Readers Up #25: Central Florida Thoroughbreds
As of this writing, I've spent the better part of three weeks trying to cyberbully the New York Racing Association into acting like something other than passive, milquetoast ostriches, content to ignore the institutions being dismantled and the history being made in their city and state. For some reason they don't want to talk to me! When have I ever been anything but good to you, NYRA? And you can't even throw an Aqueduct Tough shirt my way, content to let your jockeys walk the walk for you... A little more saliently, the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame also doesn't care to make a statement, or chat about why they're avoiding the relationship between US society's racial architecture and how violent oppression has shaped the sport, which should be one of the core aspects of any American museum's mission. Then again, they also didn't care to respond to my email two years ago.
Ah, but we're not here to talk about New York, although on the eve of the Belmont it's difficult not to recall last year's Belmont and all that's changed, or not changed, since then. Other industry mouthpieces, including The Blood Horse and Paulick Report, have produced some interesting pieces in the last several weeks, and Belinda Stronach's group (owner of racetracks such as Gulfstream and Pimlico) has thrown monetary support behind initiatives for racial justice. Anyway, we're here for Florida! I've been consistently homesick during the pandemic and now, during the demonstrations and protests in support of George Floyd and the unending reel of Black Americans killed by police (and other institutions) in our time and the times before. It's not that I have any real desire to be in a state treating coronavirus like just another excuse to day-drink, although I would've been happy to be involved in the removal of that godforsaken Confederate battle flag at the I-4/I-75 junction. But in times of stress it's good to be in the place you understand best, and that place for me is certainly not upstate New York. Barring any ill-advised travel to and from hot-spots, a thoroughly Floridian book like Charlene R. Johnson's Central Florida Thoroughbreds scratches the itch.
In her opening chapter, Johnson writes of equine fossils which undergird Marion and Polk Counties and notes, simple and direct, First Horse loved Florida. From this thesis statement the book unspools, ranging through the scrub and phosphate and mild rises barely tall enough to be called hills, beginning in the Miocene and culminating in our present--and always following that love, seemingly present in humans and horses both. Humans love Florida for its unending flexibility, which sometimes provides for avarice, exploitation, or destruction, but just as often for innovation and creative enterprise. Horses love Florida for its mineral-rich grass and year-round warmth. These factors, Johnson shows, combined to birth Thoroughbred industry and sport in the peninsula. Needles, Susan's Girl, Rough N'Tumble, Carry Back, Dr. Fager, Pleasures both Foolish and Honest, Affirmed, Silver Charm; Jimmy Bright, Carl Rose, P.A.B. Widener, John Nerud, the O'Farrells, Louis and Patrice Wolfson; Gulfstream, Calder, Tampa Bay, Tropical Park, storied and lost Hialeah: all the names are here. Warm in tone and eminently readable, the book is an excellent primer for readers wondering how and why Florida came to rival Kentucky in stakes races run, foals dropped, and stallions stood. Beyond that, Johnson's love for the state shines on every page, which is not always a quality you get in writing about Florida.
Despite being born and raised in the Sunshine State, I never made it to Ocala until I was an adult. My best friend moved north and I drove up to see her; I will never forget my first glimpse of the mammoth training oval off I-75, just past the turnpike junction. I hadn't been in love with racing for very long at that point. I had read Central Florida Thoroughbreds for the first time only a few months before, and was in the middle of writing a novel about a horse-hearted girl dreaming of jockeys and fast ponies in... Ocala. In hindsight, it's a miracle I never crashed my car, craning my neck at the farms and fences as I drove up and down the interstate over the next year. I moved to another slice of American horse country before I managed to viewing the "Horses in the Sun" annual show, or getting a tour of one of Marion County's Thoroughbred farms. Horses didn't net a mention in the state history units of my public school classes, despite the impact of equine economy on the state's coffers and the relatively easy availability of racing sport. Much of Florida's vivid history is flattened into a palatable slurry of Walt Disney, space shuttles, and citrus. Its uglier legacies, such as its record of Klan activity and other tendencies synonymous with (but not singular to) the Deep South, are often ignored. And its triumphs, all that is most beautiful from its homebred racehorses to the natural spaces far from palm-lined beaches, are rarely permitted at face value.
The story presented in Central Florida Thoroughbreds is one of galaxy brains and guts. Carl Rose's willingness to use Army remount stallions for stud; the original FTBA's aggressive Florida-bred incentives spurring not only what would become the Florida Sire Stakes but also ultimately the Breeders' Cup; Joe O'Farrell splinting an eventual Belmont winner's leg--everything Florida racing's formative influences did was either a gamble or a dare. At the same time, Central Florida Thoroughbreds elides the eternal and core question of land management. Who was on Florida soil before the Spanish named it that? Whose homes and graves lie beneath Ocala training tracks and Miami racetracks? A tip of the hat to Latinx personnel appears in the final chapter, but where are the Black horsemen who built the sport ground-up before they were even free to choose it? Maybe we're too far from the outlaw early days of Cracker ponies, and too far again from the boom times of the 1970s and 80s, to access racing's memorable vitality. Maybe it's been too long since I've played railbird. Maybe racing in 2020 is so fractured that it feels impossible to imagine it thriving again. Maybe the priorities of the Powers That Be are alien and at a fundamental remove, and maybe the boots-on-dirt reality of racing is at odds with its white face and kid-gloved hands, and maybe divesting from toxic forces while acknowledging painful history is both possible and necessary. Maybe we're not talking about racing anymore. Maybe all discussion of racing mirrors the larger discussions of the day, which have always been the discourse of our country.
1931, the year of Florida's first legal horse race, wasn't that long ago. Neither was 1951, the year Harry T. and Harriette V.S. Moore were assassinated in Mims. Neither was 1978, the year the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints extended its most sacred rites of priesthood to Black members. Neither was 2013, the year Kevin Krigger attempted to become the Kentucky Derby's first winning Black jockey since Jimmy Winkfield in 1902. Neither was March 13, 2020, the date Breonna Taylor was murdered by Louisville police.
A man, a plan, a horse, Ocala. The foundations were built for us, on soft and porous limestone. If outdated and never-relevant statues can be toppled so easily, what can we sculpt in their places? Sure, change is a chancy endeavor, but what are we here for--here, watching Belmont and Fonner Park with equally rapt eyes, here, spiritually if not physically--what are we doing, if not placing those longshot bets?
Socially distant in the stacks and on the streets,
Diana
PS: If you'd like to support independent bookstores, consider picking up Central Florida Thoroughbreds through IndieBound. It may also be available at your library (or you might be able to suggest it for purchase--try OverDrive's "suggest a title" feature). Happy reading!
PPS: If you'd like to read a short story I've had no luck placing, written in a frenzy after my first read of Johnson's book, you can find that here. Happy (??) reading.