July 12th, 2012
Hi there everybody,
Today the California State Fair is
opening for the 2012 season. The Cal
Expo stable area is where I first learned the craft of training racehorses. We met and made friends with a lot of
interesting people over the years we were stabled at Cal Expo.
Sharing the shedrow with us at one
point was one of those interesting people and a very memorable old fellow named
Sam Johnson. I don’t know how old he was, I can’t really even hazard a guess,
suffice it to say, and too my twenty-six year old eyes he was ancient.
Sam had a uniform he wore every day. Every
item consisted of faded khaki, including the floppy hat he wore without fail, and
pretty much every minute of every day. We shared a hot walker next to the barn
and as we watched our horses walk, Sam would tell his stories.
Unlike a lot of elderly people I have
met, Sam never told the same story twice. It was really remarkable how varied
and rich his repertoire was. Sam was a prolific story teller, the old memories
just flowed off his tongue and he always painted a picture with his words that
put you in the moment.
Most people judged Sam on his
looks, his cataract covered eyes bulged, one looking to your left and the other
at your feet. The bottom lid on the right eye had a large divot gone, as a result
the eye watered steadily. A stream of tears coursed down his check to splash on
his khaki colored jacket. His nose ran nearly as copiously as his drooling eye,
so Sam always had a well used crumpled up handkerchief at the ready, stuffed in
his hand.
He only had one tooth left; at least it was
the only one I ever saw. Located in the middle of his bottom jaw, it angled out,
yellowed with age and he had his top lip tucked behind the lone tooth most of
the time. It was hard to make out the words Sam was using all the time, but I
did the best I could.
Jim couldn’t understand why I would listen to
old Sam. Jim was like the rest of the critics, feeling the business had passed Sam
by and considered him little more than a derelict, and certainly felt he was no
longer relevant. But I had found that
Sam remembered things long forgotten by his more youthful colleagues, who had
been seduced by the lure of new technologies and were dependent on new medications to do the training for them.
I might have to listen to fifty stories to
glean one gem of information, but there was no hardship in that. Sam was a
gentle soul and he was blessed with a rather pointed sense of humor.
Sam
only had a couple of good clients left, but they had been with him for a long
time and they kept the faith. One gentleman had sent Sam a nice two year old
colt to break and train. Truthfully I thought this big rambunctious colt was
going to get the best of Sam. One day the colt thunked Sam a good one, right on
top of his head, after he’d reared up, striking out at Sam with his front
hoofs.
The old floppy hat never budged, leading
me to believe, as I had suspected, it had become one with Sam’s scalp over the
years. Jim ran and caught the ill mannered colt, while I helped Sam to his
feet. He was sporting a nasty red scrape, but surprisingly he seemed otherwise
none the worse for wear.
As
time went by, the colt became more and more of a problem. He had obvious talent
but was turning into quite the uncontrollable rogue on the tract. Sam asked Jim
to get on the colt, but Jim refused when Sam wouldn’t let him carry a whip. A
real necessity if you’re going to climb on a nasty tempered colt, one who
particularly liked nothing better than rubbing you off on any solid surface he
could get next to.
I agreed it wasn’t worth the $2, which was the
going rate for galloping a horse in those days, to get busted up on a horse without
any manners.
Next thing I know, I look up to see
Sam heading off to the track with the obnoxious colt hooked up to a harness-horse
racing buggy. I couldn’t believe my
eyes. I was more than a little surprised Sam wasn’t already dead and the horse
down and tangled up in the remains of the buggy.
This
colt was as wild as a March Hare, and this looked as though a clear case of
suicide by stupidity was about to happen right in front of all our eyes. You wouldn’t
want to hook any horse up to a buggy without a lot of prep work, let alone a
green two year old thoroughbred colt.
Word
spread rapidly around the barn area and everybody who could, raced to the rail
to watch the smack down that was about to take place. The buzz of excited
voices ceased abruptly when the colt stepped onto the track dragging the cart
and big Sam behind him.
The
colt stood there, frozen in place, the rail birds held their collective breath,
eyes riveted, unblinking, for fear of missing the launch. The colt looked right
and then left, he lifted a front leg… the railbirds leaned further over the
rail, straining to see the action. At which point the colt turned and walked up
the track, as though he’d done it a thousand times before.
Sam trained that colt using a buggy for
weeks on end. When he finally put a rider on his back and took him to the track
for the first time since he’d hooked him up to the buggy, the colt galloped
around there like an old campaigner.
Eventually
Sam entered that colt and he raced well. Old Sam certainly danced to the beat
of his own special drum. You didn’t need to agree with his tactics, but then
Sam had his own style of proving there was more than one way to train a horse. He’d
also acquired another story to tell, that is if you were willing to listen.
I probably won’t be coming out to
Sacramento for the Fair this year, but I have been asked to be a guest at
another handicapping clinic in Santa Rosa at the Sonoma County Fair. I will let
you know the date when I find out.
Take care,
Shelley Riley
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