossed the bridge into Cedar Key, whereupon the clouds parted like the Red Sea for Moses. The sun promptly came out, we opened our champagne, took a few pictures and went to dinner at the venerable Island Hotel.
This year looked like a repeat. Same cool February day, same cloudy sky. Unfortunately, Moses was unavailable this time and when we crossed the bridge all we got was drizzle. We drank our champagne, anyway. Nothing puts us off our champagne. Then, between raindrops, I went out and got some photographs for you, our loyal viewers, who are always asking us what the hell this Cedar Key place is all about (Siobhan says she got the one of the pelicans).
For one thing, Cedar Key is old, man. Wikipedia says that humans occupied the place as far back as 500 BC but they’re just guessing. The first maps of the area date to 1542 and were made by Spaniards. We can tell because they labeled the place Las Islas Sabines. The only ancient burial found in Cedar Key was a 2000-year-old skeleton discovered in 1999, who might have died of loneliness. Arrowheads and spear points dating from the Paleo period (12,000 years old) are displayed at the world-famous Cedar Key Museum. all of which you can see while the rest of the family takes a bathroom break.
You probably won’t believe this but the Cedar Keys were used by the Seminole Indians and by pirates such as Jean Lafitte and Captain Kidd. No kidding. And followers of William Augustus Bowles, whoever he was, built a wonderful watchtower in the vicinity in 1801. You could go visit if the grumpy Spaniards hadn’t got in a snit and destroyed it in 1802, earning the thing the title of World’s Briefest Watchtower.
Permanent occupation of the islands began in 1839, when the United States Army, led by gold old Zachary Taylor, established Fort No. 4, which served as a depot and included a hospital on Depot Key, later known as Atsena Otie Key for some godforsaken reason, during the Second Seminole War. This became the headquarters for the Army of the South. In 1842, the Congress enacted the Armed Occupation Act, precursor to the Homestead Act, running off the Seminoles and opening up the territory to white settlers. Cedar Key became an important port, shipping lumber and naval stores harvested on the mainland. A lighthouse was completed on Seahorse Key in 1850, another one on Way Key in 1854. In 1860, Cedar Key became the western terminus of the Florida Railroad., connecting it to Fernandina on the east coast of Florida. David Yulee, US Senator and president of the Florida Railroad, had acquired most of Way Key—now Cedar Key—to house the railroad’s terminal facilities. A town was platted on Way Key in 1859, and Parson and Hale’s General Store, which is now the Island Hotel, was built there the same year. On March 1, 1861, the first train arrived in Cedar Key, just weeks before the beginning of the Civil War.
At the start of the twentieth century, fishing, sponge hooking and oystering had become the major industries, but around 1909 the oyster beds were exhausted. President Herbert Hoover established the Cedar Key National Wildlife Refuge in 1929 by naming three of the islands as a breeding ground for colonial birds. The lighthouse was abandoned in 1952, just as the tourism industry began to grow as a result of interest in the historic community, but it remains in use as a marine biology research center by the University of Florida.
The old-fashioned fishing village is now a tourist center. The village holds two festivals a year, the Spring Sidewalk Art Festival and the Fall Seafood Festival. You don’t want to go to these. Not because the “art” at the first consists of knicknack production by ditzy old grannies and the free seafood at the second is obtainable only after excruciatingly long waits in line. No, the real reason is that there is only one—count ‘em, ONE—road to Cedar Key, which will be chock full of unmoving automobiles. You will never get there. And if you do, you will never get back. Go when it is quiet. Like Valentine’s Day.
Most people like to eat at one or another of the restaurants overlooking the water, which is understandable, that being the main reason you are going there—to view the Gulf. We used to enjoy the Captain’s Table, now abandoned as the result of fire. But most of these are fueled by unexciting fried food dinners, so get out of the car, look at the water and then drive over to the Island Hotel or Tony’s on the main drag for dinner. Tony’s is home to World Champion Clam Chowder, an award won by sweeping the annual chowder contest in Newport, Rhode Island, three years in a row. The Island Hotel, favored by locals, has an intimate dining room, better food than anywhere else (except for Tony’s chowder) and offers a quaint little bar in back were the Cedar Key people hang out. If you want to know what’s going on in town, drop in for a couple of drinks. If you want to be a wise guy, better pick another spot. They got rid of the Seminoles and they can certainly get rid of you, too. If it’s one thing they are not in Cedar Key, it’s dainty. You’ll love it, anyway.
That’s all, folks…
On the off-chance some of you don’t know this, tap one time and whisper low on the Cedar Key photos. As if by magic, the rotation will cease and a great big picture will appear, arrows to the left and right, for your viewing pleasure. If you have any questions about Cedar Key, horseracing or How To Raise Nutria For Fun And Profit, just write.
