To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.—Ecclesiastes
The mornings are cooler now, sometimes requiring a light sweater to the early horse feedings, and a clear indication that the time has finally arrived. The thoroughbred business has its own seasons, the first—from January 1 to the end of June—finds the new foals arriving. From mid-February to early July, the mares are bred. In September or October, the babies are weaned from their mothers and left to practice their independence, while the yearlings are sent off to begin their training to be racehorses. The yearlings, unfortunately, have not received prior notice that this momentous event will be taking place and are often reluctant to abandon their lush surroundings for the giant black maw of a noisy shipping trailer. Who can blame them? Only a fool would think this could be a productive venture.
We are only less-than-200 pound humans in contretemps with 800-pound nonbelievers, but fortunately for us we have the ultimate weapon—drugs. Not too much of them, which will result in yearlings stumbling around barely able to walk, but not too little, which could allow a well-placed kick, causing humans to stumble around barely able to walk. I was the beneficiary of one of these many years ago, resulting in a permanent dent in the front of my upper right leg, which swelled to thrice normal size, only fitting in a very large pair of pants. If this happens to you once, you will take extraordinary measures to prevent its happening again. You might even secure a girlfriend with a powerful array of preventatives and the wisdom of just how to use them. So far, this has worked exceptionally well.
On shipping morning, our old pal Danny drives his Lorraine Horse Trans gooseneck into the yearling paddock and backs up to the barn where Ava and Micki are stalled up, waiting. Micki, who has shipped twice before, to and from a yearling sale, is the first to go. Micki is an avid chowhound and her fear of the trailer is overcome by her interest in groceries. Lightly tranquilized, she soon follows the bucket into the truck, with a little rear encouragement from a pair of recruits from Barry Eisaman’s training center, the yearlings’ home-to-be for the next five months.
Ava, on the other hand, is not so quickly dispatched. She puts one foot on the ramp, finds it not to her liking and steps back. No amount of urging will convince her this is a good idea, so Shamu, her 30-plus-year-old mentor/companion, is brought to the fray. Brilliant old fellow that he is, Shamu walks right onto the trailer and looks back disparagingly at Ava. “See,” he winks, “there’s nothing to it.” Ava remains unconvinced, perhaps thinking we’re paying this traitor off with extra carrots. More drugs are procured and she is eventually loaded. The trip to Eisaman Equine takes barely five minutes. Waiting there at the depot is a sympathetic pony who will lead Micki and Ava, one by one, to their stalls. Micki immediately discovers her hay. Unimpressed by her new surroundings, Ava loudly complains. Both will be left to their own devices until the afternoon feeding. In a couple of days, they will be separated from their adjacent stalls to prevent fretting each time one or the other is removed for training purposes. After being taught to lead properly, they will first be taught to circle in their stalls with no weight on their backs, then with a rider. Eventually, they will proceed to the nearby roundpen. Usually, within three weeks from the start of training, they are promoted to the Eisaman racetrack. Then, the serious business begins.
Ava inspects her new surroundings at Eisaman Equine.
Many Forks In The Road Of Life
All of us stand back at various points along the way to examine what God hath wrought….or, more precisely, what WE have brought upon ourselves. How did we get from there to here? We were traveling right down the middle of a familiar road and suddenly decided to take a fork in that path, destination unknown. Sometimes, it works out and we look like geniuses. Sometimes it doesn’t and we tell the world the Devil made us do it. The Charlatan magazine was a fork in the road for me, as was the Subterranean Circus. The right fork at the right time, as much good luck as anything else. An automotive breakdown on the way to Albuquerque sent me scurrying off to Austin at age 21, barely a choice at all, more of a last resort, and a spectacularly fortunate one at that, filled with color and music and bravado and intelligence. No better place ever existed.
But who would ever have suspected a future with horses? Hell, as kids we couldn’t even have pets, what with sister Alice’s galloping asthma, allergies to everything wearing fur. Then one day, Here comes Miami clothing salesman Al Roller with a model in tow on his way to Atlanta. Her name was Harolyn Locklair and I found her irresistible. We got married a few years later and one fine day she decided to buy a little riding horse named Odessa. Later, I bought her another, a Tennessee Walker called Sundancer. We boarded them west of Gainesville by the Interstate, exactly where the Oaks Mall holds forth today. I told her we’d get a farm of our own when funds permitted. And we did, a forty-acre place in Marion County, just off the shores of Orange Lake. But it’s a long way from riding horses to thoroughbreds, and a very expensive way. How does that happen?
Well, it was the time of the singular colt, Secretariat, a Golden Era for racing, and even once-a-year racewatchers were interested as the great red horse pursued a Triple Crown which had gone unclaimed in 25 years. And the Devil who made me do it was named Shelley Browning, God bless her soul, a thoroughbred enthusiast strangely remindful of the notorious Eve of Eden, who kept proffering that shiny apple. “You’ve got a forty-acre farm with two horses on it,” she kept saying. Why not pick up a couple of thoroughbred mares at the next sale. Okay, I thought. Seems harmless enough. And, my luck being what it was in those days, the first mare I bought had already produced a filly who would turn out to be a stakes horse, tripling her value and making her future offspring worth a ton. Offers came in, left and right. And here I made a fateful decision which turned my fortunes the wrong way. I took a deviant fork and decided to keep my horses, all of them, eschewing sales and sending everything to the track, a terrible boner which cost me a fortune. My little horse adventure had turned into a runaway train. I only gravitated to selling a few at the end of my ten-year marriage to Harolyn, immediately enjoying great success thanks to blind luck and good advice from my Kentucky pal, Bill Mauk. We actually topped a Kennington sale in Lexington and restored a semblance of order to the financial coffers. Despite continued reluctance, I parted ways with several horses in the next few years to keep the home fires burning, and I continue to do so, finally discovering the correct fork in the road. Maybe these forks should have signs affixed: “Soft Shoulder….Hairpin Turns….Quagmire Ahead.” But, as they say in thoroughbred circles, if it was easy, everyone would do it.
Exploring The End Of The Rainbow
People are quick to dismiss all that talk of a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but I think it could be there. Trouble is, how to find the end of the rainbow. Ever tried it? No matter how fast you drive, you can’t catch up with the damn thing. It’s always just around the next bend, but when you get there….nothing….like a mirage in the desert. Everybody discovers this early on, but the pursuit continues unabated. Some day that rainbow will slip up, take a blind alley, and we’ll be there to grab up that pot of gold. It’s only a matter of time and persistence. Right?
One of the many charms of the horse business is that everybody makes money….once in a while. And when it arrives, the check is rarely less than five figures, a magnificent windfall, drinks all around! Even the dullest breeder will occasionally latch onto the right stallion at the right time and come up with a valuable foal. And there are hundreds—no, thousands of tales of horses purchased at sales for a song going on to win incredible sums. That said, it is easier for a Clydesdale to pass through the eye of a needle than it is to make money in the horse business. You’d be better off getting into Typewriter Repair or raising nutria across the street from PETA headquarters. The only people who make money in the horse business are a handful of top trainers and jockeys, equine medical facilities, stallion stations with rosters of successful sires and a fair number of training operations which prepare two-year-olds for the sales or for racing. A scattered few entrepreneurs, many with their own tracks, have discovered how to negotiate the Bermuda Triangle which is pinhooking, but most of these are only one bad year away from collapse. The majority are in it for the thrill of the chase and/or because they really like horses, hoping, like lottery players, that someday their ship—or colt—will come in.
Bob DuBois (second from left), Harolyn and Bill, with Star Spectre.
Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch….
Harolyn and I bought a mare named Bonquill at an OBS mixed sale in 1977, cost $16,000. She was part of a sell-off from a Canadian Farm that was winding it down. The mare was a good-sized chestnut, correct, and in foal to a stallion named Star Envoy, a solid racehorse going a distance of ground. Since we preferred to race rather than sell, we didn’t need a horse for the early five or six furlong races, so this one was perfect. We boarded the mare at a small farm in Micanopy until our own place was finished and visited almost daily. When the birth of the foal was imminent, we hung around the stall for centuries, waiting. He finally showed up, a dashing chestnut fellow, loaded with chrome. Soon, we moved mother and son to our newly-purchased digs in Orange Lake, along with another mare named Cosome, blessed with a brilliant pedigree but in her very late teens, thus cheap. As soon as the foal was old enough to start eating grain, we drove out each afternoon and held a bucket under his nose while his mother ate. He grew into an impressive, muscular colt we named Star Spectre. When it was time to send him to the track, I called Art Grace, the racing writer for the Miami Herald (they had such people then) and asked for trainer recommendations. He gave me four and I chose Bobby DuBois, a youngish guy who seemed several degrees smarter than your average conditioner. I drove down to Gulfstream to meet him and, satisfied with my choice, promptly sent the horse. DuBois soon advised we should wait for the maiden distance races at Hialeah, as expected. Fools that we were and excited by DuBois’ high appraisal, we expected Star Spectre to win first time out and we were chagrined by a middle-of-the-pack finish, about five lengths behind the winner. Our racing friends, more savvy than we were, exclaimed that it was a great effort. Bobby DuBois nominated him for the Florida Derby, then took his string of horses off to Arlington Park outside Chicago as was his annual custom. He promised the horse would win right away.
But for a brief afternoon during a train changeover on my way to college, I had never been to Chicago. I flew up and spent a couple of interesting days in the city before the short drive to Arlington Heights. I was surprised to see that Star Spectre was a 2-1 favorite, more a comment on the high level of competition at Hialeah than anything else. Despite his trainer’s promise, the colt finished second, but he looked great doing it. I told Harolyn she had to come next time, he was almost certain to win. And win he did, on the afternoon of June 7, 1978, in a blinding rainstorm which tapered off as he reached the finish line. It’s hard to describe the excitement inherent in the moment, a celebration of all the time and thought and effort which goes into such a production. We raced back to the Arlington Park Hilton and telephoned everyone we knew, describing the result. Then, unwilling to have it over, we called a few more people we didn’t know. Victory is ours! On to the Florida Derby! Who knows what glories await?
Not many glories, it turns out. In his next out, an allowance race back at Calder Race Course in Miami, Star Spectre bowed a tendon, finishing any chance he might have had for a great career. Although bowed tendons sometimes heal sufficiently to allow a horse to resume racing at a similar level, this is extremely rare. If horses sustaining this injury do return, usually it is on a much lower tier and the odds of a recurrence are high. Big dreams die hard and young dreams die harder. Harolyn and I drove over to what is now South Beach and sat out on the sand for an hour, staring at the sea, numb, saying nothing. The best of times had suddenly become the worst of times. It’s often like that in the horse business.
When Bonquill’s next foal went into training at Tony Everard’s Another Episode Farm, Tony told us in his hearty Irish brogue that he knew a man who would give us $100,000, maybe more, for the filly by Minnesota Mac. Harolyn raised her eyebrows but I said no, the first of many miscalculations made in this business. The filly, named Nightqueen, raced in the middle of the pack a couple of times at Gulfstream, Bill refusing to drop her into claiming races due to her perceived value as a broodmare. Bonquill died soon after and Nightqueen never produced much at stud. So much for Grand Entrances. But wait!
Remember the old $3300 mare, Cosome? She produced a filly named Deadly Nightshade, a decent racehorse of great courage, always closing at the end of races, sometimes winning but always right there. Deadly Nightshade produced a raft of good horses, including superfast Clockwork Orange, who later foaled a filly named Orange Orchid. The latter, during an early stretch of her career, won or was second in ten straight races, a rare accomplishment. Like her predecessors, she was marked by competitiveness, a driving desire to win, a characteristic not available at any price, a feature consistent with the line of horses descending from Deadly Nightshade and from her mother, Cosome. Now, the latest installment is Ava. We have explained her heritage to her and she has considered it seriously, the responsibility it entails, the difficulty of the task at hand, her obligations to history and to her maternal line. We waited for her response, her acknowledgement of the significance of the undertaking and it was not long in coming. She turned her head to us with a serious mien, nodded imperiously and said, as if to the butler: “More alfalfa, please.”
That’s all, folks….
