The Racetrack
Speaking of the track, which we are now, it is my favourite place, but a few things first:
I don’t like gambling. My wife and I do gamble but it is always on who do you think is on the other end of the blinking light on the answering machine on the phone, or will we have anything besides bills in the mail when we get home? We always bet a quarter and we never pay, but I like the idea that you have to make a choice on something that you have no control over. It’s a game.
The track is different. It is a passion, both for me and for the thousands who think they can out-think a horse, which is impossible.
To stand by the last turn before they head into the stretch for the finish line is everything every sport wished they had. You can feel the earth move. That is pretty good when you are standing up with your clothes on.
You can watch half a dozen animals and humans trying to win, and I have been around the track long enough to know that the horses want to win. It is the alpha something or other but they want to be first so that the other horses know they are standing next to the top dog. They are so human.
You can bet or not. The track is free to get in once you’ve paid that overpriced fee for parking. It has also become trendy for young whatever their generation is called. They dress in good clothing—suits, pretty dresses and hats, lots of hats for the women, so many hats that there are hat sellers there for those who don’t have hats, which is the only sure way of making money at the track. They aren’t really hats so much as tiny tufts of feathers that don’t cover any part of a head, made famous by the famous races in England where they wear them.
There are also food carts and beer and wine and music, but most of all there are six or seven strong animals and an equal number of men and women who will risk their lives trying to be first.
That sounds like the Roman coliseum with fights to the death. There hasn’t been a death at the track in twenty years but it is still scary.
The horses run at nearly 60 kilometres an hour, which means they are flying while the riders are holding on with only their ankles. You try that. The other horses are almost touching them but not quite, because that is illegal. Their hoofs are below. If a jockey falls the next step is a trampling.
If it is muddy the riders have goggles. As the mud gets thrown up their goggles get covered and they are blinded, so they lift one hand and throw off their goggles and under it is another pair—and another pair. Five, six times during a race their faces are smeared with mud and they grab for a way to see.
There is a difference in the summer when it’s hot and dry. There is no problem about dust, but there is the weight. The jockeys are weighed before each race. Weight is a big thing in horse racing. The horses have to carry it.
If a jockey loses, and remember all of them do except one, the owners and the trainers want to know why.
First of all they check the weight. Did the jockey gain anything between the first race and the second? By anything they mean a few grams. In imperial measurement it’s less.
So to keep their weight down the jockeys, even on the hottest days, each buy a can of 7 Up or ginger ale. They poke a tiny hole in the top and when they are desperate for a drink of water they suck the fizz off the can. No weight gain. Sports are tough.
All they have to do to explain why they lost is to blame the horse or the horses that were in front of them, but there was one they never blamed—George Royal. If you go to the track, and you should because at least the first time you will think this is the greatest thing there is, you will see a frozen-in-time statue of a horse in the paddock.
The paddock is where the horses parade around in a circle while the betters watch them and think they can tell a winner by the muscles or tails or ears.
Actually, the most prized way of picking a winner is to wait for the horse that poops the last. He or she feels the best, as you know, and will run the fastest. Sometimes it works.
Anyway, in the middle of the paddock is this statue. It looks like any in a herd of four-legged animals with a head and tail, but it is George Royal. He ran at the Pacific National Exhibition racetrack in the 1960s. Think of Babe Ruth. Think of Wayne Gretzky. There are many other names but you get the idea.
George Royal, a Canadian horse, a British Columbian horse, in the world of horses was a nothing. “He’s from where? Can’t run.”
George Royal would stand at the gate waiting for the start and then, bang! And he would still be standing there. Go horse! Nothing. All the horses would be pounding their hearts out on the track—except George Royal.
Then George Royal, no matter who was the jockey on his back, would take a few steps. The crowd would groan. He’s a loser, even though they had bet on him.
Then he would take a few more steps, and a few more, and he would gallop and he would push his hoofs into the dirt and charge and he would gain speed and push harder and in a few moments he would be at the back of the pack of his competition.
But that was halfway around the track and horses at the back at the halfway mark are losers.
Then George Royal would dig his hoofs in deeper and use muscles that no one could see. He pushed and he flew. He moved onto the outside. No horse or car racer or ice skating racer goes on the outside, but George Royal went on the outside.
And he passed the horses at the back. He flew faster and passed the horses at the middle of the pack. Then he took off and passed the horses at the front while he was still on the outside, which meant he was running farther than they were.
And then at the last turn, where I said you should stand to see the true moment of pain and triumph, George Royal would pull in front of the pack and that is where he let it all hang out, as they say now.
He didn’t win by a nose or a head; he was alone as he went for the finish line. He probably didn’t know where that was but he knew that somewhere up ahead he would be reined back while the other horses were still trying to get there.
Good feeling.
He did this over and over, so many times that he was upgraded and moved to California where he did the same thing again. California of course has much better tracks with the much better horses. That didn’t matter. They were running. George Royal was flying.
When you see the statue of that plain old brown horse in the middle of the paddock remember that greatness can be anywhere. Then try to pick a winner.
One of my favourite people at the track was a groom who sang to the horses. He loved them and they loved him. Horses do love. And there was Ed Thompson. Okay, okay. You know the story, but every time I go to the track I tell it again.
I’ll keep it short, but if you want proof that you get what you want, look at Ed.
He was a banker, and an executive-type banker, in a ridiculous place to be an executive in a suit: Dawson City in the Yukon. A cold place, but he was hot in his rise up the ranks of important people in the bank. From the Yukon he would be transferred to a high-class place like Vancouver, but Ed didn’t want that. He, for reasons known only to him, wanted to be around horses, and the horses he wanted to be with were racehorses.
He loved them. If you don’t want your daughter to grow up to be a groom and then a trainer and then an internationally famous and rich jockey don’t take her to the track.
Ed wanted to be with horses. He quit his job at the bank. His friends said, “Ed, you are a nutcase.” They said other things but this is a family book.
He moved to Vancouver and walked into the barns at the back of the track.
“Want something?” someone asked.
“I want to work here,” he said.
He got a job. It isn’t hard to get a job there. If you want work go to the track. You can start out walking the horses. After they run they have to cool off, slowly. You take the bridle and walk around and around inside the barns. And then you walk some more. It takes a long time for a horse to slowly coo
l down. And when you are finished you walk another horse. Don’t ask about how much you will get paid. You can afford to eat and you don’t need a gym membership.
And then you get promoted. You are a groom. You get to brush and feed and wash and water and carry hay and then you get to clean out the stalls.
You get to sleep in the barns, usually in a tiny room with no windows next to the horses. You are there in case a horse wakes up in the middle of the night and you have to care for it. And somewhere down the row of stables one horse will wake up every night.
That is where Ed was sleeping and working, and when he did finally get to sleep he was up again at 4:45 a.m. because the day begins at 5.
This is what Ed wanted. In truth, everyone who works at the track wants this because if they didn’t want it they would actually be crazy, not just called crazy by those who would never do this work.
In time he got a chance to train a horse. Trainers are the artists of the track. They bring out what is in those incredible animals that have such heart. It is all done through long, cold, wet mornings on the track with exercise riders who ride as the trainers tell them. Faster here, hold back there; like training any athlete except these can’t talk.
By the time I met Ed he was one of the top ten trainers at Hastings Park. He never missed the bank. What Ed did—following his dreams right through the muck and manure—is what I wish for everyone, minus the muck and manure.
His story is not very different from Reilly’s, except I saw him catch his winner.
There is more to the story. It involves love, which changes everything. You can read it in the book I gave away and you can get through the internet. The email address is in the Foreword.
Ed is retired now. He plays Santa Claus at Christmas. Santa never wanted to be in banking.
Flowers for Joe
People also die. Almost always there is emotion, but sometimes it sneaks up on you. We did not know about the death or the feeling or anything.
Murray Titus and I were on Denman Street looking for something bright on a gloomy November day. He had a camera on his shoulder and I had hope in my head, and just as you have to remove the lens cap on the camera to get anything you have to open your eyes to everything and anything.
“Would you take pictures of that corner store, please?”
Always say please and thank you. If you learned that as a child you got much further in life than you can imagine.
The store was across the street and it was surrounded by flowers. This is something we all know, we just have to notice. Most corner stores in this part of the world have gardens on their sidewalks. That is a local kind of magic.
They are wrapped flowers and potted flowers and then more of both. There are bright and subtle colours and green, lots of green, even on a gloomy November day.
This will be good, I think. You don’t need a garden if you have a corner store nearby. Murray takes close-ups and medium shots and at least one wide shot.
It is a fundamental rule for photography or life. Of course it is or we wouldn’t put it in here. If you want to get to know things, look at the overall scene, then move in a little closer and then get right in there next to it so that you are almost brushing the petals or looking at the perfect imperfections.
Alongside the close-ups of the flowers are always the price tags. Okay, ignore them, you are just looking and enjoying.
And then there was a man looking at the flowers. He didn’t look like the flower type. He was more round than thin and more short than tall, like most of us. He had on a baseball cap and a kind of sports bomber jacket. I don’t remember what team.
Anyone can buy flowers but in a world full of prejudging he didn’t look like he was buying them for himself. On the other side of unfair evaluation, if he was buying them for a wife it would be a beautiful moment.
I could see him telling us how much his wife would be surprised. It was her birthday, their anniversary. He did this once a year and always came to this store and she liked yellow or pink or whatever colour he was looking for.
I like my dreams. Even if they fall apart I have them for a moment.
“Hello. Hate to bother you.” The usual stuff.
No. Not for his wife. He was not married. And no, not for himself. For a friend.
That is even better, I think. No, I know it is better if he will not be too embarrassed and tell us.
“My friend Joe.”
He said it while still looking down at the flowers and picking up one potted plant then putting it down.
“Who is Joe?” can we ask.
“My friend,” he said.
“Would we be imposing if we asked you about Joe?”
Some things are very hard to ask and you have to ask permission, and when you ask you have to be truly humble. Spotting a phony or a salesman is easy. They don’t know humble from a hole in the ground.
“Sure,” he said. “We met in a bar a long time ago. He was a little older than me, and big. A very big man.”
One word in the past tense and the story changes.
“Is he not here any more?”
“No, he died a long time ago.”
He went back to looking at the flowers, picking up one, putting it down, then picking up another. The flowers were more important than us.
He told us his name, Ralph, and he had worked in a warehouse. I didn’t understand if it was part of a grocery store or something else. Joe had worked in the office of some shipping company. I didn’t get the name of the business.
“We would talk all the time. We went to a bar usually but sometimes we would go to his apartment and talk. And in the summer we would meet on that bench across the street,” he pointed at the bench, “and drink coffee.”
Ralph was back in another world. Daydreams are a good place to go when the day is gloomy.
“We even went on a bus trip together down to Seattle. He wasn’t married either. He had never been married.”
I asked if the flowers were for his grave.
“Yes,” he said, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, he grabbed a fairly large pot of yellow chrysanthemums, like he didn’t want anyone else to get it.
“You like that?”
“This is what I want.”
It wasn’t light or easy to carry. If he held it in both hands by his stomach the flowers came up to his chin.
He went into the store and paid. We waited until he came out.
“Is the cemetery near here?” I asked.
“It’s in Surrey.”
“Driving?”
No, taking a bus, several buses and the SkyTrain in between, he said.
“When did he die?”
“Eight years ago.”
“You go once a year?”
“No, every month.”
“For eight years?”
“Every month.”
Nothing else to ask. We watched him walk north on Denman to get a bus on Georgia Street to visit his friend named Joe.
● ● ●
In the darkroom where the editing is done a young fellow named Ryan was putting together the pictures. He was touched, of course, by the story, but in his world his wife was about to have a baby, their first. He was bubbling with the excitement we all have at the beginning. And now he was looking at the pictures of the end of the journey.
“Life is really precious, isn’t it?” he said.
He knew that of course, but there are things that sometimes happen that do more than remind us of it, they let us feel it. And then it always seems there is nothing else you have to know.
Kite Lady
We were wandering. It is good to wander. We were exploring. It is also good to do that. Exploring sometimes lets you find something new and when you do you get excited.
Everyone does that. You can walk down a street two blocks from w
here you live and see a house, a garden, a pile of garbage or someone picking up garbage and say, “This is neat. How come I’ve never seen this before?”
That’s because you have been a stick-in-the-mud. No, that is wrong. I can’t call you that after you bought his book, but face it, if you haven’t walked on a street two blocks from where you live and you have lived there for more than a week, you are a . . . stick-in-the-mud.
I was with Murray Titus, again. You have read about him before. He is no stick-in-the-anything, but wait.
“You have never been to Burkeville?”
“Nope.”
How is that possible? You are a news cameraman. You go everywhere. You went to the war in Bosnia with a helmet and a bulletproof vest along with your camera. You sometimes see death and destruction for breakfast. You are an actual street-wise journalist. You seldom go inside. You are at those events that alter and illuminate our times.
Walter Cronkite from cbs used to say that. “Today was a day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times.”
That was, to me, the line that elevated journalism to poetry and philosophy. And there it was on television in black and white said by someone who brought the news of the day to everyone, at least everyone in America and the part of Canada that was close enough to the border to get the signal.
Some reading this now are saying, “Who’s Walter Cronkite?” and “I never heard anyone say that and, in addition, what the heck is black and white?”
For you who never enjoyed the beauty of black and white, black and white was I Love Lucy, and the Vietnam War. It was everything.
Paul Simon said that everything looks better in black and white, but he was also singing about Kodachrome, which was film, colour film, which some of you know nothing about.
Film was something you put in your camera and when you finished a roll you took it out and brought it to a photo lab or London Drugs and waited a few days and you got your pictures and you opened the envelope before you walked out of the store and you said, “Wow. This is wonderful. This is Uncle Ned and oh, no. I shook the camera when I took a picture of the new baby.”
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