“Keep On The Sunny Side Of Life!”—Maybelle Carter
One of the great joys of our childhood, and I speak here of myself and sister Alice (The Republican), was the occasional automobile excursion, always on a weekend to nearby Salisbury Beach. On small, winding country roads, past colorful little produce stands fronting modest farms and interesting antiqueries with fascinating junk piled high on the sidewalks, past clam shacks and miniature golf palaces crammed full of dinosaurs and windmills, over the meadows and through the woods we went until….there it was….the iconic Salisbury Beach Roller Coaster jutting out into the coastal skies. You could see it for miles and miles and miles and it always brought the same reaction in our car: “That damn thing is dangerous!” my grandmother would unfailingly announce. “Too rickety, hasn’t been fixed in years. Some day, one of those cars is gonna fall right down into the street.” She was wrong, though. They never did. If they had, Alice, an inveterate rider of roller coasters, would be falling down there with them. Alice was a pretty fearless kid—the scarier the ride, the more she liked it. Well….almost. Everybody, after all, has their Achilles Heel. For Alice, it was Ferris Wheels. That’s right—laconic, serene old Ferris Wheels. She was unaccountably terrified of the things—you know, like some people have an irrational fear of clowns. Alice would rather take on a room full of rattlesnakes than get on that Ferris Wheel.
“It will stop when I get to the top,” she always said, “and I’ll be up there for the rest of my life.”
You scoff, but Alice knew what she was talking about. Forty years later, when I finally managed to talk her into getting on one of the things at Canobie Lake, it did stop. The exact moment when Alice got to the top. It was as if all the Ferris Wheels in the universe had conspired for just this moment.
“SEE!?!” Alice sneered through clenched teeth. Didn’t I TELL you?”
Our mother, Marie, preferred the gentle carousel, or “merry-go-round,” as she called it. The memorable, compelling organ music would draw her in and next thing you knew, there she was, mounted astride one of the dazzling painted horses, always a horse which glided up and down, never one of the subdued, immovable steeds preferred by the timid and by mothers of small children who would hold their babies in place as the carousel whirled. Since the moving horses were preferred by most, the carousel proprietors sought to entice more riders to the outside row of horses, those locked in place, by offering a prize in the form of a brass ring, which entitled anybody who grabbed one to a free ride.
As the carousel began to turn, rings were fed to one end of a wooden arm that was suspended above the riders. Some degree of dexterity was required to grab the ring from the dispenser and the majority of revolutions did not produce a prize-winner; nonetheless, the rings were a popular feature and led to the phrase “Grabbing The Brass Ring,” which became a metaphor for achieving some large measure of success in life. Somewhere along the line, everyone aspires to Grab The Brass Ring.
The Trip To Bountiless
For the owners of thoroughbred race horses, that brass ring can be mighty evasive. Oh sure, you can win a few races, make a dollar or two here and there, but the Big Horse, the animal which escalates an owner to relevancy and his bank account into the black, is largely a creature of fantasy. We all hear of the occasional lottery winner suddenly delivered to the Gates of Prominence but there is little mention of the millions of ticket buyers cast hapless on the shoals. And so, when there is occasion to think a horse of this caliber may have finally presented himself, excitement rises, hopes are stoked, we all await the results from the proving grounds with hearts aflutter. Thus it was, as I embarked for Miami on Sunday, the better to view the next start of Cosmic Flash, a thoroughbred of great promise and delayed fulfillment. After winning his first start with ease, the horse came up with a niggling injury called sesamoiditis and after that a series of minuscule but career-delaying insults which kept him from the business of racing for a year. In his first start back, the jockey who had been working him had a call on another horse in the race; the rider we wound up with hit the gate at the break, bumped another horse and checked his mount in a panic, losing all chance. This time Flash would be ridden by Edgard Zayas, third leading rider at Gulfstream Park, who had worked him a week before the race and was sufficiently impressed. Hopes were high, the moment was near. Siobhan had business at home so I was off on the solo journey, a 4 1/2 hour trip. It was a warm and brilliantly sunny day. Traffic was modest and the first half of the drive, fueled by coffee, seemed like nothing.
Approximately half-way to Miami, I stopped at the esteemed Fort Drum Service Plaza for food and maintenance. Fort Drum is one of several plazas on the Florida Turnpike, placed about forty-five miles apart, offering gas, nourishment and, more important, bathrooms. It was pretty much brand spanking new, having replaced an old, dowdy building. As I walked in, light streamed cheerily through innumerable glass panels in the ceiling, travelers scurried about visiting one or another of the food providers lined up, mall-like, along the North wall, and mothers explained to their wailing tots why Johnny couldn’t have another sack of candy. At first glance, the place seemed a vast improvement over its predecessor but closer consideration deemed much of the enhancement a mirage. For instance, the prettier and more expansive bathrooms actually had fewer toilets, thus longer lines. The food area offered a few more chairs but not many additional vendors. The walk in from the parking-lot was much longer than before, perfectly appropriate for the obese and lazy but not so great for Uncle Maxie who has the emphysema or Cousin Eddie with a raging case of gout, not to mention the aging Grandpa Pawpaw and Nana Booboo, long spoiled by those helpful "Handicapped” tags and the wonderful automated shopping carts at the Walmart. Pretty is as pretty does, after all.
The remainder of the journey offered no problems and I arrived at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale in the early afternoon, a day prior to our race. Gulfstream used to be an enormous racing plant, vast grounds, seating for 40,000. Even more than that showed up on Florida Derby Day, which was something of a carnival, occasionally even offering an appetizer race featuring animals who were not horses. Gulfstream once hosted the spectacular Breeders’ Cup, November’s answer to the Kentucky Derby, but those Glory Days are long past. Current owner Frank Stronach, an ebullient 81-year-old Austrian who thinks he’s 31 (and more power to him), razed the original track and rebuilt Gulfstream as the first boutique racetrack. He added a small casino and attached the whole thing to a tasteful shopping court, looking to glom onto a wider market than the average aging racing fan. The facilities are posh and attractive, though the casino is too small and the seating for racing is inadequate for big events. Stronach is willing to make that sacrifice, feeling that his redesigned arena is more appropriate to the current realities of racing. Meanwhile, for some reason known only to himself, he is building the world’s largest statue of Pegasus, so large that it can be seen on a good day from as far away as Nebraska. You think I’m kidding. If you’re ever in the neighborhood, take a look. I’m okay with the Pegasus but for some reason Frank thought it would be a good idea to have the thing stomping a dragon. I didn’t think they even travelled in the same circles.
Louie The Prophet
Late in the afternoon, our trainer, Larry Pilotti, ambled in to saddle a horse in the seventh race. It was then I realized our ongoing siege of problems had not ended. Cosmic Flash had come up with a rarely seen problem called a “shoe boil” and only a miracle would make it disappear before tomorrow’s race. Sigh. Another day, another carbuncle. “First one I’ve ever had in 32 years of training,” said Larry, as if that helped.
A shoe boil can occur, of all times, when a horse is lying down. Are they ever safe? With the front legs folded under the horse, the elbow (second joint up the leg, after the ankle) rests right on the heel of the shoe. Occasionally, it will irritate the skin,causing inflammation. Over time, a seroma will develop—merely serum between the skin and underlying tissues. Now and then, this can be traumatic enough to cause bleeding beneath the skin called a hematoma. The resulting swelling can appear to be a “bubble” hanging from the elbow, and can be fairly large. Most of the time, there is an area of the skin surface that is damaged where the pressure was. This will appear as a superficial wound but deep insults may allow bacteria into the seroma. Pockets of serum or blood clots are great places for bacteria to make a home for itself, so sometimes shoe boils will become infected. Blood analysis established that this did not happen with Cosmic Flash, although he was put on a regimen of Genticin just in case. Over the next few days, the edema would regress and the colt was back jogging by Friday.
So, a 9-hour round trip for—basically—nothing. Or maybe not. After all, it’s not every day you get to talk with Louie The Prophet. An 85-year-old Italian New Jerseyan, Louie has been haunting race tracks since he was a kid, winning and losing many fortunes and learning, in the process, more about horse wagering than all those TV experts put together. Doctors have told Louie a dozen times his days were numbered; he just laughed, waved his hand in rejection of the notion and told them they were crazy. Apparently, he was right. Louie is a disciple of the venerable Dominic Imprescia, betting impresario nonpareil, often carrying his bets to the windows and returning with large armfuls of cash. Dominic, who passed a few years ago at age 94, never bet less than $100 on anything, regarding a C-note the same way the average Joe thinks of a $2 adventure. Somewhere along the way, Louie the Prophet became a philosopher, not an unusual happenstance for people who deal in large sums of money. “Easy come, easy go!” is a leading attitude. Like many avid gamblers, these folks have an affinity for the Manana philosophy and one big payday carries them for months.
Louie was a good person to talk to, especially in trying times, because Louie was exceptional at seeing the Big Picture. As I recited my litany of woes, he shook his head up and down knowingly, a sad expression of sympathy crossing his face. Feeling a little too sorry for myself, I complained “Louie, I just can’t seem to grab that Brass Ring.”
And at that, Louie beamed his big Louie smile and turned to me with that everpresent twinkle in his 85-year-old eyes. “Billy,” he said, using the same name for me that Dominic always did, “I gotta tell ya. As long as I’ve known you, you’ve never worked for another man. You had a business that was like a hobby for twenty-five years and you had a ton of good horses. You’ve got your health. You live with a brilliant woman in a place that’s always warm. Lemme tell you, Billy, you’ve already GOT the Brass Ring!”
I guess it’s all just a matter of perspective.
That’s all, folks….
