The Legend of Zippy Chippy (11 page)

It's difficult to determine who the best prankster was back then, the horse or the kid with those big, misbehaving eyes. “It wasn't long after that that my dad caught me feeding Zippy carrots with my teeth,” said Marisa. “I thought he was going to have a cow!”

Meet [trouble] as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it

and had better be on speaking terms with it
.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Zippy's home for three years and seventy races at Finger Lakes was stall number seven in barn twenty, on the backside. Just like at every thoroughbred track in North America, the backside (or the backstretch, as it's sometimes called) at Finger Lakes serves as the stabling area and living quarters of the pony people, a small, strange, and solitary world not unlike the jerry-rigged lot of tents and trailers where circus workers live temporarily. This is the place where the callused, unseen hands of horsemen and handlers make the sport of racing horses work. Finger Lakes's backside is a timeless and shabby little village, far from the property's glittering casino. While thousands come to play the slots every day, few people attend the races, and almost nobody goes to the backside.

It's a quirky little community consisting of twenty-one long, rectangular barns, four one-story concrete residences with twenty dorm rooms each, a few circular equine playgrounds linked by roads that are usually muddy or rutted hard. A spacious canteen called Cilantro serves grilled meats and tacos as well as a lot of leafy, healthy foods so riders can keep their weight down. Here in the “kitchen,” listening to salsa music, men in mismatched
tracksuits shoot pool or play pinball machines, ignoring the bank of simulcast monitors broadcasting races from other tracks.

The front windows of the tiny rent-free apartments have long been filmed over by cigarette smoke, and beat-up bicycles lie on patchy lawns or stand propped up against rusted-out air conditioners. The uneven grass is trampled, not mowed. A mottled old couch and ripped-up recliner sit soaking from last night's rain under a battered umbrella. The living conditions in almost all North American racetracks are and always have been an embarrassment to the industry. Arlington Park in Chicago has been called “the Taj Mahal of racing” because of its fine track and clubhouse, but its backside, where a single bathroom once had to accommodate one hundred workers, mostly Latinos, has been described as a “ghetto.” Arlington has made significant improvements to the workers' residences, but it still took the American Civil Liberties Union to win the right for four hundred children to live in the backside with their parents during the racing season.

The Finger Lakes barns, however, are spotless, with two wide aisles running the length of each barn, separating rows of stalls on each side. The bobbing heads of horses stretch over the front walls of the stalls, demanding food or water, but mostly just attention, with a variety of sounds, from a high-pitched, anxious neighing to a softer, contented nickering. And they get everything they want, almost on demand. Here, the horses are the high-priced talent. A loud complaint from one stall brings a bough of fresh hay, kicked beneath the horse's feet under the webbing that keeps him in. A stomping fit attracts a groom with a garden hose, to fill the bucket on the wall. A few horses prefer to drink from the nozzle of the hose, soaking themselves and the handler in the process. The stall floors are repeatedly mucked and replenished with fresh, golden straw.

Suddenly, shouts are heard outside: “Loose horse. Loose horse!” Workers swarm the steel-fenced exercise circle to corral a horse that has snapped his lead and is running wild inside, threatening to collide with another horse still hooked up to the circling bar.

A girl, maybe twenty, runs to the ring and shuts the machine down with the slap of a hand. She slowly walks through the gate toward the rampaging horse, talking softly but showing no-nonsense body language. Calmly, she corners the big black stallion, who surrenders to her touch. “Nice work!” yells a guy from a neighboring barn, and it's all over in less than a minute.

There are eight tack rooms in each barn, the largest being the trainer's, with harnesses and nosebands, saddles and stirrups hanging on all four walls. Drop nosebands and tongue-ties keep the horses from swallowing their unusually large tongues. On the wall for all to see is that day's worksheet, a list of which horses need to be primed for races and which need to be walked, galloped, or worked out in the exercise barn. Around every corner inside the barns are stacks of baled hay reaching nearly to the rafters.

The tiny tack rooms located near the four entrances to each barn are smaller than the stalls of the horses. There, trainers, pony riders, and grooms keep their gear. Small fridges contain snacks, sodas, and medicine for the horses. Most have cots, some have TVs, one has an air conditioner. This one belongs to Emily. “Mom” has spent every week at the track for most of her life.

There's a pleasantness around the barns in the morning as the work routines are infused with good-natured banter. “J-Rod” chides “Butch” about his favorite filly, who came in last yesterday. “Diesel Dave” and “Muscleman” jar at each other as “Mom” walks laps inside the barn, five horses every day. And yes, there's always a “Mom” in the backside, to whom others bring their troubles.

Except for the grooms and the hot-walkers, the pony riders and the trainers, people who can be identified by the crust of muck and crap on their boots, the only others to visit the backside are the vets and farriers. The track officials and stewards never come here, except in crisis. Even here at Finger Lakes jockeys have their own comfortable digs closer to the track, complete with lockers, a kitchen, TV monitors to watch themselves and the competition, a sweat box, a hot tub, a sleeping room with bunk beds, a pool table, an ice machine, and windows onto the paddock. The silks room where the jockeys' uniforms are kept is managed by the “Color Man,” and the all-important weigh station is operated by the “Scales Clerk.” Some jockey rooms have “spit boxes” or “vomit stalls,” the second-quickest weight-loss program known to a rider. The first is a white pill that contains the egg of a tapeworm.

The backstretch workers are an odd and fascinating lot, vagabonds with seasonal jobs that move with the horses and the weather. For these grooms, hot-walkers, and foremen, the days begin at four in the morning and end around six at night, seven days a week. They are poorly paid, and holidays and sick days are unknown to them. First and foremost, there is an immense respect for animals here, a common thread that bonds together these backside workers, an endearing link between the racers and their caregivers. Secondly, come hell or high water, birth, illness, and death – the backsiders are there for each other.
They
are all they have. They intermingle and intermarry and watch each other's back. They are matter-of-fact, friendly, weary, but always polite to a visitor. Most of them have had hard lives; all of them have stories. Fights and petty crimes are common. Many are locals not afraid of hard work and accepting of low pay. Others drift from track to track, followed by the “bad paperwork” of
warrants, unpaid child support, and immigration issues. On one of my visits to the Finger Lakes Racetrack, a stabbing had occurred in the backside the night before. Nobody died, but the barn people were much more upset about the cops being called in than about the assault itself.

The language of the backside is mostly Spanish, the dress code is dirty denim, and the smell is an inoffensive combination of urine and liniment, hay, and horse buns. In fact, some back-stretchers believe it brings good luck if you step in it! The round-the-clock rhythm changes from hectic between dawn and eleven in the morning to tranquil from six until dusk.

From a post time of one o'clock until the completion of the program's ninth and last race at about five-thirty, the backside is a shuttle service. With a 5:00 a.m. breakfast and a 10:00 a.m. light lunch, horses are kept hungry for the afternoon races. Horses leave for the track, excited and feisty, and return a half hour later, still pumped up and soaked in sweat. A cold shower and a big dinner await them in the barn. After dark, the only sound heard is a troublemaker trying to rouse the others; the only movement is the beam of the security guard's flashlight as he makes his nightly rounds, checking on the expensive inmates.

Race day is game day, and the backside looks like the backstage of a Broadway play. That day's stars, one or two from each of the track's twenty barns, are primped and fawned over, braided and gussied up and talked to like actors about to take the stage. The afternoon matinee, with curtain-up announced by a bugler, is about to begin. Not yet saddled, that day's racers are led from the barns to the track by stable hands wearing bright oversized jerseys, each numbered in order of the horse and its post position. It's a ten-minute walk to the track, and the horses are on edge, their muscles rippling and coats shining as they nicker and nudge
their handlers with their long, gorgeous snouts. With a jerk of a harness and a harsh word, they are told to cut it out.

Once horse and handler arrive at the paddock area, the trainer saddles up his mount in an open stall and talks to the jockey about the race, now a half hour away. If the rider wants to keep working for the trainer, he listens to the instructions and follows them closely once the starting bell goes off. The horse does two turns around the circle paddock, where bettors get a chance to size him up, the first time led by a stableman, then the next with the jockey up.

A bright blaze of color from the jockeys' silks and the horses' saddlecloth moves slowly down the chute to the track, where the bugler blasts his call to post. The post parade looks like a fashion show, with bettors still judging the strutters and high-steppers as they make their way to the starting gate. Preening, posing, nodding knowingly to their riders, the horses are the stars of this festive extravaganza, and they know it. The bell rings and the pageantry of the race explodes on the track as the audience goes silent in anticipation, all eyes focused on the pack. The horses are rarin' to go. Each will perform in one colorful, breathtaking swirl around an earthen oval, winner takes top prize.

After the track's camera stops flashing at the finish line, some of these sleek and silky characters will be applauded for their efforts, a few might be booed, but most certainly one will go to the winner's circle to be photographed with the jockey, the trainer, and the owner's entourage.