There are few events a fan could call glorious in American sports but one which unquestionably rings that bell is the 150-year old Kentucky Derby, often called the greatest bucket list event in the country. Unaccountably, 150,000 cramped fun-lovers annually show up at Churchill Downs race track in Louisville, Kentucky on the first Saturday in May perfumed, well-coiffed and dressed to the nines for an event most of them know virtually nothing about. Colossal hats and mint juleps are the order of the day as rookie visitors busily check their programs, tip sheets and pocket ouija boards to find a candidate to bet on, often taking their cue from a horse’s name, the owner’s colors or the handicapping of a friend of a friend whose brother once knew a guy who owned a horse which won a race at Ak-Sar-Ben in Omaha.
There will be another such crowd two weeks later at fading Pimlico race track in Baltimore and then at Belmont in New York three weeks after that. The three iconic events comprise thoroughbred racing’s hallowed Triple Crown, a brilliant trifecta captured by a mere 13 three-year-olds since 1875. Perhaps 1% of the celebrants on Derby Day could name any of those horses but Secretariat, who turned the trick back in 1973, when racing was in flower.
British aristocrats called horse racing “The Sport of Kings” back in the day because they were the only people who could afford it. Pretty soon it will be called The Sport of Kings again for the same reason. Burgeoning lotteries and sanctioned gambling of every description have compromised thoroughbred racing, as has the soaring cost of maintaining the animals and the exploding value of the large expanses of real estate they compete on. There were 314 tracks operating in the United States in 1890 and there are about 70 now, many of them holding abbreviated meets. The next one to go may well be Florida’s financially successful Gulfstream Park, now owned by a callous daughter of previous racing magnate Frank Stronach, who captured it from her mentally diminished dad in a court case. She also owns California’s Santa Anita, alas. If Gulfstream disappears from the racing scene, the only track left in Florida would be Tampa Bay Downs, which also rests on pricey land. The era of racing barons of the past, great sportsmen who valued sport over money, has ended and with it the halcyon days of thoroughbred racing. Racing will continue to exist at the highest level and Derby Day will never die but the little guy with a backyard horse he bred and raised on a five acre farm in Ocala will eventually be a thing of the past, as will the support system that made the industry great. Those of us fortunate enough to be here during the days of wine and roses may be saddened but we’ll always appreciate our good luck at being around for the unforgettable party.
In 1970, I was married to Harolyn Locklair, a Miami fashion model with an affinity for horses. We bought her one, an agreeable mare she named Odessa, then a palomino Tennessee Walker named Sundancer, which even I could ride with a semblance of confidence. We stabled them at a horse facility located where The Oaks Mall is temporarily ensconced. If mall occupancy rates keep diving like they are presently, the property may be a horse facility again soon, but I digress. Harolyn eventually became grumpy about her long daily drive to the ranch so she moved her buddies closer, to the Southeast part of town. One day, she rode Odessa from her new digs back to our house next to the Subterranean Circus on SW 7th Street, put her in the garage for a few minutes and came to visit at the store. Highly offended by this breach of courtesy and her deployment in a dark, depressing place with no food, Odessa bolted through the unlocked garage doors and headed for home. Oh, the troubles that we weave when first we opt to own a steed!
Harolyn said her pal would find her way back to the stable, which I found amazing and hard to believe. She jumped in her truck and headed off. Rod Bottiglier, one of our Circus workers and I got into his step van to follow the likely trail of the escapee. Now, you have to understand one thing about Rod. If the house was burning down and he could save either his mother or his Harley Davidson, mom was toast. The Harley was tied down tight in the back of the van, but Rod’s cruising speed was still about ten miles an hour. “Come on, Rod,” I prodded, “we’ll never catch her poking along like this!” Rod eased up to 12 mph and muttered, “Can’t go too fast. Can’t have the bike falling over.”
We proceeded at this rate down Depot Avenue, across Main and finally to Odessa’s barn, where she stood nibbling hay and laughing at us. “You guys are the most pitiful cavalry I ever saw,” said Harolyn. “And by the way, Sundancer (still a stud) got out of his stall last night and sniffed a few ladies. We have to either geld him or find us a new home.” The next day, I started looking for farmland in Marion County.
“This one is nice, and it’s a bargain,” said a young, laid-back real estate agent named Tim Paletti of a very green 40-acre place just a stone’s throw from the southwest shore of Orange Lake. “It’s owned by a ten-man consortium which couldn’t agree on what to do with it. Only $70,000.” He showed me a dozen other places but none of them compared with the first. I know that the price seems ridiculously cheap now but in 1973 it was real money. Most of my friends thought I was nuts but I bought the place with a ten-year mortgage. We called it Rolling Thunder Farm. Danny Levine, a city boy with absolutely no equine experience, was the first resident-manager. He turned out to be perfect.
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| Izaak Walton Levine |
For Daniel Levine, nothing could be better than living in inauspicious natural surroundings. There was a comfortable old mobile home sitting under a massive 200-year old tree to sit in and philosophize. There was plenty of room to start a wonderful organic garden. There was a fine sinkhole in which to grow marijuana plants without being discovered by the sheriff’s narcy helicopters. If that wasn’t enough, Danny had dreams of erecting a singular structure. “Bill, we need a sunset tower. Very tall, to see over the woods to the west. Every night, we can climb up in our sunset tower and watch the sun go down. Whaddaya think?” I told him to figure out the cost and get back to me, but forget it if it was over a hundred dollars. I never heard much about the sunset tower again.
Danny eventually fell in love with a high-school girl named Charlotte and moved into town to be closer to her. That began a string of questionable farm help highlighted by the stint of Ralph and Kim Stone, sturdy and dependable workers even if Ralph went overboard regaling anyone who would listen with tales of his past glories. Then one day on a trip to the 7-11, Ralph was gobbled up by the FBI for breaching probation in California. Kim, a strong Minnesota dairy-farm girl was left dazed and confused. And weeping. “I don’t know what to do,” she cried. “His name isn’t even Ralph Stone, it’s Tim Dugger. Am I even married---we got a license with fake names? And if I am married, is my name Dugger or Stone?”
I told Kim to hang around til the dust settled and she figured things out. Those Minnesota mornings of milking cows at 4 a.m. toughen a girl up and she decided to stay on the job and make a new life for herself and her two Dobermans. She was a very dependable worker, tending to the now dozen or so horses, fixing the place up, accepting a date now and then from some goofy farm boy. One night, a couple of besotted gentlemen exiles from the notorious James Bar in Orange Lake came weaving down our long dirt road, calling out her name. Kim backed out the trailer door, levelled her shotgun and fired a blast over their heads, then set the Dobermans on them. “You never heard such cussin’ and squealin’” she said after watching the deadly duo stumble down the road in the dark. I asked her if the dogs bit the culprits. “I’m thinkin’ yes,” she said, “since they both came back with blood in their mouths.” We never heard from the homeboys again, nor any other scalawags from the sinful James Bar. We suspect they whisper there in hushed tones of the fearsome blond amazon, her trusty rifle and the vicious pack of devil-dogs she commanded. Let’s go hassle Lucy at the laundry is probably a more appealing option.
Now in these times, there was a house of some repute on NW Tenth Avenue just off 441 where people gathered in fellowship to discuss important matters of the day, plan social activities and smoke dope. The place belonged to the irrepressible Shelley Browning and her affable husband Bert, who held a position of some magnitude in the History department of Santa Fe Community College. By day, a tweedy, meek and mild college professor, by night a rampaging party animal, converted to the dark side by his lusty female companion. Everybody went there at one time or another, especially if they misplaced their dealer.
Now Shelley was, among many other things, a serious student of thoroughbred horse racing. She knew her pedigrees, was an expert on conformation of the animal and was an unchallenged historian of the sport, not to mention as big a fan as existed of Secretariat, who won the Derby in 1973. “You should buy a couple of mares,” she advised. “You have two horses on forty acres, so you’ve got the room. You’re a competitive guy and you’re never going to own the Red Sox. What’s to lose? Let’s go to a sale, I’ll go with you.”
And so it starts, the slow descent into dubious behavior that gradually leads to ecstasy, fear, overoptimism, impossible highs and withering lows. Horses win magnificent races. Horses are injured and even die. One day you’re on the moon, the next you’re run over by a tandem-truck. You win races over millionaires and sheiks, you lose to a one-horse stable run by a chicken farmer. There’s nothing like it. It’s as addictive as crack cocaine and oreos. Then one day you wake up and there’s fifty horses standing in your back yard saying “Feed me.”
That’s not quite all, folks….
Next Week---Part Two
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
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| The original acreage of Rolling Thunder Farm, now an RV resort golf paradise. |
