Off to the Races

An admittedly quirky little letter of introduction

The day I realized my childhood was over, I was fourteen. Like many young women, this revelation came to me in the form of an inappropriate remark from a man old enough to be my father. My experience was perhaps a bit unusual in the specifics; the man was wearing bright blue eyeshadow, enormous fake eyelashes, and he directed his comment, or I should say query, not to me, but to my father, who was kneeling down in the straw wrapping a bandage around a racehorse’s leg, while I was at the horse’s head. The guy stared at me, then asked my dad, “how much would I have to pay you to borrow your help for an hour?”

For a minute there I was still thoroughly childish, because I didn’t even get it. I thought he was a trainer whose help didn’t show up that day, that he needed someone to muck a few stalls or walk some hots (walking with horses hot from training while they slowly cool down). Or that there was a giant load of hay he needed help unloading. Something normal. I was still slow-wittedly trying to figure out why he’d offered to pay my dad to “borrow” me, when my dad, who had ceased not to wrap but had gone very quiet for a moment, answered.

“Billy”, he said, his tone conversational, “this is Jes, my fourteen-year-old daughter. You know I’d have to kill you if you say another thing like that.”

See, my dad understood the question. Then I got it. And grew up in a hurry.

The only other thing that’s important to understand about this story is this: that was the end of it. I saw Billy around all the time in later years, both in and out of the company of my dad, and apart from some nervous stuttering on Billy’s part it was all very friendly and never brought up again. Because that’s just how it was at the racetrack. HR existed directly between people, not as a managerial position.

The horse racing world is a world of sorts unto itself, or at least, akin to a small country, with its own customs and language. In those days, anyway. Like most things nowadays, it’s increasingly becoming more like anywhere else, though it’s going more slowly and proving more recalcitrant than many industries.

When I was a child, as I recall, it seemed to be a country peopled mainly by old men. They were the fixtures to me, anyway; their work as grooms and hotwalkers tied them to the barns, unlike the (mostly) younger men and women who were the exercise riders and the jockeys; they were different, dipping in and out of the barns quickly to hand off one horse and be given a leg up onto the next; at the end of the morning they were briefly a part of the life of the barn as they stood cleaning all the bridles, yokes, and girths hanging from bridle hooks by the barn doorways, and then they were gone.

But the old men, the backbone of the place, they were in the barns all morning, working with more care than speed. Many of them lived right there on the track, in the rooms above the barns, or in the nearby neighborhoods, within walking distance (I knew few, if any, grooms with cars). This was Pimlico racetrack in Baltimore, in the 90’s and early 2000’s; a rough place to walk at 2 or 3am, which was when these gentlemen came to work. A guy I knew got attacked by a couple of kids who jumped the fence to get inside the racetrack, stabbed him 17 times, then took off. Miraculously, he survived, though it was touch and go for awhile.

There was a man who worked with my dad for decades; everyone called him Bones. Bones was in his seventies when I met him; he still walked to work every morning through a neighborhood that was mainly drug dealers. He got jumped, too, and beaten so badly that the retina was detached from his eye and had to be surgically re-attached, though he never regained his sight on that side. He still walked to work, declining offers of a ride.

Bones told me stories of jumping on trains when he was a kid, and of first coming to the racetrack as a teenager, never looking back. He told me about his wife and him losing a baby many decades before, when they’d been turned away from the nearest hospital because they were black. He told me the story without bitterness or rancor, his grief not faded but softened with time, merely sharing history with me. He didn’t even blame the racist hospital staff for the death of his baby; he didn’t claim to know that the baby would have survived if they had gotten prompt care. I couldn’t believe he could even say that. I burned with the injustice, absolutely certain in my bones that surely, it was the fault of those evil people. Even if it wasn’t, technically, it might as well be. In my mind, at least, the verdict was in and they were found guilty of murder.

I used to help Bones and a couple of other grooms to mix up poultices and slather them on the legs of the horses. Nowadays, people mostly buy their poultices pre-mixed in a bucket, but back then folks made their own, from big bags of dried “bowie mud” mixed with water and whatever additives they chose. They’d have two buckets mixed up; one for legs, one for packing hooves. The hoof mixture would have less water in it, so the slightly dried “mud” would adhere like putty to the bottom of the horse’s hoof, with a neat little square of paper (cut from a feed bag) slapped on top of it after the hoof was packed. The mixture for legs was a little more wet and slippery, so it had a perfectly smooth glide as you spread it over a horse’s leg from knee to fetlocks. Too wet, and it would be sloppy and ooze out of place; too dry and it would stick in clumps to the hair on the legs. People nowadays tend to wear disposable gloves to do this, but we just got messy then, and took considerable time rinsing it off. Every bandage was smudged with muddy fingerprints.

(To this day, I’d rather feel the poultice on my skin. I haven’t done this in a few years, but whenever I did, I’d flash right back to “doing up” horses with Bones, Bernie, Monroe, and my dad.)

They had their own poultice recipes in those days, jealously guarded. Each of the true old-timer grooms had his own blend of lineaments and herbs and such that he added as he saw fit to his poultices; sometimes different combinations for different horses or different needs they saw in their legs. These old men all had tricks up their sleeves; recipes they swore by and shared with nobody. Though two of them, Bones and Monroe, did furtively allow me to join them in mixing up their craft concoctions. Little kid privilege.

After putting mud on the legs, the poulticed portion was wrapped in either feed-bag paper cut to size (for a dry poultice), or sheet cotton (for keeping it slightly moist), or, cotton covered with a layer of saran plastic wrap (really moist, and warm). Then an actual bandage, called a standing bandage (for standing around in a stall, get it?) was wrapped overtop to hold it all in place and to apply just the right level of compression to those hardworking legs, and to wrap it up (so to speak), two large diaper pins, interlocked, pinning it in place.

There was the odd horse who might like to mess with and chew upon their bandages, which could be dangerous if they pulled them out of place and caused too much unevenly distributed pressure on their tendons. We would mix up a paste with a little cayenne pepper and water, then carefully paint it with a brush on the outside of the bandages. The horse inevitably left them alone after that, but I tended to sneeze when removing the treated bandages. People buy a spray for this now.

My dad was a small-time trainer, meaning, he usually had just a few horses and did a good deal of his own grunt work. He rode all his own horses for the morning training when I was a kid (when my brother and I got old enough, we gradually took that over). He also still did a great deal of freelance riding for other people then; he had a reputation for being able to “get along with” virtually any horse, even the truly rough ones that other people flatly refused to ride. He was also good at “holding a tough horse”, meaning, specifically, a horse that pulls really hard and tends to run off with people. Needless to say, no human is as strong as a near half-ton of racehorse, so “holding” one is not entirely a matter of strength (though stamina is crucial); it’s a matter of finesse that is difficult to describe and more difficult to do, but it is deeply satisfying to do well on a horse that makes it arduous. Though, occasionally, a really tough one may make it so gut-wrenchingly exhausting that you are just glad to have gotten through another morning gallop without them getting away from you, with every muscle like rubber, praying to a God you rarely consider real that the next horse will go easy on you.

Also, occasionally you do get run off with, at least a little bit. It comes with the territory.

When I was little, I would occasionally stray from the barn, shyly accompanying one of the other trainers out to the grandstand to watch my dad ride. Or every now and then, my dad had a jockey breezing one of his horses (a breeze, or “work” is basically a controlled sprint for a specific distance, rarely more than 5/8 of a mile). I’d accompany him up to the clocker’s stand in these instances; to watch the work, and usually, I got to run the stopwatch. I’ve forgotten the clocker’s names; but I remember them as jovial, kindly, ever-so-slightly unscrupulous characters, always teasing me and calling me “Boss”. I got that a lot as a kid; apparently even at seven, my face tended to assume the same intensity of focus as my father’s. We have a picture of the two of us together, in the saddling paddock before a race on a rainy day; both of us looking like drowned rats, me holding the horse’s head and my dad instructing the jockey, our expressions identical. I remember that day, I was fifteen. That horse ran a heart-pounding, breath-takingly close second and just missed by a nose at the wire.

It seemed that people were drawn to the racetrack for one of three reasons, or some combination thereof. There were those who loved horses so much they couldn’t have borne not spending their lives with them; they just lived and breathed horses, they loved them with a fanatical, idolatrous sort of love. Then, with considerable overlap, there were those who loved horse racing; they loved its strange blend of seediness and old-money glamour; its juxtaposition of gritty, almost military discipline with a twist of traveling carnival bohemia. For both sorts, there was the allure of the splendid animals themselves, some of them anyway; the incomparable thrill of standing by the rail (or riding one of them) when down the stretch they came, the way the earth shakes as they flash by.

Those folks leaning towards the thrill-seeking second category also tended to love all the gambling, and perhaps the general licentiousness that was rampant.

Last but not least, the racetrack of my childhood seemed to function like a kind of Island of Misfit Toys, an environment so bizarre anyway that any sort of eccentric person was welcome to join its membership. If you were good at your work with horses (and when I was a kid, at least, the people who tended to stick around usually were quite good), no one really cared if you were a cross-dresser or a paranoid schizophrenic.

Billy, for example, was a very good rider. And kind of a sweetheart in his way. He was honestly pretty horrified to realize that he had solicitated a fourteen-year-old; we could argue that was not quite the whole of his offence, but we got along fine once my dad cleared that up. And one of the best hands with a horse that I knew was a guy who was in fact a paranoid schizophrenic; it seems counterintuitive, but he had a real knack for getting horses to relax. He hid around corners from women, couldn’t tie his shoes, and was strangely obsessed with Michael Jackson, but he was good with a horse and we all liked him. I was honored to be one of the few women he could comfortably speak with.

As I’m reminiscing, I keep coming across this theme: mixing. There was just more mixing things back then. Like the poultice, horse feeds have been increasingly made as pre-mixed, “balanced” for you so you don’t have the trouble of carefully considering and balancing the individual nutritional needs of the horses in your care; you don’t have to plan anything but purchasing and measuring. I can’t remember the last time I saw a bin of plain oats, but as a kid I used to scoop up handfuls of them, breathing in their scent, and slowly spreading my fingers so they went trickling, then cascading, plunk-plunk-plunk shhhhhhhh, back to the bin. I played with (and tasted) all the different grains, but I remember the oats best. They satisfied something in me.

It was a great place to be a little girl, though, sometimes, a rough place to be a young woman. Sometimes. I’m not complaining. When I turned sixteen and could be licensed to ride, it was a transfigured world for awhile; no longer confined to the view with my feet on the ground, in the barn or the grandstand. Spending most of my mornings on the track itself, faster paced (very fast indeed when breezing), physically taxing and thrilling at times.

There are moments of that I’ll probably remember like yesterday even if I live to be ninety; certain horses that moved under you like they had panther blood in them somewhere; days when the track was “fast” and galloping over it, my horse felt as if he or she were floating beneath me, with the sun just rising and burning away a light morning mist. Certain kinds of mornings can make me ache for that.

Or there was a mare I rode in the mornings down at a training center in Camden, SC. She was known for “fireworks” when stepping onto the track or off of it, sometimes quite severe and getting other people in trouble with their horses, but I’d discovered that if I let her just stand and watch the other horses training for awhile first, she relaxed and was (usually) an angel for me the rest of the ride. My dad used to sometimes let horses do that, the older, smarter ones especially, and I’d noted how relaxed and happy they always appeared to be, just watching. So I tried it. Did the trick. I can still picture it in my head, the acres of pines surrounding the track, with her pert, slightly curved, dark gray ears in the frame, pointed forward, but relaxed. Happily interested ears, not fixed-staring-about-to-explode-ears. Sometimes she’d rest a hind foot awhile. If I’d offered her a cigarette it could hardly have made the picture more complete.

When she was ready, she’d glance back at me with one big dark eye for a flash (really), then briskly trot off, ready for work, the moment my weight shifted in response. We got along great. I like remembering that view, with those ears in it. That was twenty years ago, so I’ve no idea where that mare is now or if she’s still alive; I hear that training center is a housing development now.

Recently, I was meditating upon 1 John 2:17, “and the world is passing away, with all its desires, but the one who does the will of God abides forever.” Sometimes I feel as though I can almost see the passing away happening before my very eyes; that the world is not “merely” changing but winding down, passing away bit by bit, quick as the rail whizzing by on a breezing horse. That odd little world of my childhood is gone, along with much of its excellence and its eccentricity, and my dad is one of the old men now, of whom there are few. It’s no country for old men anymore; it’s merely slick and fast and uniform everywhere. There are no more secret recipes.

I could get very sad thinking about this. I’m a nostalgic person by temperament; I love old things, old people, old ways. I love old houses and farm buildings, old city neighborhoods, old small towns, ancient cities, ancient languages, and I love difference. I love misfits who aren’t trendy. I love secret recipes for poultice, or red velvet cake. I love history, old books, and saving things that are important or just lovely (which is a kind of importance) from being lost.

But of course, in the end I can’t do that. All things and all lives under the sun are impermanent, even the things that are most important, most lasting…they will not last. America will not last. The best-stewarded, multigenerational farm will not last. My marriage will not last “forever”, but only til death. My child will hopefully long outlive me and perhaps have children of her own, but she, too, will die, and so will her children.

The pines that are gone are gone for good, but one day, God has promised, He is going to make a new heaven and a new earth. He is going to make all things new. Personally, I hope that means there will be horses. And very tall pines, and any number of other things I have loved and mourned here. I long for the true Narnia (if you’ve read and loved The Last Battle, you get me). But that bit doesn’t really matter. The strange paradox of loving Christ is that He will change your heart so that you appreciate everything more, but need it less. I’m storing up my treasures in heaven; and I can’t contemplate a treasure equal to Him. I don’t care that much about what the new earth will be like, in itself, as much as what it will be like to be with Him, and to be done with sinning or seeing others sin. To have run the race.

Coming to Christ means that eventually, you will love other people more than you did before, but love no one as much as you love Him. Yet that love for Him infuses your love for other people til it grows exponentially. Most of all, that love means that I want other people to know Him. I want them to know this love too. I want them joined in the body with me, attached to the vine, on that joyous day when Christ claims His Bride.

Shakespeare said that the past is prologue, but that’s only the half of it. The present and the future here on earth are prologue, too. The real story, the true one, the eternal one, starts for us on the other side.

Too many of the old men and the misfits that I loved lived and died without, to my knowledge, ever hearing the gospel. If my writing here has a goal, it is to reach as many old men and misfits (others welcome too) as I can with the best of news, to point to something that will last. More coming soon. It won’t all be about poultice and oats all the time, I promise.