Toiling with a story about Delaware Park for a freelance assignment from the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. I just submitted it. Waiting to see if it works. God I hope it works.
I chatted with Dad about Delaware Park. A place where, in a way, he grew up and I grew up. He talked, I listened and recorded.
Here’s a bit I didn’t use.
“The exercise riders and jocks all lived at Brandywine Stable. The head jockey got the one room and the others all lived in the dormitory above the garage. A lot of them left a lot of clothes there and Buddy Raines put them in a pile and said take what you want. I took a shirt or something. My mother and father had a stark-raving fit, that Buddy Raines was somehow…I don’t know…
“Buddy Raines bought me the first pair of riding boots I ever had. I had some other hand-me-downs but I never had a new pair of riding boots. Kroop Boots. The high boots. The picture of me riding the horse, that’s his boots I had on then. I guess I was…I was showing pretty good when I was 12, 13, 14. The other kids had made ponies. I had one nice horse. Carglen. Morris Dixon trained his family of horses. He sent him to Bill Thomas, Sally Richardson’s father. Bill Thomas knew my father and made some deal with my father for Junior.
“My father was going to sell him to Allaire DuPont. We changed horses on the hunt field, she was interested in buying him. I got on her mare and finished out the day’s hunting while she rode Junior. I was horrified that my father would sell this horse. She thought he was too small for her or she would have bought him I guess. I was hurt. It hurt my feelings and everything else. I was thinking about running away from home.”
Grand Paddy didn’t sell the horse and Dad didn’t run away from home.
