I stumble across the photo, the tree, the setting on a slow Tuesday morning.
On a walk, going nowhere, just strolling, through Clare Court, down in the valley, past Greentree, up the road along Yaddo’s backyard, wondering who’s writing poems, who’s writing classics on the other side of the woods. Artists on one side. Artistry on the other. A horse leaps and skips in Barclay Tagg’s round pen. An exercise rider, feet dangling below short irons, waves. An old pony ambles like a pack mule on a path. Jalapeno peppers, rich and potent, the deepest green, pile high on a picnic table at the corner of a dorm. A pair of old boots dry outside a sagging wooden door. Through the narrow path, Serpe and Terranova world, the tap, tap, tap of a new shoe going on a trimmed hoof, to the main track. A left past Todd Pletcher leaning on a wooden sawhorse watching another set go another turn.
I tuck inside the board fence which runs parallel to the main track, heading back to my car parked by the receiving barn and am stopped in my HOKAs by the photo.
There is no one in sight. Just a photo on a tree.
Kind eyes. Warm smile. Close-cropped hair. Scattered sunspots. In his 60s, maybe 70s. Powder-blue T-shirt. A black strap around his neck that dangles out of the photo, surely a pair of binoculars hang to his chest. I wonder which races they’ve viewed, his horses, whose horses?
He’s looking down, a telling smile, more like a smirk, like he’s just enjoyed a moment, maybe a winner, maybe not, maybe a joke, maybe not. Definitely a Saratoga moment. The grandstand, our old friend, his old friend, in the background in the photo and in real life.
The close-up color photo, a 5×7, fills a plastic sleeve, nailed to a tree, one of the old guards on the backstretch of Saratoga. Near the mutuel windows, by the rows of TVs tucked in red wooden boxes. Along the white-board fence. By the green wooden viewing stand. I think it’s called Wendy Way. Flat-packed dirt and stone dust, you could dribble a basketball on it, grass long gone, an apron, a bib around the tree.
The old man looks familiar. You know, in that old racetrack familiar kind of way. He reminds me of a younger Manny Azpurua and an older CuCo who used to walk hots for P. G. Johnson. This place delivers familiarity every summer. I see people I haven’t seen in a year. Sometimes I remember their names. A lot of times I don’t. I wonder if I knew him, I’m sure I did. I can’t place him. I bet he read The Special. Probably made Worth Repeating a time or two.
Who is it? Who hung his photo here?
I stand under the tree, thinking about all of this. As I’m thinking – way too much after a housebound week and a dark-day morning – I turn away from the photo and catch another one. I’m taken aback again. This one is an oval photo clipped to a rectangular block of wood. One screw, top right, and another, bottom left pin it to another old tree. In cursive below the photo, “Tony In Our Hearts forever.”
There’s Tony, white T-shirt, white hair, glasses, big, booming smile, arms across his chest, holding something, I can’t tell what.
This time we have a name. I wonder about Tony. Who’s Tony? Who hung his photo on this tree and why this tree? I wonder if he knew the man in the blue shirt. I wonder if he knew all the names, all the photos, all the plaques around this old minefield of memories.
The security guard near the Nelson Avenue gate. Another photo on a tree, an American flag tucked behind it, a few struggling hostas, some long-dead flowers, a broken-down fence. Hey, any tribute is a tribute.
Just across the road, there’s David Piques, another photo on a tree. “In Loving Memory. April 24, 1962 – August 26, 2020.” The photo of David on a horse is faded, a can of Bud Light and plastic flowers surround the tree trunk.
On the other side of Union Avenue, on the Oklahoma, there’s more. Just follow the outside rail of the training track. Like mile markers on an old road.
In Loving Memory of Felix “Tony” Garcia, Sept. 9, 1997. In Memory of Cole Rosen “The Clocker,” 1928-2015. In Loving Memory of Betty Russello, Sept. 19, 1996. In Loving Memory of Dominic Galluscio, March 17, 2014.
And a stop at Bill Mott’s barn for the biggest plaque of all. Wood trimmed and high in the highest tree. In Loving Memory of J. David “Doc” Richardson. 1945-2021. Founding Member of the Railbirds.
And I know there’s another I pass most mornings, oh yeah, under the tree near Bruce Levine’s barn. In Loving Memory of Jim O’Connell, Past President I.J.H.U. I have to dig in the dirt to see the rest. 1912-2000.
One day they’re back here holding court under a tree, morning workouts, afternoons on the backstretch when the races rip past early and drift away late. The next they’re memories, memorials, on old-growth trees and outside rails.
There are stakes named for some – Woodward and Whitney, Johnson and Johnstone, Sheppard and Shipman, Violette and Vanderbilt. And then there’s others, tacked-up photos and chiseled plaques, gone but not forgotten.
Who will hang your photo, your plaque? And where will it hang?
