In California, they’ve got rampaging forest fires, urged on by raging Santa Ana winds. Once all the vegetation has been wiped out by the conflagrations, they’ve got mudslides. It’s hard to figure out where to build your house in California. Put it on top of a hill and the forest fire sweeps up and carries it off in its arms. Stick it down at the bottom and the mudslide washes over it. Maybe off on a beach with no hills around? Well, they’ve got hurricanes for you, pal. Probably not a good idea to live in the Pacific Northwest, either. Aside from it raining all the time, everybody knows it’s only a matter of time until Thermal Headquarters—also known as Yellowstone National Park—blows up and dumps ashes all over your backyard. Assuming you have a backyard left. Like maybe if you live in Chicago.
Nobody wants to live on the border, of course. EITHER border. The northern one is cold as a prom queen’s heart and there’s not one thing there after you discount Glacier NP. In places like North Dakota, I hear they don’t even have buildings. It’s true. Oh, there is one little hamlet where they discovered oil and jobs abound but they still can’t get anybody to actually move there. I foolishly raced a couple of horses at Sportsman’s Park in Chicago one February and like to froze to death. Not only was it cold, but the wind would blow you down the street. It reminded me of Popeye. I went to the racetrack one Saturday and, despite the heatlamps in the roof, there was not ONE PERSON in the stands. No kidding. This was a puzzler since the parking lot was full of cars. I discovered the culprits were all inside under the grandstand, loading up on hot coffee and beer. I never went back.
In addition to being on the southern border, Arizona is too hot. Once the thermometer gets to 100, I’m leaving. Arizonans tell you “oh, but it’s DRY heat.” Right. I’ve been to Las Vegas when it was 108. I’ve been to Death Valley when it was 123. That was dry heat, too. Tell me I wasn’t a trifle warm. It gets warm in Texas, too. Worse yet, they have extensive droughts. Once when I was there, we went 55 straight days without a drop of rain. When it did finally rain, the University of Texas was so happy they lit up their orange Victory Tower—used mainly to celebrate football wins—in gratitude. Then, of course, it never stopped raining so they had floods. The Gulf Coast of Texas also gets hurricanes, by the way, in case you haven’t been paying attention. And tornados are no strangers to the rest of the area. If Harry Edwards didn’t live there, we’d be inclined to just write off the whole place.
So what’s left? Not much. New England is as cold as anywhere, except maybe International Falls. It’s always been amazing to me that people really live in Maine. I never drove anywhere near Buffalo or Erie, Pa. when it wasn’t snowing. The weather is better in Washington, DC, but it doesn’t matter because you can’t really go anywhere in Washington, DC, due to the incessant traffic jams. Some people have been known to sit in traffic for months in northern Virginia. People on scooters have to bring food to them. I’m not making this up. Same with Atlanta. They built an interstate highway on either side of Atlanta so you wouldn’t have to go through the middle of town. Guess what? It’s easier to go through the middle of town that to travel on the newer highways. They get snow in Atlanta, too, sometimes, which seems like a merry diversion. Trouble is, the city of Atlanta is not about to purchase expensive snow-clearing equipment for an occasional blizzard. So everybody has to sit in the house, look out the windows and say “gee”.
All things considered, I’d rather be in Florida. Oh, we’ve got occasional hurricanes. Once every ten years or so, somebody gets nailed but most of them roll up the coast to Carolina or skitter through the gulf to Alabama or New Orleans or Texas. We might get a baby tornado every now and then which blows down a trailer park but nothing like those monsters that blast through Oklahoma and Kansas. The weather is great here. It’s a little hot in June, July and August but that’s a small price to pay for sixty and seventy degree daytime temperatures in winter. Unfortunately, however, we DO have one big problem that most everybody else doesn’t have. We’ve got SINKHOLES and they’re no fun. One day, Uncle Ernie’s cow barn is sitting there in all its radiant splendor, next day it’s in the sinkhole. Used to be, sinkholes opened up slowly, over time. Now they pop open in minutes right under the interstate, making auto travel surly. Couple weeks ago, some poor shlub had one open right under his bedroom and he was carried off to the underworld, neither hide nor hair ever found. This could happen to anybody. I bought 40 acres in Orange Lake back in 1970 that features a couple of nice old sinkholes. Before I signed on the dotted line, I got a couple of guys to come out from the University of Florida Geology Department to assay the area. They fiddled and twiddled and performed extensive tests and finally told me the sinkholes were very old (they had big trees in them) and I shouldn’t worry about anything. I said I wasn’t too worried about the old ones, I just didn’t want to see any more show up. They told me don’t worry, be happy, so I bought the property. One day, I was out mucking around in one of the horse paddocks and I noticed a new phenomenon—a little hole, no more than twelve inches across, had opened up. It eventually widened, only to about two feet, but it was extremely deep. I built a little fence around it and checked on it occasionally, but it never changed. Sinkholes, for the uninitiated, can come in many sizes, from “stovepipes” like this one to giant neighborhood-swallowing maws. Try getting sinkhole insurance in one of these areas.
I used to think it was only us Floridians who had to worry about sinkholes but the other day I read about a golfer in southern Illinois who was gobbled up by a hungry one right out on his very golf course! Sinkholes, it seems are properly democratic—they snare rich and poor alike. This guy fell about 18 feet and landed on his shoulder, damaging it, but was quickly retrieved by his pals. Fortunately for him, he was part of a rare non-drinking foursome. You can just imagine three snockered golfers trying to pull a guy out of an 18-foot hole. The main rescuer said the victim disappeared so quickly he thought it was “some crazy magic trick or something.” I don’t know about you but when I am on the golf course I confine my crazy magic tricks to filling up the holes with a few dozen of those funny styrofoam peanuts, never disappearing into thin air. This has stood me well over the many years.
Anyway, since there are sinkholes showing up all over the place, I might as well stay in Florida. We do have some problems here, of course. Like right down the road is an enclave of rabid Republicans called The Villages, the denizens of which come out at night to bay at the moon. So that’s scary. And we just went through another incarnation of Bike Week, during which thousands of motorcycle enthusiasts pass through the area on their way to destroying bars and testing jail capacities in Daytona. Spring break is worrisome also as that is the time suicidal college students arrive from all over the country to drink tons of beer and topple off hotel balconies, testing the hardness of the asphalt below. So far, the asphalt is leading by a large score.
But we’re used to a few minor discomforts. As I guess they are in California, Washington, Texas and Chicago. There are pros and cons to virtually any geographical area. I said “virtually”. There are, under NO circumstances, any conceivable reasons for living in North Dakota. There may be one for living in the state just south. That being that it is not North Dakota.
Hannah To The Fore!
Now that Puck (aka Cosmic Flash) is all tucked in at Calder and performing in an exemplary manner, it is time to get on with the second part of the daring duo, Hannah, also known as Scarlet Siren. Hannah worked alone at Eisaman Equine last week in 25.1, just what was asked of her, and will get on the Great Silver Turtle next Monday and head south. Pictured below with visitors Bruce and Barbara, Hannah is anxious to get on with it, having fallen behind Puck just a bit due to an earlier confrontation with a paddock fence. As for Puck, he is scheduled for his first track work this coming Saturday. The surface at Calder is much different than at Eisaman’s and not as well negotiated by some horses, so we’re anxious to see how he does. You’ll be the third to know.
Elsewhere in horse affairs, it’s breeding season and also foaling season for local mares Dot and Wanda. By next blog, we hope to have baby pictures of Wanda’s Kantharos foal. She reached 335 days last night and is as big as the moon. We will be up nights, waiting. On a positive note, Kantharos’ stud fee has been raised $2000, now up to $5000 and he is oversubscribed at his new home, Ocala Stud, so his first crop must be outstanding. Dot is about a month behind Wanda and probably won’t be happy about it when her compadre has a nice baby to nuzzle and she hasn’t. We’ll show her the calendar and try to explain but she’ll probably have none of it, fretting and complaining until her own child is born. ‘Twas ever thus. Keep your fingers crossed. Word has it that helps ward off bad fortune and we don’t need any.
Let’s Hear It For The Pope!
The College of Cardinals, in their infinite wisdom, decided to throw a sop to South America, fastest-growing Catholic continent in the world, selecting a Pope from Argentina. And just in time, too. The television networks had decided that during this selection process NOTHING ELSE WAS GOING ON IN THE WHOLE WORLD! We were overwhelmed with popery. It was worse than the O.J. trial. So now everybody is happy. Well. Except maybe those people who subscribe to the opinions of one of Argentina’s most notable journalists, Horacio Verbitsky, who, in his book, El Silencio, recounts how the Argentine navy—with the connivance of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio (the newly-installed pope)—hid from a visiting delegation from the Inter-American Human Rights Commission some of the dictatorship’s political prisoners. Bergoglio was hiding them in his holiday home on an island called El Silencio on the River Plate. Oh oh. Is it too late to appoint Tim Tebow?
That’s all, folks….
