Visited the Kentucky Horse Park \u2014 in large part to honor, or atone, or reconcile with my memory of my father He was an avid horse follower. In my youth, he was track medic for the jockeys at Alexandra Park, not far from the last house we inhabited in Auckland. He claimed the only time he cried was when a famous horse, possibly \u201cPhar Lap,\u201d a New Zealand-bred racer who, after a staggeringly successful career in Australia, died mysteriously in California. He was not one to show emotion. The story may be apocryphal but showed a greater affinity for, or ease with, non-humans. He and I lived at loggerheads. He couldn\u2019t accept that I never submitted to him. And I found him dishonest, not a liar but a walker on the edge of the double yellow line, often evading or slip-sliding direct questions.\u00a0This discovery was a huge come down in my adolescence because I had been in awe of him and revered him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But I am here in Kentucky, home of horse flesh at its finest. To celebrate retirement, my father and mother joined a global TOBA (Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association, his qualification a mystery) tour that took them to, among others, the Kentucky Derby, the Jockey Club in Hong Kong (my mother marveled at the horses exercised on rooftop turf on skyscrapers), the Gold Cup in Dubai, Longchamps in Paris, and, finally, Epsom Downs in England. In an ironic twist, when I was sent to an English boarding school called a prep school, educating 8 through 13 year olds while my family lived in Kuwait, I was expected to subsequently attend Epsom College, an historic English public school for 13 – 17 year olds. The college had been established to provide education for \u201c\u2026 sons of poor or deceased members of the medical profession and accommodations for pensioned doctors\u2026.\u201d Epsom College could have been my father\u2019s life insurance policy for me, were he \u201chit by a bus\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another reason for my visit was, during my marriage to Johanna, the Kentucky Derby as an anchor to our year. It was the beginning of the possibility of summer; it was for us two exclusive, in many ways more important than Christmas, which had always been purely family and more so after her daughter expanded numbers and generations with marriage and children. Johanna and I have many Derby Day stories as it was a day to interact with the world at large. Her gallery had openings the first weekend of the month. A conflict with Derby Day. One year, we thought, the Jai Alai fronton that had been converted to a gambling hall would surely have the race on big TVs. We arrived to a huge hall, thick with smoke (we had quit some three years or so before) and pensioners glued to one-armed bandits that no longer required pulling a lever, but responded to a button push. The horse betting was in the back and to the right in a low ceiling area off the gaming floor and passageway. Three large screens covered the south wall. Above the screens hung alphabet boards or smaller screens announcing the the track and race playing on screen. The floor was thick with discarded, often half-torn betting tickets and puddles of spilt beer. Anchored to the floor were rows of narrow tables about 12 inches deep, just the right size for a racing form, and at a height where the form was easy to read while standing. The screens showed only the race cameras. No NBC color commentary, no ladies in hats and fascinators, no money bros contrasted with the old race royalty. Just a screen with horses led to the starting gate. The gate opening, and the horses off. No commentary. The two screens flanking the Derby had their own races, race prep, or race finish. Then it was done. The odds were posted. The few people attedning discarded tickets to the floor. I don\u2019t think there was a winner. Other years, we would take a personal TV to watch the race in the back of the gallery, until TV went digital so rabbit ears no longer worked. We switched to a personal emergency battery-operated TV. It was a struggle to set up and was not always reliably charged, and we sometimes had to snake a cord out to the rear parking lot for reception or to be less of a distraction to artists at the opening. After Johanna stopped showing at the gallery, there were, of course, the neighborhood Derby Day parties. These were the unofficial locals\u2019 opening of the summer season, a few weeks preceding the true opening at Memorial Day. They were marked by drinking and au hasard<\/em> betting \u2014 drawing slips from a hat to pick your horse \u2014 limiting bets on a particular horse \u2014 and sometimes just straight picks. The payouts were based on dividing the pot – half to the winner, three eighths for second, and one eight for third. The math felt more complex after a mint julep or two. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n To the horse park \u2014 I hope it is not a letdown after those personal reminisces. It is an open-air museum built to introduce the visitor to horses and horse culture in the Kentucky thoroughbred sense. It is not Houston\u2019s Rodeo nor the Western cowboy or the Indian adaptation of the horse to become mobile, raiding warriors. Besides the racers, the park also has a barn with photogenic work horses \u2014 Clydesdales, Percherons, Shires, or Belgians. Morgans, standard breeds, mavricks have a cursory mention in the museum, but are not on display in the barns nor a focus of the exhibits. The museum, interestingly, starts with an elevator ride so the order of passage is through the second floor to the first. The second exhibit focuses on Kentucky racing the transition of black jockeys and trainers from the Civil War (slaves) to the turn of the 20th Century (freemen). It marks Plessy v. Ferguson as the end to the vaunted black jockey\u2014 nothing the last black jockey to win the Derby 1901 and 1902. However, the entrance to the visitor center and ticketing booth, with the statue of Man of War, does pay significant tribute to Isaac Murphy, born a slave but becoming America\u2019s best jockey. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Further on, the museum shows horses as integral to society before the development of the tractor, a display on horse culture, particularly racing in Japan, and a large section on the Arabian horse. The latter seemed at odds with the current conflict that region and with this current administration\u2019s antipathy towards Arabs, Arab culture, and their contributions. The museum ends, as expected, with large displays devoted to Derby, and especially Triple Crown winners, with a real focus on Kentucky-bred and trained horses. Although Funny Cide, Kentucky-sired, New York-bred, does get a mention in part because he retired to the park and was a visitor favorite in the Hall of Champions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Outside the main gate, very much off to the side and not well marked stands the American Standard Breed museum. For a horse neophyte this was the more interesting site. The breed is one of America’s grreat contributions to horse breeding especially as they dominate harness racing. My father’s favorite trotter “Cardigan Bay”, the first harness racer to win $1 million, was owned by people who lived a few houses down from us in Auckland and was a standardbred, foaled in New Zealand. The museum has clear exhibits on the five strides for the breed as well as nifty low tech interactive experiences to give the feel of riding a horse. The museum reported that the Amish often purchase retired standardbred race horse. In traveling the borders between Eastern Kentucky and Tennessee I came across Amish or Mennonites riding buggies — some at quite the trot. One in particular had the beautiful high step as he pulled two boys speeding down the road, clip-clopping to beat the band. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Visited the Kentucky Horse Park \u2014 in large part to honor, or atone, or reconcile with my memory of my father He was an avid horse follower. In my youth, he was track medic for the jockeys at Alexandra Park, not far from the last house we inhabited in Auckland. He claimed the only time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chapter-4-back-to-ri","category-ww-on-the-wroad"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":664,"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions\/664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}