-
I'M A FOOL
It was a
hard jolt for me, one of the most bitterest I ever
had to face. And it all
came about
through my own foolishness too . Even yet
sometimes, when I think of it,
I want
to cry or swear or kick myself Perhaps, even now,
after all this time, there will
be a
kind of satisfaction in making myself look cheap
by telling of it.
It began at three
o'clock one October afternoon as I sat in the
grandstand at the
fall trotting and
pacing meet at Sandusky, Ohio.
To tell
the truth, I felt a little foolish that I should
be sitting in the grandstand at
all.
During the summer before I had left my home town
with Harry Whitehead and,
with a nigger
named Burt, had taken a job as swipe with one of
the two horses Harry
was
campaigning
through
the
fall
race
meets
that
year.
Mother
cried
and
my
sister
Mildred, who wanted to get a job as a
school teacher in our town that fall, stormed
and scolded about
the house
all during the week before
I left. They
both thought
it
something
disgraceful that one of our family should take a
place as a swipe with race
horses. I've
an idea Mildred thought my taking the place would
stand in the way of
her getting the job
she'd been working so long for.
But
after
all
I
had
to
work,
and
there
was
no
other
work
to
be
got.
A
big
lumbering
fellow of nineteen couldn't just hang around the
house and I had got too big
to
mow
people's
lawns
and
sell
newspapers.
Little
chaps
who
could
get
next
to
people's sympathies by their sizes were
always getting jobs away from me. There was
one
fellow
who
kept
saying
to
everyone
who
wanted
a
lawn
mowed
or
a
cistern
cleaned, that he was
saving money to work his way through college, and
I used to lay
awake nights thinking up
ways to injure him without being found out. I kept
thinking
of wagons running over him and
bricks falling
on his
head
as he
walked along the
street. But never mind him.
I got the place with Harry and I liked
Burt fine. We got along splendid together.
He was a big nigger with a lazy
sprawling body and soft, kind eyes, and when it
came
to
a
fight
he
could
hit
like
Jack
Johnson.
He
had
Bucephalus,
a
big
black
pacing
stallion
that
could
do
2.09
or
2.
10,
if
he
had
to,
and
I
had
a
little
gelding
named
Doctor Fritz that never lost a race all
fall when Harry wanted him to win.
We
set out from home late in July in a box car with
the two horses and after that,
until
late November, we kept moving along to the race
meets and the fairs. It was a
peachy
time
for
me,
I'll
say
that.
Sometimes
now
I
think
that
boys
who
are
raised
regular
in
houses,
and
never
have
a
fine
nigger
like
Burt
for
best
friend,
and
go
to
high schools and college, and never
steal
anything, or get
drunk
a little, or learn to
swear from
fellows who know how, or come walking up in front
of a grandstand in
their shirt sleeves
and with dirty horsey pants on when the races are
going on and the
grandstand is
full of people all dressed up--what's
the use of talking about it? Such
fellows don't know nothing at all.
They've never had no opportunity.
But I
did. Burt taught me how to rub down a horse and
put the bandages on after
a race and
steam a horse out and a lot of valuable things for
any man to know. He
could wrap a
bandage on a horse's leg so smooth that if it had
been the same color you
would think it
was his skin, and I guess he'd have been a big
driver too and got to the
top like
Murphy and Walter Cox and the others if he hadn't
been black.
Gee whizz, it was fun. You
got to a county seat town, maybe say on a Saturday
or
Sunday,
and
the
fair
began
the
next
Tuesday
and
lasted
until
Friday
afternoon.
Doctor
Fritz
would
be,
say
in
the
2.25
trot
on
Tuesday
afternoon
and
on
Thursday
afternoon
Bucephalus would knock 'em cold in the
of time to hang around and listen to
horse talk, and see Burt knock some yap cold that
got too gay, and you'd find out about
horses and men and pick up a lot of stuffyou
could use all the rest of your life, if
you had some sense and salted down what you
heard and felt and saw.
And
then at the end of the week when the race meet was
over, and Harry had run
home to tend up
to his livery stable business, you and Burt
hitched the two horses to
carts and
drove slow and steady across country to the place
for the next meeting, so as
to not
over-heat the horses, etc., etc., you know.
Gee whizz, gosh amighty, the nice
hickorynut and beechnut and oaks and other
kinds
of
trees
along
the
roads,
all
brown
and
red,
and
the
good
smells,
and
Burt
singing a song that was
called Deep River, and the country
girls
at the windows of
houses and everything. You can stick
your colleges up your nose for all me. I guess I
know where I got my education.
Why, one of those little burgs of towns
you come to on the way, say now on a
Saturday afternoon, and Burt says,
And you took the horses to a livery
stable and fed them, and you got your good
clothes out of a box and put them on.
And the town was full of farmers
gaping, because they could see you were race
horse people, and the kids maybe never
see a nigger before and was afraid and run
away when the two of us walked down
their main street.
And that was before
prohibition and all that foolishness, and so you
went into a
saloon, the two of you, and
all the yaps come and stood around, and there was
always
someone pretended he was horsey
and knew things and spoke up and began asking
questions, and all you did was to lie
and lie all you could about what horses you had,
and
I
said
I
owned
them,
and
then
some
fellow
said
you
have
a
drink
of
whiskey
all right, I'm
agreeable to a little nip. I'll split a quart with
you.
But that isn't what I want to tell
my story about. We got home late in November
and I promised mother I'd quit the race
horses for good. There's a lot of things you've
got to promise a mother because she
don't know any better.
And so, there
not being any work in our town any more than when
I left there to
go
to
the
races,
I
went
off
to
Sandusky
and
got
a
pretty
good
place
taking
care
of
horses for
a
man who owned a teaming
and delivery
and storage and
coal
and real
estate business
there. It
was a pretty good place with
good eats, and a day off each
week, and
sleeping on a cot in a big barn, and mostly just
shovelling in hay and oats
to a lot of
big good-enough skates of horses, that couldn't
have trotted a race with a
toad. I
wasn't dissatisfied and I could send money home.
And then, as I started to tell you, the
fall races come to Sandusky and I got the
day
offend
I
went.
I
left
the
job
at
noon
and
had
on
my
good
clothes
and
my
new
brown derby hat, I'd
just bought the Saturday before, and a stand-up
collar.
First
of
all
I
went
downtown
and
walked
about
with
the
dudes.
I've
always
thought
to
myself,
up
a
good
front
and
so
I
did
it.
I
had
forty
dollars
in
my
pocket
and
so
I
went
into
the
West
House,
a
big
hotel,
and
walked
up
to
the
cigar
stand.
and strangers and
dressed-up people from other towns standing around
in the lobby
and in the bar, and I
mingled amongst them In the bar there was a fellow
with a cane
and a Windsor tie on t hat
it made me sick to look at him. I like a man to be
a man and
dress up, but not to
please and looking down on the swipes
coming out with their horses, and with
their dirty horsey pants on and the
horse blankets swung over their shoulders, same as
I had been doing all the
year before.
I liked one
thing about
the same as
the
other,
sitting up there and feeling
grand and being down there and looking up at the
yaps and
feeling grander and more
important too. One thing's about as good as
another, if you
take it just right.
I've often said that.
Well, right in
front of me, in the grandstand that day, there was
a fellow with a
couple of girls and
they was about my age. The young fellow was a nice
guy all right.
He was the kind maybe
that goes to college and then comes to be a lawyer
or maybe a
newspaper
editor
or
something
like
that,
but
he
wasn't
stuck
on
himself.
There
are
some of that kind are
all right and he was one of the ones.
He had his sister with him and another
girl and the sister looked around over his
shoulder, accidental at first, not
intending to start anything--she wasn't that kind
--and
her eyes and mine happened to
meet.
You know how it is. Gee, she was
a peach! She had on a soft dress, kind of a
blue stuff and it looked carelessly
made, but was well sewed and made and everything.
I knew that much. I blushed when she
looked right at me and so did she. She was the
nicest
girl
I've
ever seen in
my life. She
wasn't
stuck on herself and she could
talk
proper
grammar
without
being
like
a
school
teacher
or
something
like
that.
What
I
mean is, she was O.K. I think maybe her
father was well-to-do, but not rich to make
her chesty because she was his
daughter, as some are. Maybe he owned a drug store
or a drygoods store in their home town,
or something like that She never told me and I
never asked.
My
own
people
are
all
O.K.
too
when
you
come
to
that.
My
grandfather
was
Welsh and over in the old country, in
Wales h was--but never mind that.
The
first heat of the first race come off and the
young fellow setting there with
the two
girls left them and went down to make a bet. I
knew what he was up to, but he
didn't
talk big and noisy and let everyone around know he
was a sport as some do. He
wasn't that
kind. Well, he come back and I heard him tell the
two girls what horse he'd
bet
on, and when the heat
was
trotted they
all halfgot
to
their feet
and acted in
the
excited, sweaty way
people do when they've got money down on a race,
and the horse
they bet
on is
up there pretty close
at
the end, and they think maybe he'll
come on
with a rush, but he never does
because he hasn't got the old juice in him, come
right
down to it.
And
then,
pretty
soon,
the
horses
came
out
for
the
2.18
pace
and
there
was
a
horse in it I knew. He was
a horse Bob French had in his string but Bob
didn't own
him. He was a horse owned by
a Mr. Mathers down at Marietta, Ohio.
This Mr. Mathers had a lot of money and
owned some coal mines or something,
and
he had a swell place out in the country, and he
was stuck on race horses, but was
a
Presbyterian or something, and I think more than
likely his wife was one too, maybe
a
stiffer one than himself. So he never raced his
horses hisself, and the story round the
Ohio race tracks was that when one of
his horses got ready to go to the races he turned
him over to Bob French and pretended to
his wife he was sold.
So Bob had the
horses and he did pretty much as he pleased and
you can't blame
Bob, at least
I never did. Sometimes he was out to
win and sometimes he wasn't.
I
never cared much about that when I was
swiping a horse. What I did want to know
was that my horse had the speed and
could go out in front if you wanted him to.
- And, as
I'm telling
you, there was Bob in this race with
one of Mr. Mathers'
horses, was named
About Ben Ahem or something like that, and was
fast as a streak.
He was a gelding and
had a mark of 2.21, but could step in .08 or .09.
Because when Burt and I were out, as
I've told you, the year before, there was a
nigger Burt knew, worked for Mr.
Mathers, and we went out there one day when we
didn't have no race on at the Marietta
Fair and our boss Harry was gone home.
And so everyone was gone to the fair
but just this one nigger and he took us all
through
Mr.
Mathers'
swell
house
and
he
and
Burt
tapped
a
bottle
of
wine
Mr.
Mathers
had hid in his bedroom, back in a doset, without
his wife knowing, and he
showed us this
Ahem horse. Burt was always stuck on being a
driver but didn't have
much chance to
get to the top, being a rigger, and he and the
other nigger gulped that
whole bottle
of wine and Burt got a little lit up.
So the nigger let Burt take this About
Ben Ahem and step him a mile in a track
Mr.
Mathers
had
all
to
himself,
right
there
on
the
farm.
And
Mr.
Mathers
had
one
child, a daughter, Linda
sick and not very good looking, and she came home
and we
had to hustle and get About Ben
Ahem stuck back in the barn.
I'm only
telling you to get everything straight. At
Sandusky, that afternoon I was
at the
fair, this young fellow with the two girls was
fussed, being with the girls and
losing
his bet. You know how a fellow is that way. One of
them was his girl and the
other his
sister. I had figured that out.
He was mighty nice when I
touched him on the shoulder. He and the girls were
nice to me right from the start and
clear to the end. I'm not blaming them.