Horse Sense

In the spring of 1978 I determined to become the greatest trainer of thoroughbred horses that ever lived, surpassing even Sonny Jim Fitzsimmons and Lucien Lauren with my expertise. That went the way of many of my dreams, of course. But I had started down that path in the real world by taking a small stable of racehorses and setting up shop at the annual Oaklawn Park Race Meeting in Hot Springs, Arkansas. My horses ran well, my clients made some money, I got my name in the racing form as an “up and coming” young star and enjoyed my success. I’m not waxing nostalgic here, altogether. What reminds me of this spring meet over several others I attended at Oaklawn over the years is the current state of our society in the 21^st century. Let me explain.

In the barn across from mine on the backside of the racetrack, a wealthy man stabled a huge contingent of thoroughbred horses. It was years before the intrusion of corporate racing and syndicate ownership made large racing stables of forty plus horses a common sight at tracks all over the U.S. He had built a reputation as an independent trainer and good businessman and in so doing, a lot of wealthy clientele sent their horses to his care and tutelage. The horse owners paid this trainer a steep fee so they could indulge their hobby without effort.

This trainer’s name is unimportant to the point I’m trying to make, but his arrogance, crudeness, self-centered behavior, and actions are not. Managing a horseracing stable is an around the clock enterprise seven days a week. Most of us chose to live as close to the track as possible during each meet we attended. At Oaklawn, a seedy motel outside the back gate and across the highway filled with racetrack personnel quickly. It had a liquor store next door and a café in the lobby. We needed nothing else. 

The trainer in question always rented three rooms for the duration, one for his barn foreman, his secretary/bookkeeper, and himself. However, it was common knowledge that his bookkeeper spent most of her evenings in the boss’ room and therein lies the crux of this story. If you’re interested in the intricate workings of the thoroughbred racing industry, I’m going to suggest buying and reading a very good book on the subject—Off Track: or How I Dropped Out of College and Came to be a Horse Trainer in the 1970s While All My Friends Were Still Doing Drugs—published by Blue Heron Book Works in 2015. Full disclosure, I wrote it.The rest of this brief account has more to do with the intricate workings of human nature rather than equine instinct.

One evening, long after the day’s racing had concluded and most of us were safely tucked away in the motel watching Johnny Carson, drinking cheap whiskey, or snoring, a taxi arrived at the front office. In one of those inexplicable quirks of fate, the trainer’s wife decided to surprise her husband by leaving their gorgeous home and flying from Louisville, Kentucky, to Hot Springs—something she had never done in their twenty plus years of marriage. After locating his room and retrieving a key by browbeating the night clerk, she proceeded to invite herself in with the intention, no doubt, of a romantic interlude. What she discovered was coitus interruptus.

There’s no need to go into graphic detail. The imagination will provide context. But, by now, most of us were awakened in the chaos. As the Mrs. stormed from the room, I heard the trainer scream at the back of her head, “Nothing’s going on. Are you going to believe what you see or what the hell I tell you?” And, the sad reality was the latter. The bookkeeper continued performing her duties day and night until the business folded a couple of years later due to mismanagement of funds and the wife, after considering what a divorce would cost her, continued performing her duties until her husband died of a massive heart attack shortly after the business went the same way. I don’t know what happened to her after his death, but I can’t imagine she had the strength of will to make a life on her own. 

I never liked the man and I didn’t know the woman, but I felt rage and pity toward them both. Obviously, he was a pig in human disguise and devoid of redeeming qualities. On the other hand, the one thing that would have earned her respect and credibility—cutting all ties with him—seemed beyond her grasp no matter what evidence presented itself. She accepted without question whatever he said, and even the things she saw she believed to be illusions. I always wondered what could have justified this, a redefining of truth, the idea that facts aren’t really facts, an obsessive and deranged concept of worship, a fear of being replaced, or did she simply put up with his bullshit because they had so many other horrible values in common.

Why am I reminded of this? It’s all in the language. Words generate memory, and I heard almost the identical phrase quoted on a television news report from a presidential speech in 2017. “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening,” said Donald Trump about the mountain of factual evidence available for public consumption on the matter of his corruptness. In other words, by looking you could see the truth with your own eyes even though that reality was being verbally denied. He continued implying that nonsensical propaganda to many of his questionable activities right through 2020 and his resounding denials of election loss by over seven million votes. Trump voiced his lies so much and they were reiterated so often by his minions both in right-wing media and in Congress that weak-minded and frightened people accepted them as reality right up to the point where they involved themselves in a violent insurrection instigated by this whiny infant as he incited them to attempt a coup that would have illegally kept him in office. However and for the moment, some semblance of a damaged democracy has been rescued by a few decent people in our Capitol building.

The current violent divisions in our society exists for many reasons that experts, socio/politico theorists, and philosophers will debate over the coming decades, just as psychologists can probably argue why the trainer’s wife chose to remain loyal despite the evidence available to her. However, a workable society is only workable so long as the members of that collective are willing to agree with certain truths predicated on real facts and evidence. A horse has enough sense to pull up short before it runs full speed into an impenetrable obstacle. A horse has enough sense to avoid a wolf. Remember the Declaration of Independence. “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” The idea that we can see some things are happening even if we don’t like them or want them to. The reality that facts remain constant outside of our own desires, wishes, prejudices, and demands provides a boundary for self-evidence and prevents chaos from destroying us.