The First Derby I Never Saw
Posted by frankpos on April 26, 2009
As we thunder into the home stretch toward the Greatest Two Minutes in Sport, a remembrance of years and Derbies past, from long-time reader, Roz:
The First Derby I Never Saw
It was before microwave ovens, and bottled water. Before I pods and microbrews. Before laptops and Twitters. Even before Tweets.
It was in the spring of my early life, in my first year of college in Columbus, when my roommate, Tim Holder, a recently discharged Viet Nam Vet, and I decided to engage in The All American right of passage and attend the 1970 Kentucky Derby. Through the drink and the haze (you can imagine) and the newness of youth and freedom, we decided one late Friday night that nothing could prevent us from going the next day.
Although my last name, German, means “one who takes care of horses,” I have never owned a horse, fed a horse, groomed a horse, mucked-out the stall of a horse, and except for the black stallion at the now defunct Stein and Goldstein carousel at Shontags near Saugerties, New York, I have never been on a horse.
Yet I have a connection to racetracks through my sweet, late father. Saratoga. Monticello. Yonkers. Aqueduct. Green Mountain. These were all places with the Runyonesque characters that we have all become familiar with. I became comfortable with the sights, the silks, and the smell of the track. The hawkers. The tip sheets. The Morning Telegraph. The hot days in the grandstand. The waft of bad cigars. The thrill of a come from behind winner. The despondency of a nosed out loser. The tearing of the pari mutual tickets into small pieces.
On the trip to Louisville, Tim’s 1969 VW (bought new for under $1800) chugged admirably above the rising heat of the asphalt as we trundled toward Cincy on I 71. We made a couple of stops along the way to pick up different types of beer that might not be available in New York, as gifts for my father. We stopped in Southern Ohio. A small grocery store featured Weidemanns, Strohs, Blatz. Great souvenirs for the old man.
The beetle chugged ever southwestward and when we got into Cincy you could feel more of the heat lick upward through the floorboards. This day was gonna be on about the fourth level of Dante’s big furnace. To the left we saw the Reds old and pacific palace, Crosley Field, and soon came the new concrete monstrosity, Riverfront Stadium, as we crossed the dirty Ohio into northern Kentucky.
By about 3:00 in the afternoon we were within the Louisville City limits and didn’t have any trouble finding the track as we snaked our way through the urban streets. As we got closer to the old twin spired Grande Dame we were both surprised at how rural the area around Churchill Downs appeared. Red clay road. Small lean-to houses. Overgrown weeds. We weren’t expecting Royal Ascot but for a Yank like me, it seemed like I might have imagined Mississippi would be. Tim said he thought we were in “Dog Patch.” The environs around the great grandstand were more cousin to the scruffy and hard scrabble than to the sport of kings.
We entered the old place under the double spires and right away noticed that the cement canyons, dark byways, and open promenade areas of the place were like a steam bath. It was wall to wall people and you couldn’t help but lean too familiarly onto your next door neighbor as he or she did the same. The overripe human scent was an assault on your olfactory system.
I almost lost my breath in the hothouse humidity as dark stone walls sweat and puffed as we bumped and crawled, back and forth, in the bustle. I thought of many great horses. Man o War. Carryback. Citation. I thought of all the history as a cart piled high with frankfurter buns, and pushed by a blonde haired teenage boy, stalled in the traffic in front of me. All the history. All the victorys. All the disappointments.
We tried to make it to the infield through the tunnel and experienced “human trafficking” before there was such a term. Like the in and out tide, we crept forward, fell back, losing some ground, winning a little more, until we finally broke through and into the sun. You know the scene…colorful campers…beer…kids playing Frisbee…beer…very healthy coeds in straining halter tops…beer…sausages grilling…beer. Except for the ocean, we could have been at spring break in Fort Lauderdale.
Well, Tim and I bet a couple of races and came up empty and as the day went on, more and more people funneled to the already teeming infield. We both sampled the required Mint Julep in the Commemorative Keepsake Glass, which, by the way, turned out to be so brittle, that later that day when I tossed it into the back of Tim’s car onto some sweatshirts, it shattered into a thousand shards. The mint julep itself was undistinguished…so much so that Tim and I were forced to sample a couple more to ensure that our initial judgment of the bourbon laced drink was not flawed.
By now Post Time for the Derby was rapidly approaching. I HAD to bet on a horse called “My Dad George,” because, well…that was my father’s name. I heard the track announcer bellow, “Six minutes to post.” The $2 window was crawling, and I began to get a sick feeling in my stomach that I wouldn’t get the bet in. We all queued in a stationary dance as there appeared to be a problem at the head of the line…a middle aged women with sunken cheeks and wearing a yellow sun dress was barking at the black ticket seller that he had given her the wrong ticket. I got more and more nervous. “Two minutes to post,” and I could see that not only my palms, but my wrists as well, were sweating in the airless tomb. “What the hell,” I thought and bolted toward the empty $10 window and put my last sawbuck on my father’s namesake to win. I breathed a sigh of relief that I got the bet down in time.
Now it seemed the entire populace of Churchill, indeed, all of humanity, were trying to squeeze through the narrow tunnel to reach the fresh air of the infield to be able to watch the race. I heard the PA say with some flourish, “It is now post time!” and instead of moving ahead, the human tide seemed to stop, to freeze, to almost go dormant in the middle of the underground tube. I tried to miniaturize myself, to turn myself sideways, and got by a guy in a Hawaiian shirt and straw fedora, but got road blocked when a lady pushing a double stroller, both kids in tow, suddenly stopped right in front of me as I ground to a halt. Now I was sweating like a spout. I shuffled this way, that way, every way, but made little progress.
“They’re off!!” I still had maybe twenty feet to go and it didn’t look good. I could barely hear the announcer call the race as the crowd roared. Somehow I twisted myself into a small pretzel and made it near the end of the tunnel where a TV monitor showed the horses enter the first turn. I could barely hear the announcer and the names I could make out were foreign, nothing even remotely resembling “My Dad George.” Suddenly the whole crowd swelled and I felt myself swept backward losing this last bit of progress. In the distance, the PA guy sounded more and more excited as he described the scene as the horses entered the clubhouse turn. Finally, I clawed my way all the way back to where I could barely sneak a peek at the monitor when a woman, the size of Junior Sample’s sister, appeared from the right and drifted slowly across my limited field of vision like a nimbus, blocking out all light as the crowd roared at the finish.
Later, Tim told me that “My Dad George” finished second. I still hold the losing ticket in my wallet today.
We stopped for more beer on the way home. Burger. Falstaff. Ballantine Ale. Even though I couldn’t drive a standard, Tim insisted that I take over the wheel for part of the drive home. He didn’t seem to mind that I ground a pound or two from the transmission. I bet there are still some iron filings out on that highway today. No, Tim didn’t mind at all. I guess when you’re a Viet Nam vet you become more forgiving of such relatively trivial matters.
Anyway, that’s the way it was on the first Saturday in May almost forty years ago. Back then, the Derby, along with the Heavyweight Championship fight, and the World Series, was a “big thing.” But even then, the Derby’s power and attraction was already waning. Secretariat’s magnificent Triple Crown win three years later really just managed to put a final exclamation point on an era that was really over.
Times change and people change, though now and again I get a whiff of that burning stogie smell and I think of the first derby I never saw, and I think of my dad George.
