(Editor's Note: This is the annual repost of the way Derby used to be before corporate entities and profit schemes took over our beloved pastime. Written in 1970 by Louisvillian Hunter S. Thompson, it is a snapshot in time. The Kentucky Derby is no longer decadent or depraved. It is simply a Saturday afternoon party for east-side trust fund twentysomethings.)
The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved
by Hunter S. Thompson
I got off the plane around midnight and no one spoke as I crossed the
dark runway to the terminal. The air was thick and hot, like wandering
into a steam bath. Inside, people hugged each other and shook
hands...big grins and a whoop here and there: "By God! You old bastard!
Good to see you, boy! Damn good...and I mean it!"
In the air-conditioned lounge I met a man from Houston who said his name
was something or other — "but just call me Jimbo" — and he was here to
get it on. "I'm ready for anything, by God! Anything at all. Yeah, what
are you drinkin?" I ordered a Margarita with ice, but he wouldn't hear
of it: "Naw, naw...what the hell kind of drink is that for Kentucky
Derby time? What's wrong with you, boy?" He grinned and winked at the
bartender. "Goddam, we gotta educate this boy. Get him some good
whiskey..."
I shrugged. "Okay, a double Old Fitz on ice." Jimbo nodded his approval.
"Look." He tapped me on the arm to make sure I was listening. "I know
this Derby crowd, I come here every year, and let me tell you one thing
I've learned — this is no town to be giving people the impression you're
some kind of faggot. Not in public, anyway. Shit, they'll roll you in a
minute, knock you in the head and take every goddam cent you have."
I thanked him and fitted a Marlboro into my cigarette holder. "Say," he
said, "you look like you might be in the horse business...am I right?"
"No," I said. "I'm a photographer."
"Oh yeah?" He eyed my ragged leather bag with new interest. "Is that what you got there--cameras? Who you work for?"
"Playboy," I said.
He laughed. "Well, goddam! What are you gonna take pictures of — nekkid
horses? Haw! I guess you'll be workin' pretty hard when they run the
Kentucky Oaks. That's a race just for fillies." He was laughing wildly.
"Hell yes! And they'll all be nekkid too!"
I shook my head and said nothing; just stared at him for a moment,
trying to look grim. "There's going to be trouble," I said. "My
assignment is to take pictures of the riot."
"What riot?"
I hesitated, twirling the ice in my drink. "At the track. On Derby Day.
The Black Panthers." I stared at him again. "Don't you read the
newspapers?"
The grin on his face had collapsed. "What the hell are you talkin' about?"
"Well...maybe I shouldn't be telling you..." I shrugged. "But hell,
everybody else seems to know. The cops and the National Guard have been
getting ready for six weeks. They have 20,000 troops on alert at Fort
Knox. They've warned us — all the press and photographers — to wear
helmets and special vests like flak jackets. We were told to expect
shooting..."
"No!" he shouted; his hands flew up and hovered momentarily between us,
as if to ward off the words he was hearing. Then he whacked his fist on
the bar. "Those sons of bitches! God Almighty! The Kentucky Derby!" He
kept shaking his head. "No! Jesus! That's almost too bad to believe!"
Now he seemed to be sagging on the stool, and when he looked up his eyes
were misty. "Why? Why here? Don't they respect anything?"
I shrugged again. "It's not just the Panthers. The FBI says busloads of
white crazies are coming in from all over the country — to mix with the
crowd and attack all at once, from every direction. They'll be dressed
like everybody else. You know — coats and ties and all that. But when
the trouble starts...well, that's why the cops are so worried."
He sat for a moment, looking hurt and confused and not quite able to
digest all this terrible news. Then he cried out: "Oh...Jesus! What in
the name of God is happening in this country? Where can you get away
from it?"
"Not here," I said, picking up my bag. "Thanks for the drink...and good luck."
He grabbed my arm, urging me to have another, but I said I was overdue
at the Press Club and hustled off to get my act together for the awful
spectacle. At the airport newsstand I picked up a Courier-Journal and
scanned the front page headlines: "Nixon Sends GI's into Cambodia to Hit
Reds"... "B-52's Raid, then 20,000 GI's Advance 20 Miles"..."4,000 U.S.
Troops Deployed Near Yale as Tension Grows Over Panther Protest." At
the bottom of the page was a photo of Diane Crump, soon to become the
first woman jockey ever to ride in the Kentucky Derby. The photographer
had snapped her "stopping in the barn area to fondle her mount, Fathom."
The rest of the paper was spotted with ugly war news and stories of
"student unrest." There was no mention of any trouble brewing at
university in Ohio called Kent State.
I went to the Hertz desk to pick up my car, but the moon-faced young
swinger in charge said they didn't have any. "You can't rent one
anywhere," he assured me. "Our Derby reservations have been booked for
six weeks." I explained that my agent had confirmed a white Chrysler
convertible for me that very afternoon but he shook his head. "Maybe
we'll have a cancellation. Where are you staying?"
I shrugged. "Where's the Texas crowd staying? I want to be with my people."
He sighed. "My friend, you're in trouble. This town is flat full. Always is, for the Derby."
I leaned closer to him, half-whispering: "Look, I'm from Playboy. How would you like a job?"
He backed off quickly. "What? Come on, now. What kind of a job?"
"Never mind," I said. "You just blew it." I swept my bag off the counter
and went to find a cab. The bag is a valuable prop in this kind of
work; mine has a lot of baggage tags on it — SF, LA, NY, Lima, Rome,
Bangkok, that sort of thing — and the most prominent tag of all is a
very official, plastic-coated thing that says "Photog. Playboy Mag." I
bought it from a pimp in Vail, Colorado, and he told me how to use it.
"Never mention Playboy until you're sure they've seen this thing first,"
he said. "Then, when you see them notice it, that's the time to strike.
They'll go belly up ever time. This thing is magic, I tell you. Pure
magic."
Well...maybe so. I'd used it on the poor geek in the bar, and now
humming along in a Yellow Cab toward town, I felt a little guilty about
jangling the poor bugger's brains with that evil fantasy. But what the
hell? Anybody who wanders around the world saying, "Hell yes, I'm from
Texas," deserves whatever happens to him. And he had, after all, come
here once again to make a nineteenth-century ass of himself in the midst
of some jaded, atavistic freakout with nothing to recommend it except a
very saleable "tradition." Early in our chat, Jimbo had told me that he
hadn't missed a Derby since 1954. "The little lady won't come anymore,"
he said. "She grits her teeth and turns me loose for this one. And when
I say 'loose' I do mean loose! I toss ten-dollar bills around like they
were goin' out of style! Horses, whiskey, women...shit, there's women
in this town that'll do anything for money."
Why not? Money is a good thing to have in these twisted times. Even
Richard Nixon is hungry for it. Only a few days before the Derby he
said, "If I had any money I'd invest it in the stock market." And the
market, meanwhile, continued its grim slide.
The next day was heavy. With only thirty hours until post time I had no
press credentials and--according to the sports editor of the Louisville
Courier-Journal--no hope at all of getting any. Worse, I needed two
sets: one for myself and another for Ralph Steadman, the English
illustrator who was coming from London to do some Derby drawings. All I
knew about him was that this was his first visit to the United States.
And the more I pondered the fact, the more it gave me fear. How would he
bear up under the heinous culture shock of being lifted out of London
and plunged into the drunken mob scene at the Kentucky Derby? There was
no way of knowing. Hopefully, he would arrive at least a day or so
ahead, and give himself time to get acclimated. Maybe a few hours of
peaceful sightseeing in the Bluegrass country around Lexington. My plan
was to pick him up at the airport in the huge Pontiac Ballbuster I'd
rented from a used-car salesman name Colonel Quick, then whisk him off
to some peaceful setting that might remind him of England.
Colonel Quick had solved the car problem, and money (four times the
normal rate) had bought two rooms in a scumbox on the outskirts of town.
The only other kink was the task of convincing the moguls at Churchill
Downs that Scanlan's was such a prestigious sporting journal that common
sense compelled them to give us two sets of the best press tickets.
This was not easily done. My first call to the publicity office resulted
in total failure. The press handler was shocked at the idea that anyone
would be stupid enough to apply for press credentials two days before
the Derby. "Hell, you can't be serious," he said. "The deadline was two
months ago. The press box is full; there's no more room...and what the
hell is Scanlan's Monthly anyway?"
I uttered a painful groan. "Didn't the London office call you? They're
flying an artist over to do the paintings. Steadman. He's Irish. I
think. Very famous over there. Yes. I just got in from the Coast. The
San Francisco office told me we were all set."
He seemed interested, and even sympathetic, but there was nothing he
could do. I flattered him with more gibberish, and finally he offered a
compromise: he could get us two passes to the clubhouse grounds but the
clubhouse itself and especially the press box were out of the question.
"That sounds a little weird," I said. "It's unacceptable. We must have
access tp everything. All of it. The spectacle, the people, the
pageantry and certainly the race. You don't think we came all this way
to watch the damn thing on television, do you? One way or another we'll
get inside. Maybe we'll have to bribe a guard--or even Mace somebody."
(I had picked up a spray can of Mace in a downtown drugstore for $5.98
and suddenly, in the midst of that phone talk, I was struck by the
hideous possibilities of using it out at the track. Macing ushers at the
narrow gates to the clubhouse inner sanctum, then slipping quickly
inside, firing a huge load of Mace into the governor's box, just as the
race starts. Or Macing helpless drunks in the clubhouse restroom, for
their own good...)
By noon on Friday I was still without press credentials and still unable
to locate Steadman. For all I knew he'd changed his mind and gone back
to London. Finally, after giving up on Steadman and trying
unsuccessfully to reach my man in the press office, I decided my only
hope for credentials was to go out to the track and confront the man in
person, with no warning--demanding only one pass now, instead of two,
and talking very fast with a strange lilt in my voice, like a man trying
hard to control some inner frenzy. On the way out, I stopped at the
motel desk to cash a check. Then, as a useless afterthought, I asked if
by any wild chance a Mr. Steadman had checked in.
The lady on the desk was about fifty years old and very
peculiar-looking; when I mentioned Steadman's name she nodded, without
looking up from whatever she was writing, and said in a low voice, "You
bet he did." Then she favored me with a big smile. "Yes, indeed. Mr.
Steadman just left for the racetrack. Is he a friend of yours?"
I shook my head. "I'm supposed to be working with him, but I don't even
know what he looks like. Now, goddammit, I'll have to find him in the
mob at the track."
She chuckled. "You won't have any trouble finding him. You could pick that man out of any crowd."
"Why?" I asked. "What's wrong with him? What does he look like?"
"Well..." she said, still grinning, "he's the funniest looking thing
I've seen in a long time. He has this...ah...this growth all over his
face. As a matter of fact it's all over his head." She nodded. "You'll
know him when you see him; don't worry about that."
Creeping Jesus, I thought. That screws the press credentials. I had a
vision of some nerve-rattling geek all covered with matted hair and
string-warts showing up in the press office and demanding Scanlan's
press packet. Well...what the hell? We could always load up on acid and
spend the day roaming around the clubhouse grounds with bit sketch pads,
laughing hysterically at the natives and swilling mint juleps so the
cops wouldn't think we're abnormal. Perhaps even make the act pay; set
up an easel with a big sign saying, "Let a Foreign Artist Paint Your
Portrait, $10 Each. Do It NOW!"
I took the expressway out to the track, driving very fast and jumping
the monster car back and forth between lanes, driving with a beer in one
hand and my mind so muddled that I almost crushed a Volkswagen full of
nuns when I swerved to catch the right exit. There was a slim chance, I
thought, that I might be able to catch the ugly Britisher before he
checked in.
But Steadman was already in the press box when I got there, a bearded
young Englishman wearing a tweed coat and RAF sunglasses. There was
nothing particularly odd about him. No facial veins or clumps of bristly
warts. I told him about the motel woman's description and he seemed
puzzled. "Don't let it bother you," I said. "Just keep in mind for the
next few days that we're in Louisville, Kentucky. Not London. Not even
New York. This is a weird place. You're lucky that mental defective at
the motel didn't jerk a pistol out of the cash register and blow a big
hole in you." I laughed, but he looked worried.
"Just pretend you're visiting a huge outdoor loony bin," I said. "If the
inmates get out of control we'll soak them down with Mace." I showed
him the can of "Chemical Billy," resisting the urge to fire it across
the room at a rat-faced man typing diligently in the Associated Press
section. We were standing at the bar, sipping the management's Scotch
and congratulating each other on our sudden, unexplained luck in picking
up two sets of fine press credentials. The lady at the desk had been
very friendly to him, he said. "I just told her my name and she gave me
the whole works."
By midafternoon we had everything under control. We had seats looking
down on the finish line, color TV and a free bar in the press room, and a
selection of passes that would take us anywhere from the clubhouse roof
to the jockey room. The only thing we lacked was unlimited access to
the clubhouse inner sanctum in sections "F&G"...and I felt we needed
that, to see the whiskey gentry in action. The governor, a swinish
neo-Nazi hack named Louis Nunn, would be in "G," along with Barry
Goldwater and Colonel Sanders. I felt we'd be legal in a box in "G"
where we could rest and sip juleps, soak up a bit of atmosphere and the
Derby's special vibrations.
The bars and dining rooms are also in "F&G," and the clubhouse bars
on Derby Day are a very special kind of scene. Along with the
politicians, society belles and local captains of commerce, every
half-mad dingbat who ever had any pretensions to anything at all within
five hundred miles of Louisville will show up there to get strutting
drunk and slap a lot of backs and generally make himself obvious. The
Paddock bar is probably the best place in the track to sit and watch
faces. Nobody minds being stared at; that's what they're in there for.
Some people spend most of their time in the Paddock; they can hunker
down at one of the many wooden tables, lean back in a comfortable chair
and watch the ever-changing odds flash up and down on the big tote board
outside the window. Black waiters in white serving jackets move through
the crowd with trays of drinks, while the experts ponder their racing
forms and the hunch bettors pick lucky numbers or scan the lineup for
right-sounding names. There is a constant flow of traffic to and from
the pari-mutuel windows outside in the wooden corridors. Then, as post
time nears, the crowd thins out as people go back to their boxes.
Clearly, we were going to have to figure out some way to spend more time
in the clubhouse tomorrow. But the "walkaround" press passes to F&G
were only good for thirty minutes at a time, presumably to allow the
newspaper types to rush in and out for photos or quick interviews, but
to prevent drifters like Steadman and me from spending all day in the
clubhouse, harassing the gentry and rifling the odd handbag or two while
cruising around the boxes. Or Macing the governor. The time limit was
no problem on Friday, but on Derby Day the walkaround passes would be in
heavy demand. And since it took about ten minutes to get from the press
box to the Paddock, and ten more minutes to get back, that didn't leave
much time for serious people-watching. And unlike most of the others in
the press box, we didn't give a hoot in hell what was happening on the
track. We had come there to watch the real beasts perform.
Later Friday afternoon, we went out on the balcony of the press box and I
tried to describe the difference between what we were seeing today and
what would be happening tomorrow. This was the first time I'd been to a
Derby in ten years, but before that, when I lived in Louisville, I used
to go every year. Now, looking down from the press box, I pointed to the
huge grassy meadow enclosed by the track. "That whole thing," I said,
"will be jammed with people; fifty thousand or so, and most of them
staggering drunk. It's a fantastic scene — thousands of people fainting,
crying, copulating, trampling each other and fighting with broken
whiskey bottles. We'll have to spend some time out there, but it's hard
to move around, too many bodies."
"Is it safe out there?" Will we ever come back?"
"Sure," I said. "We'll just have to be careful not to step on anybody's
stomach and start a fight." I shrugged. "Hell, this clubhouse scene
right below us will be almost as bad as the infield. Thousands of
raving, stumbling drunks, getting angrier and angrier as they lose more
and more money. By midafternoon they'll be guzzling mint juleps with
both hands and vomitting on each other between races. The whole place
will be jammed with bodies, shoulder to shoulder. It's hard to move
around. The aisles will be slick with vomit; people falling down and
grabbing at your legs to keep from being stomped. Drunks pissing on
themselves in the betting lines. Dropping handfuls of money and fighting
to stoop over and pick it up."
He looked so nervous that I laughed. "I'm just kidding," I said. "Don't
worry. At the first hint of trouble I'll start pumping this 'Chemical
Billy' into the crowd."
He had done a few good sketches, but so far we hadn't seen that special
kind of face that I felt we would need for a lead drawing. It was a face
I'd seen a thousand times at every Derby I'd ever been to. I saw it, in
my head, as the mask of the whiskey gentry — a pretentious mix of
booze, failed dreams and a terminal identity crisis; the inevitable
result of too much inbreeding in a closed and ignorant culture. One of
the key genetic rules in breeding dogs, horses or any other kind of
thoroughbred is that close inbreeding tends to magnify the weak points
in a bloodline as well as the strong points. In horse breeding, for
instance, there is a definite risk in breeding two fast horses who are
both a little crazy. The offspring will likely be very fast and also
very crazy. So the trick in breeding thoroughbreds is to retain the good
traits and filter out the bad. But the breeding of humans is not so
wisely supervised, particularly in a narrow Southern society where the
closest kind of inbreeding is not only stylish and acceptable, but far
more convenient--to the parents--than setting their offspring free to
find their own mates, for their own reasons and in their own ways.
("Goddam, did you hear about Smitty's daughter? She went crazy in Boston
last week and married a nigger!")
So the face I was trying to find in Churchill Downs that weekend was a
symbol, in my own mind, of the whole doomed atavistic culture that makes
the Kentucky Derby what it is.
On our way back to the motel after Friday's races I warned Steadman
about some of the other problems we'd have to cope with. Neither of us
had brought any strange illegal drugs, so we would have to get by on
booze. "You should keep in mind," I said, "that almost everybody you
talk to from now on will be drunk. People who seem very pleasant at
first might suddenly swing at you for no reason at all." He nodded,
staring straight ahead. He seemed to be getting a little numb and I
tried to cheer him up by inviting to dinner that night, with my brother.
Back at the motel we talked for awhile about America, the South,
England--just relaxing a bit before dinner. There was no way either of
us could have known, at the time, that it would be the last normal
conversation we would have. From that point on, the weekend became a
vicious, drunken nightmare. We both went completely to pieces. The main
problem was my prior attachment to Louisville, which naturally led to
meetings with old friends, relatives, etc., many of whom were in the
process of falling apart, going mad, plotting divorces, cracking up
under the strain of terrible debts or recovering from bad accidents.
Right in the middle of the whole frenzied Derby action, a member of my
own family had to be institutionalized. This added a certain amount of
strain to the situation, and since poor Steadman had no choice but to
take whatever came his way, he was subjected to shock after shock.
Another problem was his habit of sketching people he met in the various
social situations I dragged him into--then giving them the sketches. The
results were always unfortunate. I warned him several times about
letting the subjects see his foul renderings, but for some perverse
reason he kept doing it. Consequently, he was regarded with fear and
loathing by nearly everyone who'd seen or even heard about his work. Ho
couldn't understand it. "It's sort of a joke," he kept saying. "Why, in
England it's quite normal. People don't take offense. They understand
that I'm just putting them on a bit."
"Fuck England," I said. "This is Middle America. These people regard
what you're doing to them as a brutal, bilious insult. Look what
happened last night. I thought my brother was going to tear your head
off."
Steadman shook his head sadly. "But I liked him. He struck me as a very decent, straightforward sort."
"Look, Ralph," I said. "Let's not kid ourselves. That was a very
horrible drawing you gave him. It was the face of a monster. It got on
his nerves very badly." I shrugged. "Why in hell do you think we left
the restaurant so fast?"
"I thought it was because of the Mace," he said.
"What Mace?"
He grinned. "When you shot it at the headwaiter, don't you remember?"
"Hell, that was nothing," I said. "I missed him...and we were leaving, anyway."
"But it got all over us," he said. "The room was full of that damn gas.
Your brother was sneezing was and his wife was crying. My eyes hurt for
two hours. I couldn't see to draw when we got back to the motel."
"That's right," I said. "The stuff got on her leg, didn't it?"
"She was angry," he said.
"Yeah...well, okay...Let's just figure we fucked up about equally on
that one," I said. "But from now on let's try to be careful when we're
around people I know. You won't sketch them and I won't Mace them. We'll
just try to relax and get drunk."
"Right," he said. "We'll go native."
It was Saturday morning, the day of the Big Race, and we were having
breakfast in a plastic hamburger palace called the Fish-Meat Village.
Our rooms were just across the road in the Brown Suburban Hotel. They
had a dining room, but the food was so bad that we couldn't handle it
anymore. The waitresses seemed to be suffering from shin splints; they
moved around very slowly, moaning and cursing the "darkies" in the
kitchen.
Steadman liked the Fish-Meat place because it had fish and chips. I
preferred the "French toast," which was really pancake batter, fried to
the proper thickness and then chopped out with a sort of cookie cutter
to resemble pieces of toast.
Beyond drink and lack of sleep, our only real problem at that point was
the question of access to the clubhouse. Finally, we decided to go ahead
and steal two passes, if necessary, rather than miss that part of the
action. This was the last coherent decision we were able to make for the
next forty-eight hours. From that point on — almost from the very
moment we started out to the track — we lost all control of events and
spent the rest of the weekend churning around in a sea of drunken
horrors. My notes and recollections from Derby Day are somewhat
scrambled.
But now, looking at the big red notebook I carried all through that
scene, I see more or less what happened. The book itself is somewhat
mangled and bent; some of the pages are torn, others are shriveled and
stained by what appears to be whiskey, but taken as a whole, with
sporadic memory flashes, the notes seem to tell the story. To wit:
Rain all nite until dawn. No sleep. Christ, here we go, a nightmare of
mud and madness...But no. By noon the sun burns through — perfect day,
not even humid.
Steadman is now worried about fire. Somebody told him about the
clubhouse catching on fire two years ago. Could it happen again?
Horrible. Trapped in the press box. Holocaust. A hundred thousand people
fighting to get out. Drunks screaming in the flames and the mud, crazed
horses running wild. Blind in the smoke. Grandstand collapsing into the
flames with us on the roof. Poor Ralph is about to crack. Drinking
heavily, into the Haig & Haig.
Out to the track in a cab, avoid that terrible parking in people's front
yards, $25 each, toothless old men on the street with big signs: PARK
HERE, flagging cars in the yard. "That's fine, boy, never mind the
tulips." Wild hair on his head, straight up like a clump of reeds.
Sidewalks full of people all moving in the same direction, towards
Churchill Downs. Kids hauling coolers and blankets, teenyboppers in
tight pink shorts, many blacks...black dudes in white felt hats with
leopard-skin bands, cops waving traffic along.
The mob was thick for many blocks around the track; very slow going in
the crowd, very hot. On the way to the press box elevator, just inside
the clubhouse, we came on a row of soldiers all carrying long white riot
sticks. About two platoons, with helmets. A man walking next to us said
they were waiting for the governor and his party. Steadman eyed them
nervously. "Why do they have those clubs?"
"Black Panthers," I said. Then I remembered good old "Jimbo" at the
airport and I wondered what he was thinking right now. Probably very
nervous; the place was teeming with cops and soldiers. We pressed on
through the crowd, through many gates, past the paddock where the
jockeys bring the horses out and parade around for a while before each
race so the bettors can get a good look. Five million dollars will be
bet today. Many winners, more losers. What the hell. The press gate was
jammed up with people trying to get in, shouting at the guards, waving
strange press badges: Chicago Sporting Times, Pittsburgh Police Athletic
League...they were all turned away. "Move on, fella, make way for the
working press." We shoved through the crowd and into the elevator, then
quickly up to the free bar. Why not? Get it on. Very hot today, not
feeling well, must be this rotten climate. The press box was cool and
airy, plenty of room to walk around and balcony seats for watching the
race or looking down at the crowd. We got a betting sheet and went
outside.
Pink faces with a stylish Southern sag, old Ivy styles, seersucker coats
and buttondown collars. "Mayblossom Senility" (Steadman's
phrase)...burnt out early or maybe just not much to burn in the first
place. Not much energy in the faces, not much curiosity. Suffering in
silence, nowhere to go after thirty in this life, just hang on and humor
the children. Let the young enjoy themselves while they can. Why not?
The grim reaper comes early in this league...banshees on the lawn at
night, screaming out there beside that little iron nigger in jockey
clothes. Maybe he's the one who's screaming. Bad DT's and too many
snarls at the bridge club. Going down with the stock market. Oh Jesus,
the kid has wrecked the new car, wrapped it around the big stone pillar
at the bottom of the driveway. Broken leg? Twisted eye? Send him off to
Yale, they can cure anything up there.
Yale? Did you see today's paper? New Haven is under siege. Yale is
swarming with Black Panthers...I tell you, Colonel, the world has gone
mad, stone mad. Why, they tell me a goddam woman jockey might ride in
the Derby today.
I left Steadman sketching in the Paddock bar and went off to place our
bets on the fourth race. When I came back he was staring intently at a
group of young men around a table not far away. "Jesus, look at the
corruption in that face!" he whispered. "Look at the madness, the fear,
the greed!" I looked, then quickly turned my back on the table he was
sketching. The face he'd picked out to draw was the face of an old
friend of mine, a prep school football star in the good old days with a
sleek red Chevy convertible and a very quick hand, it was said, with the
snaps of a 32 B brassiere. They called him "Cat Man."
But now, a dozen years later, I wouldn't have recognized him anywhere
but here, where I should have expected to find him, in the Paddock bar
on Derby Day...fat slanted eyes and a pimp's smile, blue silk suit and
his friends looking like crooked bank tellers on a binge...
Steadman wanted to see some Kentucky Colonels, but he wasn't sure what
they looked like. I told him to go back to the clubhouse men's rooms and
look for men in white linen suits vomitting in the urinals. "They'll
usually have large brown whiskey stains on the front of their suits," I
said. "But watch the shoes, that's the tip-off. Most of them manage to
avoid vomitting on their own clothes, but they never miss their shoes."
In a box not far from ours was Colonel Anna Friedman Goldman, Chairman
and Keeper of the Great Seal of the Honorable Order of Kentucky
Colonels. Not all the 76 million or so Kentucky Colonels could make it
to the Derby this year, but many had kept the faith, and several days
prior to the Derby they gathered for their annual dinner at the Seelbach
Hotel.
The Derby, the actual race, was scheduled for late afternoon, and as the
magic hour approached I suggested to Steadman that we should probably
spend some time in the infield, that boiling sea of people across the
track from the clubhouse. He seemed a little nervous about it, but since
none of the awful things I'd warned him about had happened so far — no
race riots, firestorms or savage drunken attacks--he shrugged and said,
"Right, let's do it."
To get there we had to pass through many gates, each one a step down in
status, then through a tunnel under the track. Emerging from the tunnel
was such a culture shock that it took us a while to adjust. "God
almighty!" Steadman muttered. "This is a...Jesus!" He plunged ahead with
his tiny camera, stepping over bodies, and I followed, trying to take
notes.
Total chaos, no way to see the race, not even the track...nobody cares.
Big lines at the outdoor betting windows, then stand back to watch
winning numbers flash on the big board, like a giant bingo game.
Old blacks arguing about bets; "Hold on there, I'll handle this" (waving
pint of whiskey, fistful of dollar bills); girl riding piggyback,
T-shirt says, "Stolen from Fort Lauderdale Jail." Thousands of
teen-agers, group singing "Let the Sun Shine In," ten soldires guarding
the American flag and a huge fat drunk wearing a blue football jersey
(No. 80) reeling around with quart of beer in hand.
No booze sold out here, too dangerous...no bathrooms either. Muscle
Beach...Woodstock...many cops with riot sticks, but no sign of a riot.
Far across the track the clubhouse looks like a postcard from the
Kentucky Derby.
We went back to the clubhouse to watch the big race. When the crowd
stood to face the flag and sing "My Old Kentucky Home," Steadman faced
the crowd and sketched frantically. Somewhere up in the boxes a voice
screeched, "Turn around, you hairy freak!" The race itself was only two
minutes long, and even from our super-status seats and using 12-power
glasses, there was no way to see what really happened to our horses.
Holy Land, Ralph's choice, stumbled and lost his jockey in the final
turn. Mine, Silent Screen, had the lead coming into the stretch but
faded to fifth at the finish. The winner was a 16-1 shot named Dust
Commander.
Moments after the race was over, the crowd surged wildly for the exits,
rushing for cabs and busses. The next day's Courier told of violence in
the parking lot; people were punched and trampled, pockets were picked,
children lost, bottles hurled. But we missed all this, having retired to
the press box for a bit of post-race drinking. By this time we were
both half-crazy from too much whiskey, sun fatigue, culture shock, lack
of sleep and general dissolution. We hung around the press box long
enough to watch a mass interview with the winning owner, a dapper little
man named Lehmann who said he had just flown into Louisville that
morning from Nepal, where he'd "bagged a record tiger." The
sportswriters murmured their admiration and a waiter filled Lehmann's
glass with Chivas Regal. He had just won $127,000 with a horse that cost
him $6,500 two years ago. His occupation, he said, was "retired
contractor." And then he added, with a big grin, "I just retired."
The rest of the day blurs into madness. The rest of that night too. And
all the next day and night. Such horrible things occurred that I can't
bring myself even to think about them now, much less put them down in
print. I was lucky to get out at all. One of my clearest memories of
that vicious time is Ralph being attacked by one of my old friends in
the billiard room of the Pendennis Club in downtown Louisville on
Saturday night. The man had ripped his own shirt open to the waist
before deciding that Ralph was after his wife. No blows were struck, but
the emotional effects were massive. Then, as a sort of final horror,
Steadman put his fiendish pen to work and tried to patch things up by
doing a little sketch of the girl he'd been accused of hustling. That
finished us in the Pedennis.
Sometime around ten-thirty Monday morning I was awakened by a scratching
sound at my door. I leaned out of bed and pulled the curtain back just
far enough to see Steadman outside. "What the fuck do you want?" I
shouted.
"What about having breakfast?" he said.
I lunged out of bed and tried to open the door, but it caught on the
night-chain and banged shut again. I couldn't cope with the chain! The
thing wouldn't come out of the track — so I ripped it out of the wall
with a vicious jerk on the door. Ralph didn't blink. "Bad luck," he
muttered.
I could barely see him. My eyes were swollen almost shut and the sudden
burst of sunlight through the door left me stunned and helpless like a
sick mole. Steadman was mumbling about sickness and terrible heat; I
fell back on the bed and tried to focus on him as he moved around the
room in a very distracted way for a few moments, then suddenly darted
over to the beer bucket and seized a Colt .45. "Christ," I said. "You're
getting out of control."
He nodded and ripped the cap off, taking a long drink. "You know, this
is really awful," he said finally. "I must get out of this place..." he
shook his head nervously. "The plane leaves at three-thirty, but I don't
know if I'll make it."
I barely heard him. My eyes had finally opened enough for me to foucs on
the mirror across the room and I was stunned at the shock of
recognition. For a confused instant I thought that Ralph had brought
somebody with him--a model for that one special face we'd been looking
for. There he was, by God — a puffy, drink-ravaged, disease-ridden
caricature...like an awful cartoon version of an old snapshot in some
once-proud mother's family photo album. It was the face we'd been
looking for — and it was, of course, my own. Horrible, horrible...
"Maybe I should sleep a while longer," I said. "Why don't you go on over
to the Fish-Meat place and eat some of those rotten fish and chips?
Then come back and get me around noon. I feel too near death to hit the
streets at this hour."
He shook his head. "No...no...I think I'll go back upstairs and work on
those drawings for a while." He leaned down to fetch two more cans out
of the beer bucket. "I tried to work earlier," he said, "but my hands
kept trembling...It's teddible, teddible."
"You've got to stop this drinking," I said.
He nodded. "I know. This is no good, no good at all. But for some reason it makes me feel better..."
"Not for long," I said. "You'll probably collapse into some kind of
hysterical DT's tonight--probably just about the time you get off the
plane at Kennedy. They'll zip you up in a straightjacket and drag you
down to the Tombs, then beat you on the kidneys with big sticks until
you straighten out."
He shrugged and wandered out, pulling the door shut behind him. I went
back to bed for another hour or so, and later — after the daily
grapefruit juice run to the Nite Owl Food Mart — we had our last meal at
Fish-Meat Village: a fine lunch of dough and butcher's offal, fried in
heavy grease.
By this time Ralph wouldn't order coffee; he kept asking for more water.
"It's the only thing they have that's fit for human consumption," he
explained. Then, with an hour or so to kill before he had to catch the
plane, we spread his drawings out on the table and pondered them for a
while, wondering if he'd caught the proper spirit of the thing...but we
couldn't make up our minds. His hands were shaking so badly that he had
trouble holding the paper, and my vision was so blurred that I could
barely see what he'd drawn. "Shit," I said. "We both look worse than
anything you've drawn here."
He smiled. "You know--I've been thinking about that," he said. "We came
down here to see this teddible scene: people all pissed out of their
minds and vomitting on themselves and all that...and now, you know what?
It's us..."
Huge Pontiac Ballbuster blowing through traffic on the expressway.
A radio news bulletin says the National Guard is massacring students at
Kent State and Nixon is still bombing Cambodia. The journalist is
driving, ignoring his passenger who is now nearly naked after taking off
most of his clothing, which he holds out the window, trying to
wind-wash the Mace out of it. His eyes are bright red and his face and
chest are soaked with beer he's been using to rinse the awful chemical
off his flesh. The front of his woolen trousers is soaked with vomit;
his body is racked with fits of coughing and wild chocking sobs. The
journalist rams the big car through traffic and into a spot in front of
the terminal, then he reaches over to open the door on the passenger's
side and shoves the Englishman out, snarling: "Bug off, you worthless
faggot! You twisted pigfucker! [Crazed laughter.] If I weren't sick I'd
kick your ass all the way to Bowling Green--you scumsucking foreign
geek. Mace is too good for you...We can do without your kind in
Kentucky."
