My father's thick hand holds a shiny quarter just out of reach. He laughs, flicking it in the air with his thumb and forefinger. The silver shimmers in the blue sky. I wait, what seems to be forever, for the sun to spit it back at me.
"Take that money and buy us a racing program. I'm going to get a ticket on the daily double. I'm going to buy you one too."
" I haven't picked any horses, dad."
"That's alright. We'll get a four and an eight. You were born in '48."
Whenever I drive by Ellis Park Race Track, I remember that scene. Those two horses lost their respective races, of course. Over a forty-year span, from that dogday afternoon in 1958 to the present, so have many others, saddled with my father's pari-mutuel tickets. He was a great handicapper but, a terrible gambler. Dad read the statistics in the Racing Form better than any horseman I ever knew. Not only that, we could watch the thoroughbreds prance through the paddock before each race and I believe, to this very day, he understood their thoughts.
"See the white foam around the saddle girth on that number 4 horse?"
"Yeah. It looks like whipped cream."
"That's sweat. That horse is washing out. I remember him the last time he ran. He wasn't nervous. There's something bothering him today."
"What. What's bothering him?"
"It doesn't matter. Something, anything. He just won't run good. But, look at the muscle tone on the 3 horse. See how he's trying to push his groom around. See how he's up on the bit. He looks good in the Racing Form too. That horse'll run big.”
More often than not, my father's analytical skills and observations proved true. Many of those horses did run very well, but not with his money on them. He only bet to win, never place, never show. The idea that the best horse might encounter uncontrollable circumstances and not win was a foreign one. Dad held the same view for horseracing, for baseball, and for life.
"Place bets are for sissies. If the horse's good enough to run second, he's good enough to win," he always said, as it broke bad, ran up behind a wall of other horses, or got pulled by the jockey. Then, without questioning the weakness of his logic, he would rip the useless ticket in half and begin the ritual anew, buying a win ticket on another horse in the next race. One day in the late 1970's, when I was grown and operating a successful racing stable of my own, my father sat on a park bench at Ellis and picked eight horses in eight races that ran second. It was a remarkable feat; yet, he never cashed a single ticket.
These memories flood my mind. I'm walking through the cavernous old concrete grandstand toward the Racing Secretary's office. Even though the meet has been closed for two months, I still taste homemade relish on the polish sausages. I hear the crowd rise to its feet on the balcony above me, screaming for one thousand pound animal to stick his nose in front of another at an invisible wire on a clay track. I feel the ground vibrate as forty hooves drum down the stretch. For an instant, the air seems electric, swirling and crackling, like a jockey's whip has just sliced through it. The smell of leather and sweat is everywhere.
Then there is silence and a brisk autumn breeze. I left the racing game for good in 1982 when my second child was born. I like to tell myself that I'm a good person, that I left the grueling lifestyle to properly raise children. We all stroke our conscience occasionally. The real reason was much less altruistic. By the early 1980's, horseracing was becoming something all adult children dread, a business. I loved the game. I loved shipping from one bush league track to another, working like a gypsy seven days a week. I loved the cool mornings when dawn was a mist rising from the compost and the air reeked of Bigel oil and bad coffee. Most of all, I loved the adrenalin that accelerated my heart each time one of our stable's thoroughbreds turned for home with his neck in front of the field.
When the things I loved began to fade, overwhelmed by a concern for tax laws, a search for corporate sponsors, a desire for gimmick bets, and a need for the attitude of a carnival shill, I wanted a way out. Familial responsibility provided it. But, when you abandon something you enjoy, there is a tinge of regret that becomes a permanent part of who you are. An era ends in your own mind first.
I'm feeling this regret in the pit of my stomach right now as I enter Bobby Jackson's new office. I've come here to discuss the current state of racing at this track and to write a magazine article in that regard. But my heart wants more than information. It wants vindication. I want him to tell me I was right, leaving the game when I did. His conformation that Ellis Park, a racing facility that lasted more than sixty years as a family owned enterprise, has finally surrendered its country fair atmosphere and farmland values to a slick corporate demeanor will go a long way in justifying the decision I made to leave behind something I loved. Before an era ends, it must be an era outside the boundaries of individual thought.
Bob Jackson is a thin man in his mid-fifties. He has a firm handshake and a smile that says life is pretty much okay. His current position as Director of Racing proves just how hard it is to put the racetrack out of your mind and heart once it worms its way in.
Bob's father trained thoroughbreds at Ellis Park when old man Ellis was still growing soybeans in the infield to earn extra cash. By the time he was eleven in 1953, Bob was sneaking under the back fence and galloping horses with the jockeys in the gray dawn. He became a pretty fair rider in the 1960's, but a bad spill and subsequent injury cut short his career. Bob left the track and started a construction business. Even though that business was successful, when Ruth Adkins gave him an opportunity 15 years later to work in the Racing Secretary's office, he walked away from hammers, nails, and concrete and never looked back.
"If it wasn't for Ruth, I'd probably be building houses still."
The words conjure up my first official meeting with Ruth, the woman who ran this track for the Ellis family during three decades of race meets. I was a green kid in 1978 with a stable full of cheap claiming horses. My upgrade from groom to trainer was so recent that the Polaroid snapshot on the license hadn't fully developed. But Ruth was already an icon.
I had shipped the horses from a training center in Lexington, Kentucky. It was hot. I was exhausted from the strain of trying to do everything right. The security guard told me no stall space had been reserved for my stable and I couldn't unload. The horses were sweating and thirsty. They stomped and snorted, rocking the van, while I stomped and snorted around the guard shack. I prayed none would throw themselves down and injure a leg.
A golf cart, groaning under the weight of a huge woman, careened around the corner. There she sat, like a Tahitian queen on her throne, reading the Coggins tests and past racing results on my thoroughbreds. The guard seemed to shrink inside his uniform as she barked, "Let him unload stupid. We’ve got room and we sure as hell can’t run a race meet without horses." When she spoke, her hand caressed the only other rider I ever saw on that cart, a .357 magnum with an extended barrel. Ruth never once looked in my direction.
"Oh, I remember her. She could be a very persuasive woman,” I said. "How did she coax you back, Bob?"
"It wasn't hard to talk me into coming back home.
It's odd, and sometimes wonderful, how words or groups of words will awaken your memory, like your mother giving you a gentle shake on a warm Saturday morning. Back home on the track - I hear Bob's voice, but I see my first job menial job at Ellis Park, in 1976. I was grooming horses for the Donald Hughes Stable. Work started at 5AM seven days a week. We finished by 11AM, giving Don time to drink several beers before going front side to the races, where he drank vodka tonics all afternoon. By early evening, he was usually ready to delegate feeding and watering to me.
The welfare of twenty expensive horses was exhausting to an irresponsible kid. By 9PM, I was emotionally drained and in my home, in other words, the small wooden "tack shack" at the end of our barn. I slept on horse blankets, hugged by the incense of rolled oats and blackstrap molasses. There were advantages to this arrangement. Don was generous and easy going. I answered to no one and the money I earned was mine to keep or throw away. It takes years of adult obligations to fully appreciate the value of a circumstance like that one.
"You came back to the track about the time I was leaving," I said.
"Yeah, once it's in your blood, it's like an addiction. You quit doing it but you can't stop thinking about it. I knew I was never going to be physically able to ride races anymore, so working in the front office was the only way for me to keep in touch with jockeys and trainers."
"You've spent the last fifteen years here Bob. What's the greatest change you've noticed in horseracing, particularly at the smaller tracks like Ellis?"
"That's easy. It's changed from a sport to a business. How can you operate a twenty million dollar facility for only three months a year without some pretty tight business practices? Another thing that really pushed us into the business world was the state of Kentucky legalizing simulcasting. Even though we only have live racing here at
Ellis from July through Labor Day, we can take in revenue the other nine months by giving people the means to bet on horse races all over the U.S. The beauty of it is we don't have to keep a full compliment of employees the year around, just a few pari-mutuel clerks and some kitchen help."
"Has this benefited the horsemen?"
"Sure. Their purse money in the summer has doubled since you were here last. We've renovated the backside barn area and we give away over one and one-half million bucks in stakes money each year. We draw better horses and more famous riders. People are willing to bet more when they see a better show."
It sounds good, but these factors actually make life difficult, if not impossible, for the small-time operator. I'm sure people who own small stores struggle with big corporate competitors, like Wal-Mart or K-Mart. But, that struggle can assume epic proportions at a bush league racetrack. If you don't win races, you don't eat and neither do the horses. I understand the practicality of what Bob has been saying, but it strongly re-enforces my feeling that an era has ended.
This track has existed on Highway 41 South between Evansville, Indiana and Henderson, Kentucky for most of its seventy-five plus years by the sweat and sacrifice of men who race horses because they love the sport. Many of them live in this area. Their fathers raced here before them. They aren't talented enough or rich enough or both to compete at the big league tracks in New York and California. Consequently, tracks like Ellis with cheap purses provide them an economic opportunity at a low level of competitiveness.
This caste system has always worked well because trainers who have access to wealthy clients and expensive horses traditionally stay where the big money is. When simulcasting allows smaller tracks a much larger income, they increase the purse structure. Suddenly, the big boys smell easy money and ship their well-bred horses. The racing program is flooded with more competition than the little guys can stand. Their own cheaper, slower horses lose races that, under ordinary circumstances, they could win. The small-time operator goes broke. When any community sacrifices its values and traditions to attract wealth, it runs the risk of losing its identity.
"Bob, when I raced here 15 years ago, I was on a first name basis with almost every trainer, jockey, groom and hotwalker on the backside. That familiarity was something that made me love this place. With stables shipping in from every corner of the country, it can't be that way anymore."
"No you're right. It isn't and certainly, that goes to eliminating the strong family atmosphere we once had. But we still work at making all the people on the backside feel safe and appreciated while they're here. The track chaplain has an office above the kitchen area. We've built dorms for the stable help, no more sleeping in tack rooms. We have a softball league and picnics each summer. And these are things we could never have done without extra money."
Bob goes on to explain that, even with recreational programs and a better living environment, backside security still struggles with the drunks. Yet, I can't imagine a racetrack without them. Over the course of ten years as a racetracker, I came in contact with hundreds of people at many of the racetracks in the Midwest; but the ones I've always remembered were the drunks, like you always remember the colors of a rainbow after the storm.
I don't mean the slobbering, obnoxious pseudo - rich drunks, or the once-a-month mint julep drinkers. I'm thinking of the characters that provided the glue that holds my memory of an era together. These old boys considered the racetrack their home and drinking a career choice. Many of them never used a last name. Monk, Red Harvey, Hoss and Victor were single named men who all worked for me at one time or another. I paid them cash, usually by the day, to cool out thoroughbreds after a swift morning gallop, or an afternoon race. Sometimes they mucked stalls or wrapped legs, if they were sober enough. None of them ever ventured away from the backside of the racetrack except when riding in a horse van to another track
Each man lived in a tack room. Each had his personal ritual for drinking. Red Harvey hid vodka bottles in hay bales around the barn. It was a game. He would turn a corner, disappearing on the opposite side of the barn, stop the horse, take a long pull on a bottle, and then continue the journey. When I first hired him, I wondered how it was possible to get puking drunk by walking around a barn.
Monk kept a warm beer by his cot. He awoke at 5AM every morning, and drank the single beer. There was method in this madness. On most mornings, this calmed his nerves enough to pee in the empty beer can, eliminating a cold walk to the urinals. His buddy Hoss ordinarily arrived shortly after 5AM with a washtub full of ice and the cheapest ale on sale at the track kitchen that day.
The most enigmatic of the group was Victor. He smoked Velvet tobacco rolled unevenly in Topps cigarette paper. Once the cigarette was fashioned, Victor attached it to the right corner of his mouth and never removed it. When his lip got warm, he would spit it out and roll another. This wasn’t normally a problem unless a load of dry straw was stacked close by. Victor spoke in rapid riddles. The cigarette bounced up and down, like a fishing bobber, in perfect cadence with his words. "If a preacher can save whores, why can't he save me two for Friday night?" "How can a woman be pretty ugly?" "What's under a pony tail?" Those questions served as an excuse to ponder the answers over a sip of bourbon. He asked them aloud frequently while he worked.
A cursory description of these men does them no justice. They were all more than the sum of their parts. I learned important lessons in my young manhood from these four vagabonds and others like them. Yes, they were alcoholics and their lack of moderation
was contagious. Yes, each one had his own personal tragedy by which he excused the drinking. Yet, whiskey was all I ever needed to lock up around them. Integrity and honor were part of their old "hardboot" code. You don't steal. You don't lie. You pay what you owe, and you never neglect a racehorse.
I had a gelding named Sanden King entered in the fourth race on an Ellis Park program one day in the summer of 1978. The horse carried two small bone chips in his fetlock, or ankle. By standing his front legs in ice water up to the knees three hours before a race, I pulled the inflammation out temporarily. The horse liked it, remaining motionless with his sleepy head hanging over the stall webbing.
Old Hoss always sat holding a leather lead shank attached to Sanden King's halter. They seemed to pacify each other, sometimes snoring in unison. On this particular day, I came back to the barn before post time. The gelding slept as usual, with his head resting on the man's shoulder. The man was dead, still gripping the lead shank. His drunken and diseased heart had just stopped beating. But even in death, Hoss remained faithfully at his post.
Most intelligent people scoff at the idea that man and beast have a kindred spirit and I confess my ignorance of such things, as well. But, I do know, and it is a matter of record that after the ambulance carted Hoss away, I led Sanden King to the paddock, saddled him and watched him run the best race of his career, winning by almost a full furlong. I believe it was his way of telling the old man goodbye.
The dedication and work ethic shown by these men is difficult to discover in the modern, profit motivated, business of racing. The form of the sport remains. Horses run around a dirt track from a starting gate to a wire. Spectators bet on the order of finish. But, the substance is gone. Horseracing is becoming all about money. The glory is fading. The thrill of competing is being reduced by the anxiety of earning.
Men like Monk and Hoss and all the others have either died or gone to pasture at county rest homes, replaced by vacant eyed runaways and illegal aliens who work twelve hours a day without drinking. These people also work without developing a rhythm of life. The horses in their care are dumb animals to be exploited, as they themselves are dumb animals to be exploited. It's a job and nothing more. Not only that, but Bob is telling me here today that this depersonalization of a very personal lifestyle is the wave of the future.
"Right now, we're planning on an upgrade of our wagering facilities. We want to make the person spending his money happy. We're also keeping our fingers crossed regarding alternative gaming laws."
"Alternative gaming - what's that?"
"If the state government passes laws that allow it, we'll be able to line our walls with slot machines and other types of gambling devices. That could effectively double our revenue and create more changes for the industry."
I like the fact that Bob calls the current state of racing, an industry. It's easy for me to envision a clear demarcation between the Ellis Park in my memory and the Ellis Park industry of today. I thank Bob for an enlightening interview and ask to drive through the barn area on my way out. He phones ahead to the guard shack and tells them I'm coming.
On the way to my car, I walk past one of the steel beams in the grandstand that has a high water mark on it. Men in boats scratched the mark into the surface during the flood of 1937, when this whole facility was under the Ohio River. I put my back against the beam and stretch upward. The mark is still well over my head. I remember being ten years old again. My father stood me against this same beam so I wouldn't wander off in the crowd while he bought daily double tickets. He said, "There's a time to move and a time to stand still. Now is the time to stand still."
I'm thinking about that simple principle this cold November, even though my father has passed away. Is it possible to make progress by not moving? I think the answer is yes. I think we make progress in the intrinsic values, beyond the temporal, that truly define us as human beings, only if we hold on to the pieces of the past that fix those values in us. Then they become a springboard to understanding ourselves. A famous horseman, Monty Richards, once said, "A good trainer can hear a horse speak to him. A great trainer can hear a horse whisper." This is true of life as well. A good human can hear life speak and a great one can hear it whisper.
I recognize the need for Ellis Park and many other small racing facilities across this country to expand their economic base of operations. Any business has to increase its income in direct proportion to the increase in overhead. But, that's a fiscal concern. It doesn't have to be the only concern. There is a wealth of emotion and energy, a time-honored tradition of sportsmanship, a way of life that is disappearing because of this over-emphasis on profit at all cost. Here in this grandstand with a frigid steel beam against my back and an unreachable mark above my head, I hear the wind whisper, "now is the time to stand still".
