Wherever the Fitzsimmons family has gone since about 1925, it has been something of a migration. And until she died in 1951, the people around her, and what she could do for them, became Jennie Fitzsimmons’ life. She had been through too much to be excited about any success. A win in the Kentucky Derby? Oh, that would be fine. But if Mr. Fitz’s horse blew it, that would be all right, too. There was nothing to get excited about. She had more important things at hand right in Sheepshead Bay. Her son John was living in the house. He had six children. Jimmy was across the street. He had three children. Harvey was across the street, too. He had one child. Next door were Mr. Fitz’s sister, Aunt Nora, and his brother Tom. And Edith and George and Harold and their children all lived nearby. At night, Mr. Fitz’s house was converted into a restaurant. The lads would eat there, so would any of their friends who happened to be around. Adults came in on the second wave. On a good night you would have forty people at dinner. On nights that were slow because of bad weather or another attraction someplace—the usual things that mean bad box office anywhere—only fifteen or thereabouts would be on hand. Granddaughter Kathleen, as she got a little older, began to make a rather big thing of Sunday breakfasts after church. She could guarantee a turnout of twenty without even starting to draw on the closest kin.
On a Saturday, when Mr. Fitz would be out at the track running horses in the biggest races in America, his wife would gather anywhere from fifteen to twenty children, take them to the worst horror movie she could find in Brooklyn, and sit directly behind them. When the kids froze during the scariest part of the film, she’d have a field day. She would pinch one girl on the arm and get a scream out of her. Then she’d hit a boy on the head with a rolled-up newspaper and he’d jump a foot. The picture called Dracula, in which Bela Lugosi did everything but eat cameramen, was her all-time favorite.
She also made good use of a radio show called the Witches’ Tales. For this one, she would get the kids into her sitting room, demand that the lights be put out and then, in the dark, she’d shiver and moan and get the rest of them stiff with fear. Then she’d reach out, pinch the one who was frightened most, and start a riot.
For the Saratoga season, Mr. Fitz took a house on Lake Avenue that had six bedrooms, two dining rooms, a kitchen big enough to cook for an Automat, and a cottage in the back. The place was terribly inadequate. One dining room, used for the children, was just large enough to take care of them. The second one was fine for the adults, except you had to walk around a trunk placed against one wall. The trunk served, one year, as the support for John Fitzsimmons’ bed for one three-week period in which there were too many people to fit into bedrooms. The menu for Sunday dinner became a rather constant affair—chicken. It took exactly thirty-six pounds of chicken to feed the mob.
Saratoga became so preposterous that Mrs. Fitzsimmons needed three women there to help her get through the season alive. Ella Lee, a domestic who was her only concession to success in Sheepshead Bay, came up. And Sarah and her cousin Min came from the track, lived in the cottage behind the house, and were around for the heavy times.
The size of the family gave Mr. Fitz’s wife a lot of trouble when it came to her favorite pastime of giving things away. Every present she got, no matter what it was, was given to somebody else as quickly as possible. Most of the time, however, she could not remember who had given her the present originally. This usually got her into as many fixes as anybody could put together.
After one Christmas, she called in John and between hushes handed him a silver cocktail shaker and glasses.
“Don’t say anything about this,” she cautioned him. “I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. If the person who gave me this knew I was giving it away they’d be badly hurt. Now you take this, I don’t have any use for it. But whatever you do, keep it quiet.”
John, who had given her the present himself, solemnly promised to be quiet.
She had a list of organizations and charities which apparently was sprawling. The family found that out when she died. At the wake one night, the Sheepshead Bay American Legion post, uniformed, flag-bearing, two-hundred strong, arrived at the house to conduct military services for the departed. She was, the commander explained, one of the post’s stanchest financial backers. If Jennie Harvey Fitzsimmons had been alive at the moment she would have thrown a fit.
She gave away everything that wasn’t nailed down. Mr. Fitz, in a burst of affluence, bought her an automatic dishwasher in the late ‘30s, an appliance found only at that time on Park Avenue or in a manor house. His wife thought it was great and she made much noise over it. Two days later, when everybody was out of the house, she was telling the moving men to be extra careful as they packed it onto a truck for delivery to the convent at St. Mark’s Roman Catholic Church. She gave away her clothes, her husband’s clothes— anything they had.
She read nearly everything printed, except stories on horses. She could argue the stock market, fashions or politics. World affairs in particular intrigued her. When President Truman recalled General MacArthur from Korea in 1951 she was beside herself. When she died suddenly the next day from the only heart attack of her life, everybody thought the headlines had something to do with it. But a story in the paper about her husband, of which there were several each week, was something to skip over. She knew too much about the subject to take anybody else’s views on it. Besides, the stories always were about success, a topic which bored her.
She and Mr. Fitz were impossible moviegoers. On winter Saturdays in the years before Mr. Fitz had to race horses in Florida, he would have little to do, and the two would leave the house in the morning, catch a movie in Brooklyn, have lunch, see another one in New York, go to dinner someplace, then see a third at night. It was the closest thing to an entertainment splurge you could find them doing.
“She’d come to the track on Saturday, have a couple of the kids with her, but it would only be for lunch,” Mr. Fitz says. “You could have the horses, as far as she was concerned. She’d go home when the races started. Every time she saw a track it reminded her of them two fellas that got killed and all the hard days we had to go through. And she didn’t care for any of the talk when we were going good.”
Besides, she had too many other things to do. For example, as part of her give-away program, Jennie Fitzsimmons was insistent that anybody in Sheepshead Bay, or practically anybody, who was without a home for one reason or another could find one at 1174 Sheepshead Bay Road. Her method for dealing with this problem of others was simple. Somebody in the family just had to move over.
11. For the Record
ON THE MONDAY AFTER Gallant Fox won the 1930 Kentucky Derby, the sun was just starting to gleam on the short-cropped, wet grass of Aqueduct’s infield when Mr. Fitz came to the rail, stop watch in hand, while Petee Wrack who was being pointed for the Suburban Handicap, bowed his neck against the exercise boy’s hold, and started to thump down the track to begin his workout.
This is the way of the professional. Mr. Fitz had just won a Kentucky Derby, but here he was at work, first chance after it, just as he would have been if he had lost. The glamour and excitement and handshaking is for amateurs who have to be told that they are good. The big guy doesn’t need it. He goes back to the job. You don’t find much of this. For an obvious reason. Most people are amateurs.
Mr. Fitz shipped Gallant Fox to Belmont Park a few days later to get him ready for the Belmont Stakes, the last part of the Triple Crown. In the meantime he took the Suburban with Petee Wrack, a half-brother to Gallant Fox. And Whichone, Harry Payne Whitney’s colt, came from way out of it with Sonny Workman up to win the Withers. Bookmakers promptly made him even money for the Belmont, June 7.
They were wasting their chalk. Even when Sande showed up Friday morning with a couple of black eyes and patches over his face from an auto accident of the night before, it didn’t change things. Sande got on the horse, worked him a half mile in 47 seconds, rode him out to five furlongs in one minute flat. When he got of
f, Mr. Fitz knew both horse and rider could take care of things.
Which they did the next day. Gallant Fox slammed out of the gate and seemed full of run on the rain-soaked track. Around him, Sande could see the wet dirt spraying into the air with each stride of the big field of horses. To hell with getting that dirt into my face, he said. It’ll reopen all the cuts under my eyes. It was all he had to think about. He tapped Gallant Fox, took the lead and the race was a lock. Gallant Fox won it by four lengths. He became the eighth horse in American racing history to win $200,000. His Belmont victory gave him earnings of $203,730, to put him in a class with such as Zev, Display, Man o’ War, Exterminator, Sarazen, Blue Larkspur, and Crusader. Today, money is confetti. You could beg for this much if you bum the right places. But in 1930 it was a big thing.
Woodward waited for the horse, then led him into the winner’s circle like a guy bringing his wife out of church. Sande was as straight as an Indian in the saddle. Mr. Fitz walked alongside, then as Woodward and Sande went up to receive a trophy, Mr. Fitz turned and headed back to the barn with his horse. He had a smile on his face, but that didn’t mean anything. It would have been there if he had lost.
By Monday, the newspapers were trying their best to make a big guy out of Mr. Fitz. George Daley in the World suggested Mr. Fitz be incorporated and listed on the big board. Nelson Dunstan in the Morning Telegraph said he was the greatest trainer of race horses the game ever had seen. He had taken a horse and had him hold his form through four major victories. Gallant Fox didn’t give a hint of needing a freshener. The accolades became so widespread that it is quite possible Mr. Fitz might even have read one or two of them.
“You’re a big man,” Hype Igoe, the writer, said to him at Aqueduct on Monday morning.
“That’s good,” Mr. Fitz said. “What happens next week?”
“I don’t know,” Igoe said.
“Neither do I. That’s why if you’ll get the hell out of the way here I can go to work and protect my livin’.”
From here on, the story seems to become something for a record book. Gallant Fox won the Dwyer Stakes, although Sande was horrified to find he had to hit his horse three times in the stretch to get him going. In Chicago, with $65,800 on the line for the American Classic, it was a bit different. Gallant Knight hooked onto him in the stretch and the Fox went to work on him. He was older by now and more experienced at the business of driving another horse crazy. He raced even with Gallant Knight, then 70 yards from the wire he got his head in front, his ears popped up, and he did everything but laugh at Gallant Knight. He lost one race that season—the 100-1 shot, Jim Dandy, beat him in the Travers at Saratoga. After that, Gallant Fox came back to beat Questionnaire in the Lawrence Realization at Belmont—with the ears popping up again, this time for a photographer.
At Belmont Park that day, there was a momentous occurrence. In the infield, up close to the far turn, was a crazy-quilt wooden house with several rods and smokestacks jutting from its roof. Inside, one Professor George Sykes, a gaunt, close-mouthed man, was stoking a furnace with stuff he was taking from a box. The fire sent up profuse clouds of black smoke. Standing away from the house, in a supervisory capacity, was a little man with gray hair parted in the middle, alert blue eyes, the carriage of a Prussian. He fingered a carnation in his lapel and smiled a bit as he watched the smoke rise into the soft fall air. This was James A. MacDonald, a magnificent man of forty-eight who introduced himself as Colonel John R. Stingo. He was connected with this smoke-making operation.
Its purpose was simple and tremendously important: the colonel and Dr. Sykes were getting $2500 from Joseph E. Widener to prevent it from raining.
Several days before, the colonel had been sitting on the shoe-shine stand alongside the betting ring at Belmont. He had only a couple of dollars in his pocket, but the ambition to hold much more than that. As he gazed over the mass of bettors and bookmakers, the Colonel saw a familiar figure. It was Dr. Sykes. Some years before, in Visalia, California, Dr. Sykes and the colonel had teamed up to take an amount of money estimated at $80,000 from farmers who sought relief from a bad drought which had hit the area. By shooting off an ancient cannon, doing it out of sight from the farmers, of course, they insisted they were making it rain. If the rainfall over a 32-day period was three inches or less they were to get nothing. But they were to be paid at the rate of $10,000 an inch if it came down to between three and four inches, more if it exceeded that amount.
The colonel, who believed simplicity was the key to any endeavor, whether honest or dishonest, had handicapped the deal. He had gone to the United States Weather Bureau, the Department of Agriculture, and other organizations devoted to helping a public which mostly does not know these aids exist. With long hours of study and figuring—just as mighty a project as attempting to discover an overlay at Santa Anita, the colonel insists—he discovered the records gave him a tremendous edge for this period. The rainfall, over the years, was always three inches in that area. Chances were fine it would hit four. All the farmers knew was that they wanted rain. So on opening night, amidst much booming of the gun, a monsoon hit the area and one of the great swindles was brought off.
And now, at Belmont Park, here was Dr. Sykes. And he was talking to Mr. Widener, the president of the track. Talking rather quickly, with much animation and, judging by the nods of Widener’s head, with much success.
“It was rather easy to see what was going on,” Colonel Stingo says. This was the depression. Belmont Park, in its first full meeting during this national calamity, was finding it hard. Here with twelve days left in the fall meeting the crowds had fallen off because of the wretched weather and the lack of money in general. But if the weather were to shine favorably upon Mr. Widener’s establishment, the track could at least break even on the meeting. Now suddenly we find Dr. Sykes on the scene. And doing well. It does not take a genius to discover the reason for this momentous meeting. Dr. Sykes was selling the sucker on a deal to make it stop raining.
“I departed from the shoe-shine stand in utmost haste and made my way to the gathering just as Widener was leaving. I took my dear old friend Sykes by the arm and inquired what was up. And in what way, if any, he could avail himself of my services. In other words, boy, I was taking a piece of his action.”
“Lo! It was better than I suspected. The millionaires had actually brought him from California to protect their meeting against losses. He was a magnificent old fraud. He looked me right in the eye and maintained he could turn rain on and off as he pleased. Then he came down from the clouds just enough to make a little sense. He could use my meteorological research. He also could use a little help with money—tease, as I call it. And I’d have 45 per cent of the action.
“His deal was functional. He would put up $2000 as evidence of good faith. Then he was to stop the rain. For this, Widener was to pay $2500 on Saturday, $1000 on each weekday it didn’t rain. In turn, Sykes was to pay $2000 on each day that the weather bureau reported even the slightest thing this side of a dew.”
Sykes had informed Widener he used a special iodine-silver spray which would ride wave vibrations clear to the very heavens. They could change the climate of India with enough of their machines, they said. And in setting the terms, the $2000 show of faith was urgent. “Always give the fish at least a look at a blood worm,” the colonel says. The colonel and Sykes spent several evenings researching the weather for the area and noted that, as had happened in California, they had Nature going for them. Little rain occurred over the years in the twelve-day period they were about to handle. Then the colonel went out and got the $2000 from a Shylock, Sykes posted bond, the track advanced money to build his rain-prevention setup and the project which was to earn Colonel Stingo a name as “The Honest Rainmaker” was under way.
“I remember they had something out there,” Mr. Fitz says. “It was Mr. Widener’s idea. None of my business. I paid attention to the horse, not the people around, so I didn’t know what they were doing. But I remember
they had some sort of a house out there and they were doing somethin’ in it.”
“We were,” the colonel recalls, “robbing another sucker, of course.”
The colonel tells you this story in several places. At a bar in the Hotel Dixie on New York’s 43rd Street. Or up on Eighth Avenue in a place called Gilhuly’s, where he drinks profusely and, at age eighty or so, reminisces about the rain-making, or swings right into his present day interest. “We are specialists,” he says softly, “in overlays. We do not advocate indiscriminate betting. When it is right, we are there. The public, a sucker as always, establishes a false favorite. Ours goes off at a magnificent price. The horse irrigates down the stretch and the boys who were on him fill their pockets with tease.” He also told his tales at great length to The New Yorker magazine’s Joe Liebling, and the material was later published in book form under the title of “The Honest Rainmaker.”
At any rate, the day of the Lawrence Realization began with a dripping mist rolling in over Long Island from the Atlantic Ocean. Sykes kept disappearing into the house. The colonel stayed outside, ready to run at the drop of rain. By midmorning the fog dissolved into fine sunlight, remained that way through the day and as Gallant Fox came on to nail Questionnaire and take it all for Mr. Fitz, Colonel Stingo had a winner for himself, too. It was a great triumph. “All that happened,” he says, “is that it just didn’t happen to rain on the poor boobs below.”
For Mr. Fitz, the year 1930 was a big one. Horses he trained won $397,355, a tremendous sum for this time.
Sunny Jim Page 20