Now that animal looked good to a lot of people, she was bet down from 5–1 to 8–5 following the jockey change, and so naturally you heard the whole house groan when the nag could not go with them. Fix! they screamed. Ted, they screamed, dammit, why’d you pull the horse? They always do. No one pulled the horse. The horse was hurting and should have been scratched. Why she wasn’t is another matter and no one out here knows it all. An allowance race, so they were not looking to unload. Possible they really hoped she would come around and get a check for them. And yes they may have had some dough on another horse—not pulling their own, just knowing she couldn’t go and utilizing the knowledge to milk a nice mutuel.
If I spend a little time on the backstretch these days, it is not in quest of an edge on the day’s handicapping. Just a nice way to pass an hour before I pull on my zoot-suit—it’s sunny and quiet and I enjoy the atmosphere, like backstage at the circus. You might see a trainer’s kid getting trained, and maybe a girl or two, the owner’s daughter. People in half costumes, dirty silks and blue jeans, horses in blankets, the saddling and unsaddling, plus all the shit being shovelled.
Fifteen hundred horses is no joke. It’s enough horse-plop every day to fill Carnegie Hall, and they cart it off direct by train to the farmers on Long Island. It’s a big business, really, worth thousands a month to someone.
I am what Wiley calls a democrat. Not a Democratic, like Truman and Roosevelt (though I am also one of those)—to Wiley a democrat is anyone who only looks down on the higher-ups. A garbageman you must respect and I do. I can see it takes knowhow to dispose of six thousand pounds of swill. Technique and experience, like anything else. These guys know the score, and some people would be surprised to interview a Bowery bum or a South Street pier rat sometime. They follow politics and they know the score too.
I like to strike up conversations when I walk, making my rounds, and that’s Oscar the democrat, enjoys a word with anyone. Truthfully I always preferred talking with a total stranger than with my close associates back in Brooklyn. You know a friend, you know what he has to say on the issues of the day, give or take ten percent. With a total stranger just off the boat or up from the swamps of Florida, you never can tell. They might supply you with an original slant.
An example of this. They have a girl here who handles a few horses for Farr Brothers, a young woman with a lovely appearance, who quietly goes her way, keeps her own counsel. But she looks intelligent and anyway I’ll trust the judgment of the horses—they go for her.
A girl like this, though, someone unexpected (working the stalls and a real beauty too) isn’t she more likely to have something interesting to say than the Queen of England? What can the Queen of England possibly have to say?
I took this matter to my sachem, to garner his opinion. What would the Queen of England say?
“A bit of watercress with a nice hot cupper. And plenty of lemon!”
“That’s what she’d say?”
“More or less.”
“What about at home or with her buddies?”
“Bloody awful weather we’re having, eh wot?”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it, my friend. You think she spouts Shakespeare in the afternoon or something. Oh that this too too solid tortoni would melt!”
“I don’t know Shakespeare. I’m not a reader.”
“As you like it,” says Wiley the sharp one. Even I know it’s a line from Shakespeare he turns to.
Bumped into Timothy Myers at the grocer’s just now and we visited on the street coming home.
“I feel badly not to return your hospitality. I want to feed you soon—it’s just I am not a cook.”
“We know that. That’s why Mary had a dinner for you. She figures we ought to feed a bachelor in the building. You don’t worry about it.”
“Still, I’ll get around to it,” I told him. But it is not the cooking. I could cook better than Mary Myers with frostbite in eight fingers and a blindfold over both eyes. What I dread is the social side. You can hash over Jimmy and Beatrice, but that will only make the poor kids squirm. You can discuss the spaghetti dinner even as you are choking on it—from a can!—praise the spaghetti, and then what else? Let them know how much you admire the photo of Ike, in uniform, framed, upon the wall in the dining area, though it orders a halt to conversation and digestion as well. And anyway Mary Myers is not out to feed the lonely bachelors of this world, she’s just nosing around for a little gossip.
With cocoa season over and the Great High Resource gainfully employed, I see less of my pal Jimmy. When I’m around, and he comes around, I now provide him lemonade. It’s lemonade season. Results are the same, same intake. He swallows half a gallon of the stuff without blinking. Enough lemonade to flush a toilet and this kid won’t even burp for me.
He’s got a new collection going, Indian chiefs in the cereal. So he has me buying Post Toasties and urges me to eat up fast, have a second bowl each day, lots of vitamins—so I can buy more boxes with the Indian chiefs. These people know how to sell their cereal!
At his house it’s the same routine I’m sure, forcefeeding little sister and dumping the stuff dry into the trash—rakes a page of the Mirror over the top to conceal his crime? He can be slippery that way, a real go-getter. I heard a terrible groan issue from him, like he took an arrow in the chest, when I opened the new Post Toasties and it was Sitting Bull inside. Sticks his mitt in there right up to the bony elbow and fishes for the card, then lets out with this groan. He was looking for Cochise or Osceola. He has already three Sitting Bull, two Crazy Horse, two Geronimo. (These are statistics I keep abreast of.)
“Trade with your pals,” I advise.
“But no one’s got Cochise or Osceola. It’s always Sitting Bull.”
“You got Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce,” I remind him.
“I know it! I’m the only one who does.”
He wants to have them all plus he wants to be the only one so blessed. A touch of madness of course and yet I can understand. Or sympathize at least—he’s got me emotionally involved, if only because I like to see him happy. So I open the Post Toasties with the same emotion I have watching an underlay stagger to the wire with my money in his saddle-bags. Come on you Cochise, come on Cochise baby, get up!
A big race, stakes race, is the toughest to handicap because for one thing with the shippers you are asked to compare apples and oranges. In addition to that, there is always too much talk and a lot of strange money going around, so my general principle is leave it alone, let the suckers play this one.
However a handicapper is a handicapper only if he is willing to reconsider his own rules, and yesterday I had a strong feeling for Son of Erin—went for him big at a decent price, and he got it. We had a nice tight finish, a photo, with Erin bobbing up on the last jump with a helpful whip-tickle from underneath by Boland. In a photo, it is often the best pose that wins.
“Come on Son of Erin, come on Son of Bitch—get up!” I was worked up watching the stretch run and I think my rich lady got a shock when I ran down along the big window to the wire, the way I do on the rail, to keep my horse company. Bert didn’t see it but my rich lady had a surprise and she was laughing. She likes me. She keeps telling me this, as though I stand around wondering does she like me.
“I like you, Oscar, really I do.” But all the time. She is in every day, always my tables, and she approves of me. Gives thanks for anything I bring her, including the bill, and tells me she likes me, she likes me.
“Oscar, I didn’t know you played the race.”
“Sometimes, you know.”
“I gather you had the Son of Erin.”
“I had him, Mrs. Whitman. A nice investment.”
“Good. I had him too. Let’s celebrate together, shall we? I don’t suppose you are allowed to join me?”
“No I don’t suppose. But you enjoy it and I’ll be enjoying it too. I’m not a drinker anyway.”
“Not a son of Erin, I guess! Well, I’ll ha
ve to tipple for two, that’s all. Here’s to Willie Boland, who can sit still in the eye of the hurricane.”
“Wiley says you could serve drinks off that guy’s back.”
“But Oscar, you can’t mean you don’t take a single drink, ever?”
“An occasional bottle of beer. I prefer soda.”
“No! What then, was your old man a soak? Is this related to some childhood trauma?”
“Nothing like that, It’s just the taste—I prefer something sweet.”
“Have a sloe gin, then, I’ll treat you sometime after hours.”
I can just picture it, me and my rich lady tippling after hours. Not that she scares me with all her furs and money. She’s people and I’d put her at my age or maybe plus five years. A lovely speaking voice but a face like an unbaked loaf, soft and soggy. She was never a beauty, just tries to show herself a good time. The Duke of Kent tells me she is divorced and had a son killed in the War, so now she buys horses and chats with her waiters. The Duke had her in the past and made a living on her tips.
“She gets tired of you and changes over. I had her two meetings last year, we’ve all had her. You’re the new blood, so enjoy it while it lasts.” (The Duke speaking.)
Wiley adds, “Some people like Mrs. W. go through husbands, she goes through waiters.”
“Much easier I’m sure.”
“Oh yes, and cheaper too. But that dame knows horseflesh. The hell with her table change—you watch what she does with her money at the window.”
“They say the rich get richer.”
“And do they but this old girl will never skip a race. Like a dummy, gets her bets down early on every race they card—but sharp, Oscar, she will never miss twice in a row.”
We closed up late tonight. No one was rushing off so we sat and looked at the news on television. Once Bert goes home we own the room, it’s our clubhouse and we form a nice little club. The Duke of Kent (really named Mickey Klutz, but he likes to put on airs) will hold forth on the day’s events, with Wiley setting him straight from time to time. Sid polishes his glasses, wipes down the bottles, etc. He’s a fiddler, can’t keep his hands still without a pair of handcuffs. And I will furnish myself and Captain Wiley with cigars, settle up the tips (plus any side-bets), and sip my lemon soda.
Everyone concurs Ike is looking old. (He should treat himself to Morris’ pep pill doctor on Joralemon.) But he is running and will hold himself together long enough to gather in the vote—then he’ll slump down in his chair. That’s the fear. We will all survive if he hangs in there, we proved that already the last four years. But if he goes out in harness, better duck, because then you get the Vice-President Nixon. A phony. He’s the one who gave everyone a hot-foot over communism. A dangerous character, a joker playing serious games. Even Bert, our resident Republican, is afraid of this guy.
So we have agreed to organize Jewish Mothers For Ike on nationwide basis, to insure he gets nice hot chicken soup everywhere he goes until 1960.
Today on the main dirt track I watched the young woman Caddy Moore (her name compliments of the Duke, who knows it all) working a half mile at top speed on Farr brothers’ Criterion. You see her in their barn where she rakes, swipes, handles the tack, and you see her walking hots but never on the main track before and this girl can ride. Very poised. Criterion threw in a 48 flat running on the new cushion and that horse was really dancing.
Women could be your natural jockeys. In this country, how many bantamweight fighters will you see, or flyweights? We eat too well and we are a tall people too, so a jockey is hard to find. He can’t be a midget—he should be lanky, an athlete and yet a tiny fellow. A boy hasn’t got the strength, plus he will naturally grow out of it just when he has the know-how. But why not a woman?
Easy: prejudice. It is true many of them are weak and unathletic—a few are allergic too I’m sure. But there would always be a supply. In every one hundred men in this country you might find one the right size. In every one hundred women you will find forty or fifty and in a field that large there will be plenty with the potential.
This Caddy Moore is the proof in the pudding. She is a worker and she is knowledgeable with horses. She talks to them but can also ride them, turning in a 48 flat half-mile in blue jeans and a sweater—no silks, no whip. Nice muscles in her arms. And that isn’t Nashua she’s sitting on either, the horse must make a contribution too.
I must have had Walter on my mind when my rich lady inquired “Do you have any children, Oscar?”
“No, Mrs. W., I got a nephew, that’s all. Three of them, actually, and three of nieces as well. All my sisters have kids and that’s it for me.”
I expect she intended for me to ask right back, And what about you, Mrs. W? The Duke of Kent had forewarned me, however, that she likes to do this—get rolling on the subject of her son she lost at sea, and refuse to return you your arm until you both have dropped a few salty tears in her gin tonic.
So I declined the invitation, as the Duke would say. It’s easy to hide behind a class difference—rich lady poor waiter—if you wish to avoid a personal remark. There are ways I know to show in your face, without a word spoken, that you respect the class difference and will therefore answer a question but never ask one. I was brilliant in this role and shut her off like a water-tap. But for what?
Why not let the lady cry if she needs to do it? Why not lend her a sympathetic ear—what does it cost me that I can’t afford? This might be too big an imposition on Mickey Klutz but I can take it. I’m not in such a great hurry and here’s this nice lady lost her only child. She likes me, and I like her, and I would just as soon hear anything she wishes to say about her son. And if she ever takes another crack at it, I’ll be happy to so conspire, maybe even grease the skids.
Early this a.m. we experienced a small fire at 10 Battersea. The whole asylum emptied out into the street, like kids in the schoolyard—a fire drill, except wearing bathrobes. Mary Myers came disguised as Frankenstein’s Bride, very convincing in her pink curlers.
All this thanks to Jesus H. Johnson who was so busy Praising the Lord that he set fire to his muffins. Of course he panics—starts howling the Savior’s name, knocks over the toaster, and manages to ignite a bag of newspapers on the floor. You might think something like this can’t happen, that no one is that stupid, but think again. It happens once every eleven minutes. (New York Post.)
And there appeared in the street, in among the known commodities, a pleasant soul I had never glimpsed before. Mrs. Vickers, a widow with two grown daughters on the Island. She has inhabited the asylum twenty-four years, up on the fourth floor with Lopat, our junkball pitcher, and she never shows her face. A sweetie, however, kind and cheerful old dame. She was the one who called in the hook-and-ladder boys, while the Holy Rollers were too busy making things go from bad to worse.
A person could feel foolish standing on the sidewalk in his bathrobe and bare feet, yet not so much when everyone is in the same boat. We all live in a hole in the wall, like rodents nesting, and learn to fear the light of day. Then something like this occurs and you get together—someone’s got a bag of crackers and the morning news and soon it’s not a disaster, it’s a party. And I’m sure that’s what Johnson had in mind, bringing the inmates together under the good fellowship of God.
No serious damage, but the hallways were smoky, so I offered to take Myers along with me to the fish breakfast. A couple of uniform cops in there that he knew to say hello, and they asked after his family. Myers shows a handsome smile (thirty-two perfect teeth he has been keeping in cold storage) when he gets away from his house. I grabbed the check, to help even our social score. Now if I treat the Bride to lunch at the Horn & Hardart we’ll be even-steven.
Wiley got started tonight. It was an item on the news that did the job—a couple of cars collide on Bruckner Boulevard and out jump the drivers, mad as two roosters, and they go at it until they notice the truth. And the truth is they are brothers, who never got along and had not spoken
in eight years, and so they meet again. Fate takes a hand!
Everyone had his own version of this. To Sidney it was all a matter of fault. Whose fault? He knows the intersection, a very tricky spot he assures, and diagrams it for us on a placemat. But to the Duke of Kent it is a simple question of compiling damages, because he has a brother in the body-shop racket. And if you ask my opinion the whole business is funny stuff, vaudeville, it’s the Marx Brothers on Bruckner Boulevard.
But to Wiley, our sachem, it is Life itself and he must dress it up with the pearls of wisdom. How I love this man.
“I don’t see why anyone’s surprised,” he starts in.
“No one’s surprised, Wally,” says Sid.
“We’re not surprised,” adds the Duke.
“What’s so surprising?” says Wiley. “This was no accident, I can tell you that much. There is no such thing as an accident.”
“Here he goes,” says Sid.
“Go on, Wiley,” adds the Duke, “tell us about the shitting ducks.”
“It’s only the truth,” says Wiley. “Oscar did you ever stop to think about all those tiny ponds way back in the woods where no one lives, no one even hunts? There’s fish in those pools, thousands of fish. Millions.”
“Helluva number of fish,” says Sid.
“Tell it!” says the Duke.
“No one stocks those pools, Oscar, and so how do you suppose a fish arrives there? You think he hitch-hikes up, or rides the bus? I’ll tell you. Those pools are stocked by wild ducks flying over the whole of New York State and excreting their dinner.”
“He means shitting.”
“Duck soup.”
“It’s only the truth. That’s how they get there. An accident, gentlemen, and then again no accident atall. Something else entirely. Oscar, did I ever tell you the story of how I met my wife Sylvia?”
“No, Wiley, you didn’t.”
I can tell from the others that this story is old and familiar like the shitting ducks, and it must be, since Wiley got married sometime back in the sixteenth century. But I don’t mind an old story and anyway—it’s like Linda and the Lama—if I haven’t heard it yet, then it’s news to me.
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