“I had rather be on my farm than be emperor of the world.”---George Washington
“I cannot tell a lie. I would rather be emperor of the world. But only by a teensie-weensie margin.”---W.T. Killeen
Old friends from more populous climes often pose the question “What’s it like to live in Fairfield, Florida?” Well, it’s like this:
Yesterday afternoon, while feeding the horses, I noticed two unlikely travelers walking down the long Clay Electric right-of-way which separates our property from 350 acres of forested land. Turns out the young man and woman were looking for seven of the family cows which had knocked down a fence and left the large herd, apparently seeking greener pastures. Cows will do this sometimes, never considering the ramifications of such behavior. Older cows mislead them with false tales of the glamour of the outside world and the young bucks—or buckettes—take it as Gospel and decide to see for themselves.
This sort of recklessness never leads to good results. Invariably, the cows get lost and never having had the good sense to procure a cell phone with GPS properties, they remain that way until help arrives, if it ever does. The cows usually figure out they have a problem at dinner time when nobody is showing up with the lobster bisque. The bovines attack the problem by letting out forlorn wailing sounds as they stomp around confused and pining for home, stumbling through Aunt Emma’s once-lovely geraniums in the process.
Sometimes, and we hate to say it, the story has a sordid ending. The confused animals never find their way back and wind up living in the streets and back alleys of Fairfield, shooting dice and experimenting with alcohol. There are even stories of cows being lassoed by varlets and sold into the sex trade or hauled off to the merciless cleavers at Joe’s Meats. Oh, what a troubled web we start when first we practice to depart.
The young fellow on the other side of the fence, straight out of Future Farmers of America, showed me a photo of Clarissa, one of the missing, in happier days. She was an arresting black-and-white model, easy to spot. I asked the boy if he had a card, a hilarious request of a farmer. All he had was a small piece of paper and no pen. He said he’d leave his phone number taped to our front gate on his way home, but apparently he had no tape either. Too bad. Later, Siobhan mentioned seeing Clarissa mooing plaintively in a neighbor’s yard the previous day, a good place for the cow posse to saddle up. I drove slowly around the nabe, peeking into back yards, but no luck. Let’s hope somebody from Lost & Found ran across her and called home. Or that Clarissa found a gaggle of gypsy cows meandering out west for a look at the Continental Divide. Or little Ella found her walking down the street and talked her doting dad into keeping her. The alternatives are too unvegan to mention.
Guns & Roses
One of the reasons people who live in the country dislike gun control is this: they live in the middle of nowhere and it takes the sheriff 30 minutes to answer a call. If you’re lucky. No tellin’ what type of maverick might come a-wandering down your road with evil intent. Looking down the barrel of a shotgun discourages bad manners and coveting your neighbors goods, like Moses said.
Bill Killeen once owned a 40-acre thoroughbred farm in rural Orange Lake, at which he kept a homey mobile residence, which farm people sometimes call a trailer. Select personnel were allowed to live there gratis in exchange for feeding and otherwise caring for the horses. Under these circumstances, you occasionally find yourself recruiting people with shady backgrounds. One such was the alleged Ralph Stone, AKA Tim Dugger, an A1 horse feeder but also a probation-jumper from California, who was eventually tracked down by the FBI, leaving his capable wife Kim confused and abandoned. “I don’t even know my real name,” she complained. “Is it Stone or Dugger? Am I still married if we didn’t use the right name?” Good questions. Anyway, Kim Whatever decided to stay on. She was an ex-Minnesota farm girl, after all, inured to the life.
Now, as luck would have it, there was a seedy tavern down the road from Bill’s farm, a bar which catered to persons of the lowbrow persuasion, and one Saturday night two clodhoppers got to talking over too many beers about the lovely blonde girl who lived in a trailer down the road. Not having a vehicle at their disposal, they decided to hike the mile-and-a-half to see if she was entertaining visitors. Turns out, she wasn’t.
After altogether too much whooping and hollering by the good ol’ boys, Kim emerged from her kitchen and fired a few shotgun blasts across their bow. Then she set her two Doberman Pinschers after them. The fellers were not their usual speedy selves due to alcohol backwash and stumbled off in terror hoping to escape the avid dogs who had no such problem. I asked Kim what happened after that. “I don’t rightly know because it was dark,” she said, with a hint of a smile on her Viking face. “But when they came back, they had blood in their mouths and a spring in their step.” See. There are more fun things to do on Saturday night in the country than just watching the Grand Ole Opry.
Call Me Coyote
If you live in this neck of the woods, you soon realize it’s pretty much a laid-back, laissez-faire society. Sprawling horse farms overseen by multi-millionaires are nestled snug-up to minimalist quarters often occupied by the people who work on them. Hispanics, blacks and rednecks circulate comfortably among one another on these islands of activity where the morning preoccupation is getting the thoroughbreds ready to go to the racetrack and there is little time nor inclination for petty niggling. A few feisty women have even inserted themselves into the picture, exercise riders who can hold their own with the men, barn workers who might react to a demeaning remark by slapping an offender silly. For the most part, it all goes swimmingly, workers locked in a common cause, their success measured by what happens later on the track or in the sales ring. Of course, there are always a few characters who march to the beat of a different drummer.
Jason Stodghill was an ex-retailer, neuvo-farm-owner who lived on the west side of Marion County. Jason, who looked somewhat like a genteel Yosemite Sam, never changed his getup, which consisted of a large cowboy hat, denims, boots and eventually an enormous belt-buckle which he received one year for winning more races than any other trainer at Tampa Bay Downs. Stodghill had a soft voice and a quiet demeanor which belied his underlying toughness and determination. Once, a nervous yearling he was leading in an open field decided to head for the hills. Your average handler would given up and called for reinforcements, Jason merely let himself be dragged around on his stomach until the youngster got tired. Once back on his feet, he merely smiled at the ridiculousness of it all.
Now, Jason Stodghill might have passed over this Earth with only a modicum of notice had it not been for his unseemly affection for coyotes, which he admired, respected, even cherished. When it came time to name the first few horses he bred, “coyote” was part of each one’s name. Quick Coyote. Dancing Coyote. Wily Coyote. Not one roadrunner in the mix. This went on over many years as hundreds of coyotes spread out to racetracks all across the country carrying the burnished seal of the coyote man. If you noticed a “coyote” in the fifth at faraway Santa Anita, you knew where he had ultimately come from.
This sort of animal-worship/celebrity would have been enough for most men, but not for Jason Stodghill. To be honest about it, he wanted to be a coyote, too. So one day he packed up all the requisite paperwork and headed to court to change his own name. “You’ve given this a lot of thought, I assume?” queried the judge. “Yessir,” declared Jason, “I’m truly a coyote at heart.” The judge pounded his gavel. “And in name, as well.” And voila, now Stodghill is officially Jason Coyote until the end of days. Hey, it could be worse. His friends are happy Jason wasn’t overly fond of Pink Fairy Armadillos, the Tasseled Wobbegong or Satanic Leaf-Tailed Geckos. And so are the normally glib-tongued announcers at the nation’s thoroughbred race tracks.
A Country Girl Will Survive. More Or Less.
Nobody could say Ruth Reed was born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Abandoned at an early age by indifferent parents and reared by substitutes not celebrated in the Parents Hall of Fame, Ruth ran away to join the circus. It was the thing to do in those morose days of the middle 20th century. Only thing was, the circus did not find itself in need of a talentless drag on the budget. “Can you ride a horse,” they wanted to know. Sure!” answered Ruth, and she absolutely could ride a horse, albeit after breaking almost every bone in her body in the learning process.
The circus life agreed with Ruth, who never felt at home anywhere before. Eventually, alas, a sinking economic situation drove the entertainers to Europe, where the circus fizzled out. Ruth returned to the U.S., found herself a crusty husband and had several children, eventually winding up on her own horse farm in Anthony, Florida. You remember Anthony—it’s not far from Citra. Ruth Reed was happy with her lot, finally on solid ground, devoted to her horses, a hit with the neighbors. If the children were slightly lacking in scholarship, well, no life is perfect.
The first of three sons perished in an auto accident. The second became a drug dealer. So now it was all up to Robbie, the last hope of a dying flame. Robbie was a moody sort who considered school more of an obligation than an opportunity. As a youngster, he found himself in one scrape after another, then righted himself with a series of entry-level jobs. Like Studs Lonigan, he deemed himself worthy of better things, a more exciting life and avidly sought a path to success. Let’s see, where in the world can a young man find some money?
When reporter Mitch Ohnstad asked Willie Sutton why he robbed banks, he replied, “That’s where the money is.” But Willie’s career was lengthened by the fact that he didn’t start out by robbing the bank in his own neighborhood. Unpossessed of a vehicle, Robbie did. Since it was also his mother’s depository, the teller recognized him immediately when he walked in. “Are you SURE you want to do this, Robbie?” she asked, plaintively. “Damn sure!” he told her as he took the loot and marched home, where he was apprehended about five minutes later.
Ruth shrugged forlornly as they led her offspring off to the hoosegow. “You know, you don’t expect your boys to be geniuses. Maybe one of them grows up to get a mechanics’ job at the Ford dealership, another one raises a horse that wins a few allowance races, little successes like that. But you don’t expect to go 0 for 3, that’s a mother’s nightmare. If Robbie had just come to me, I’d have found him a car. He could have hit a bank in Ocala or Dunellon, some place nobody knew him. They never would have found him. He’d be living the high life in Aruba or some place like that. Where is Aruba, anyway?”
That’s all, folks….
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